efforts, is calculating on a decade or two of pursuit and attainment. I,
too, may perhaps live for some years; but for me there is no more
activity, no ambition. I have had my chance--and I see what I made of
it.

The thought was for an instant all but dreadful. What! I, who only
yesterday was a young man, planning, hoping, looking forward to life as
to a practically endless career, I, who was so vigorous and scornful,
have come to this day of definite retrospect? How is it possible? But,
I have done nothing; I have had no time; I have only been preparing
myself--a mere apprentice to life. My brain is at some prank; I am
suffering a momentary delusion; I shall shake myself, and return to
common sense--to my schemes and activities and eager enjoyments.

Nevertheless, my life is over.

What a little thing! I knew how the philosophers had spoken; I repeated
their musical phrases about the mortal span--yet never till now believed
them. And this is all? A man's life can be so brief and so vain? Idly
would I persuade myself that life, in the true sense, is only now
beginning; that the time of sweat and fear was not life at all, and that
it now only depends upon my will to lead a worthy existence. That may be
a sort of consolation, but it does not obscure the truth that I shall
never again see possibilities and promises opening before me. I have
"retired," and for me as truly as for the retired tradesman, life is
over. I can look back upon its completed course, and what a little
thing! I am tempted to laugh; I hold myself within the limit of a smile.

And that is best, to smile, not in scorn, but in all forbearance, without
too much self-compassion. After all, that dreadful aspect of the thing