black realities that sought to decorate themselves with outward
grace or glory. But at every atrocious fact that was added to his
catalogue, at every increase of the sad knowledge which he spent his
life to collect, the native impulses of the poor man's loving and
confiding heart made him groan with anguish. Next, with his heavy
brow bent downward, there stole into the hall a man naturally
earnest and impassioned, who, from his immemorial infancy, had felt
the consciousness of a high message to the world; but, essaying to
deliver it, had found either no voice or form of speech, or else no
ears to listen. Therefore his whole life was a bitter questioning
of himself: "Why have not men acknowledged my mission? Am I not a
self-deluding fool? What business have I on earth? Where is my
grave?" Throughout the festival, he quaffed frequent draughts from
the sepulchral urn of wine, hoping thus to quench the celestial fire
that tortured his own breast and could not benefit his race.

Then there entered, having flung away a ticket for a ball, a gay
gallant of yesterday, who had found four or five wrinkles in his
brow, and more gray hairs than he could well number on his head.
Endowed with sense and feeling, he had nevertheless spent his youth
in folly, but had reached at last that dreary point in life where
Folly quits us of her own accord, leaving us to make friends with
Wisdom if we can. Thus, cold and desolate, he had come to seek
Wisdom at the banquet, and wondered if the skeleton were she. To
eke out the company, the stewards had invited a distressed poet from
his home in the almshouse, and a melancholy idiot from the street-
corner. The latter had just the glimmering of sense that was
sufficient to make him conscious of a vacancy, which the poor
fellow, all his life long, had mistily sought to fill up with
intelligence, wandering up and down the streets, and groaning