asleep upon the carpet. But Mr. Smith, whose silver hair was the bright
symbol of a life unstained, except by such spots as are inseparable from
human nature, he had no need of a babe to protect him by its purity, nor
of a grown person to stand between him and his own soul. Nevertheless,
either Manhood must converse with Age, or Womanhood must soothe him with
gentle cares, or Infancy must sport around his chair, or his thoughts
will stray into the misty region of the past, and the old man be chill
and sad. Wine will not always cheer him. Such might have been the case
with Mr. Smith, when, through the brilliant medium of his glass of old
Madeira, he beheld three figures entering the room. These were Fancy,
who had assumed the garb and aspect of an itinerant showman, with a box
of pictures on her back; and Memory, in the likeness of a clerk, with a
pen behind her ear, an inkhorn at her buttonhole, and a huge manuscript
volume beneath her arm; and lastly, behind the other two, a person
shrouded in a dusky mantle, which concealed both face and form. But Mr.
Smith had a shrewd idea that it was Conscience.

How kind of Fancy, Memory, and Conscience to visit the old gentleman,
just as he was beginning to imagine that the wine had neither so bright a
sparkle nor so excellent a flavor as when himself and the liquor were
less aged! Through the dim length of the apartment, where crimson
curtains muffled the glare of sunshine, and created a rich obscurity, the
three guests drew near the silver-haired old mail. Memory, with a finger
between the leaves of her huge volume, placed herself at his right hand.
Conscience, with her face still hidden in the dusky mantle, took her
station on the left, so as to be next his heart; while Fancy set down her
picture-box upon the table, with the magnifying-glass convenient to his
eye. We can sketch merely the outlines of two or three out of the many
pictures which, at the pulling of a string, successively peopled the box
with the semblances of living scenes.