A DAY'S RIDE: A LIFE'S ROMANCE.

CHAPTER IX.

NEXT mornings are terrible things, whether
one awakes to the thought of some awful run of
ill luck at play, or with the racking headache of
new port, or a very "fruity" Burgundy. They
are dreadful, too, when they bring memories—
vague and indistinct, perhaps—of some serious
altercations, passionate words exchanged, and
expressions of defiance reciprocated; but as a
measure of self-reproach and humiliation, I know
not any distress can compare with the sensation
of awaking to the consciousness that our cups
have so ministered to imagination, that we have
given a mythical narrative of ourself and our
belongings, and have built up a card-edifice of
greatness that must tumble with the first touch
of truth.

It was a sincere satisfaction to me that I saw
nothing of the skipper on that "next morning."
He was so occupied with all the details of getting
into port, that I escaped his notice, and
contrived to land unremarked. Little scraps of
my last night's biography would obtrude
themselves upon me, mixed up strangely with
incidents of that same skipper's life, so that I was
actually puzzled at moments to remember
whether he was not the descendant of the famous
rebel friend of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and I
it was who was sold in the public square at
Tunis.

These dissolving views of an evening before are
very difficult problems—not to you, most valued
reader, whose conscience is not burglariously
assaulted by a riotous imagination, but to the
poor weak Potts-like organisations, the men
who never enjoy a real sensation, or taste a real
pleasure, save on the hypothesis of a mock
situation.

I sat at my breakfast in the Goat meditating
these things. The grand problem to resolve was
this: Is it better to live a life of dull incidents
and common-place events in one's own actual
sphere, or, creating, by force of imagination, an
ideal status, to soar into a region of higher
conceptions, and more pictorial situations?
What could existence in the first case offer me?
A wearisome beaten path, with nothing to
interest, nothing to stimulate me. On the other
side, lay glorious regions of lovely scenery,
peopled with figures the most graceful and
attractive. I was at once the associate of the
wise, the witty, and the agreeable, with wealth
at my command, and great prizes within my
reach. Illusions all! to be sure; but what are
not illusions—if by that word you take mere
account of permanence? What is it in this
world that we love to believe real is not
illusionary—the question of duration being the only
difference? Is not beauty perishable? Is not
wit soon exhausted? What becomes of the
proudest physical strength after middle life is
reached? What of eloquence when the voice
fails or loses its facility of inflexion?

All these considerations, however convincing
to myself, were not equally satisfactory as
regarded others, and so I sat down to write a letter
to Crofton, explaining the reasons of my sudden
departure, and enclosing him Father Dyke's
epistle, which I had carried away with me. I
began this letter with the most firm resolve to
be truthful and accurate. I wrote down not
only the date but the day, "Goat, Milford,"
followed, and then, "My dear Crofton,—It would
ill become one who has partaken of your generous
hospitality, and who, from an unknown stranger,
was admitted to the privilege of your intimacy,
to quit the roof beneath which the happiest
hours of his life were passed without expressing
the deep shame and sorrow such a step has cost
him, while he bespeaks your indulgence to hear
the reason." This was my first sentence, and it
gave me uncommon trouble. I desired to be
dignified, yet grateful, proud in my humility,
grieved over an abrupt departure, but sustained
by a manly confidence in the strength of my own
motives. If I read it over once, I read it twenty
times; now deeming it too diffuse, now fearing
lest I had compressed my meaning too narrowly.
Might it not be better to open thus: "Strike,
but hear me, dear Crofton, or, before condemning
the unhappy creature whose abject cry for
mercy may seem but to increase the presumption
of his guilt, and in whose faltering accents may
appear the signs of a stricken conscience, read
over, dear friend, the entire of this letter, weigh
well the difficulties and dangers of him who
wrote it, and say, is he not rather a subject for
pity than rebuke? Is not this more a case for
a tearful forgiveness than for chastisement and
reproach?"

Like most men who have little habit of
composition, my difficulties increased with every
new attempt, and I became bewildered and