V.

It was my first experiment in the world. I had no friends or acquaintances in the great metropolis. I was a stranger in its thronged thoroughfares, which are more desolate to a stranger than a howling wilderness.

At first I was distracted out of myself by the whirl of the vortex in which I found myself engulfed. The eternal din, the countless multitudes, the occupation that was legibly written in every man's face, gave me something to think of, and forced me into a sort of blind

## activity. But the novelty of this uproar and bustle, in which my own

sympathies or interests were in no way engaged, soon palled upon me, and threw me back upon the morbid humors which the sudden change had only temporarily lulled. I panted again for quiet, and sought it in the depth of the town.

At that time the church, of St. Martin-in-the-Fields was buried in a mass of dingy buildings, which, clustering up about it on all sides, blotted it out from the sun. These buildings were intersected by numerous dark courts and passages, and in one of them there was a retired tavern frequented by a few persons, mostly of an intellectual caste--artists, musicians, authors; men of high aspirations, but whom fortune never seemed weary of persecuting, and who met here of an evening to compare notes, and vent their complaints against the world. This was exactly the sort of company that fell in with my tastes. It was a satisfaction to me to herd with disappointed men, and hear them rail at the prosperity which refused to crown their merits. Their failures in life had given a peculiar turn to their minds, and tinged their conversation with a spirit of fatalism. They were one and all clearly convinced that it was in vain to struggle against destiny--that no genius, however original or lofty, could secure its legitimate rewards by legitimate means--and that, in short, the only individuals really deserving of success were those who, by a perverse dispensation of laurels, never could attain it. This view of the wrongs and injustice they suffered from society stirred up much pride and bitterness among them, and led them into many abstract disquisitions, which were rendered attractive to me, no less by the nature of the topics they selected, than by the piquancy and boldness with which they dissected them.

The most remarkable person in this little knot was a young man of the name of Forrester. Like myself, he was of no profession, and appeared to be drawn into the circle by much the same motives. He was tall and pale, and generally reserved in speech; but subject to singular fluctuations--sometimes all sunshine, breaking out into fits of wild enthusiasm, and sometimes overwhelmed with despondency. These vicissitudes of mood and temperament, which indicated a troubled experience beyond his years, interested my sympathies. The more intimate I became with him, the more reason I had to suspect that his life, like my own, was the depository of some heavy secret; but I did not venture to question him on this point, from an apprehension which his bearing toward me led me to entertain that a similar suspicion lurked in his mind respecting me. I confess that I dreaded any allusion to my own history, and carefully avoided all subjects likely to lead to it; for I should have been ashamed to acknowledge the sufferings I underwent from a cause which most men would have treated with ridicule and skepticism. I was quite aware that it was vulnerable to attacks of that sort, and the terror of having the deception, if it were one, which I had cherished with such fervor, rudely assailed and beaten down by common sense, made me preserve a strict silence in every thing relating to myself--a precaution that probably gave a keener zest to the curiosity I desired to baffle.

A strong friendship grew up between me and Forrester. We were both idlers, and we discovered that, by a happy coincidence, our literary tastes--if an industrious prosecution of desultory and unprofitable reading may be dignified by such a term--lay in the same channels. He was as deeply learned in the literature of the marvelous as I was myself; and during the summer evenings we used to take long walks into the country, beguiling the way by discussions upon a variety of wonderful matters which we turned up out of our old stores. The exercise at least was healthy, and the very disputations upon the evidence and likelihood of these things strengthened my faculties, and cleared off some clouds of credulity. This collision with another mind was a novelty to me, and, for a time, diverted me from other thoughts.

At our tavern Forrester and I enjoyed distinguished popularity. Every body listened to our opinions with attention, not so much because they were remarkable for their soundness, as because they were generally opposed to established notions, and were urged with earnestness. We always spoke like men who speak out of their convictions, while most of the others argued merely for argument's sake, and were ready to take any side of a question for the pleasure of getting up a controversy, and showing off their ingenuity.

One evening the conversation turned upon the possibility of the dead revisiting the earth, and the theory of manifest warnings before dissolution. The debate, which began in levity, soon took a more serious tone, and we had been arguing a full hour before I discovered that Forrester and I had engrossed the discussion to ourselves, the rest of the company maintaining a profound silence, and listening to our observations with undisguised wonder and astonishment. This discovery abashed me a little, for I never meant to make such a display, and I looked across at Forrester for the purpose of drawing his attention to the circumstance. I perceived, then, for the first time, that his face had undergone an extraordinary change. The natural pallor had taken an almost livid hue. The ordinary placidity of his features had given place to an expression of severe pain and alarm.

"What is the matter?" I inquired. "Are you ill?"

"No. Why do you ask?"

"You look dreadfully pale." He only smiled at this remark--but it was a ghastly smile.

"I know that something is the matter," I cried. "What is it, Forrester?"

"Nothing. What can be the matter? Are we not all living men talking upon equal terms, and in the best possible humor, about the dead? Why should that affect me more than any body else?"

"I know not why it should," I replied, "but I feel it does."

"Are you quite sure," he returned, in a low voice, "that it does not affect you as deeply?" He looked at me as if he knew my whole life, which he could not have known; and, in spite of a violent effort to suppress my feelings, I was conscious that I betrayed the agitation into which I was thrown by that searching look.

"Come, come," he exclaimed, rallying wildly, "we have both looked death in the face before now; and although use can not make it familiar, still a sight often repeated must lose some of its horrors."

"No, you are wrong. I have not seen death often."

"Once--only once," he replied, in the same hollow voice; "but you have seen many deaths in one."

"How do you know that?" I demanded; "or assume to know it?"

"One day you shall learn," he answered, calmly.

"You amaze me. Speak openly to me, Forrester, and not in these dark enigmas. I can bear to hear."

"Can you bear to suffer?" he asked.

"I can--I think I can," I replied, shrinking at my heart from the ordeal I invited. "I have suffered that which I should once have thought utterly fabulous, and beyond human endurance."

"I know it. But endurance has its limits. The earthly can bear only that which is of the earth--test them with sufferings that look out beyond this world into the darkness of eternity, and they perish. The trial is not in those things that are dated, bounded, and finite: it is where speculation can not reach nor reason avail us, where human knowledge and human strength are blind and idle, that the trial of that suffering begins, which is akin to the penalties of immortal spirits--a beginning without an end."

"I do not understand you," I answered.

"You _will_ understand me, however, when the hour arrives." Then stopping short, he whispered, "they are observing us; this is not the place for such a theme. We shall meet again, when you shall be satisfied."

"When?"

"Soon--I fear too soon. No matter--we shall meet, and you shall be satisfied."

He rose and left the room.

I was restrained from following him only by the consideration that I should expose myself to the criticisms of our companions, who, I had observed, were fond of making merry at the expense of their absent friends; and as I was beginning to feel very sensitive to ridicule, I determined not to give them an opportunity of exercising their wit upon me.

When Forrester was gone, they immediately took him to pieces. His character, habits, life, and opinions, furnished them with abundant materials for commentary, which they were all the less scrupulous in dealing freely with because they really knew little or nothing about him. One said that there was a mysterious something about Forrester that he couldn't make out--it might be all right, but, for his part, he liked people to be candid with you and above-board; another remarked, that a man who lived nobody knew exactly how, and who disappeared every night at pretty much the same hour, and was so very incommunicative about his pursuits, laid himself open to suspicion, at all events; a third suggested that, probably, he had experienced some blight, which had spoiled him for company--perhaps he had been crossed in love (here there was a general laugh, and a rapid succession of puns); while a fourth, who made it a rule never to form a judgment on any man's character without knowing him thoroughly, could not help observing that Mr. Forrester certainly held some rather extraordinary doctrines about ghosts and other nonsense of that sort, which, to be sure, was no imputation on his character, but--here the speaker stopped short, and shook his head in a very significant manner.

These opinions, delivered off-hand, puzzled me exceedingly, for I could not arrive at their meaning. It was evident that Forrester was an object of mystery to our friends--and so he was to me. But neither they nor I could get any farther in the matter. They, however, dismissed him from their minds with the drain of their glasses, while I lay restlessly all night ruminating on what had occurred.

I was passing through a state of transition from the seclusion in which my faculties had been kept dormant into a section of society which was eminently calculated to awaken and sharpen them for use. I was already getting into a habit of reasoning with myself, of trying to trace effects to causes, and examining with suspicion many things which I had hitherto taken upon trust. At first I committed numerous blunders, and fell into all sorts of mistakes, in my eagerness to emulate the cleverness of the experienced individuals with whom I was in the habit of associating. And I could not have dropped upon a clique better qualified or disposed to ride roughshod over the whole region of romance. They were generally practical men and some of them were worldly men; for although not one of them was able to do any thing for himself, they were all adepts in the knowledge of what other people ought to do. They looked with supreme contempt upon sentimental people, and took infinite pleasure in running them down. They were not the sort of men to be tricked by appearances or clap-trap. They despised finery, and ostentation, and outside manners. They loved to look at things as they were, and to call them by their proper names; never, by any accident, over-rating an excellence, but very frequently exaggerating a defect, which they considered as an error on the right side. In this severe school I acquired a few harsh practical views of life, and was beginning to feel its realities growing up about me; but in the progress from the visionary to the real there were many shapes of darkness yet to be struggled with.

A few nights afterward I met Forrester on his way to the rendezvous. There was the same unaccountable reserve in his manner which he betrayed at our last abrupt parting; but my anxiety, awakened more by his looks than his words, would not brook delay. I resolved to get an explanation on the spot.

"Forrester," I said, "you have inflicted a pain upon me which no man has a right to inflict upon another, without giving him at the same time his full confidence. You have made use of strange allusions and hints, which you are bound to explain. You seem to know more about me than I have myself ever confided to you, or than you could have known through any channels with which I am acquainted. I ask you to satisfy me at once whether it is so, or not?"

"It is so," he replied. "You see I am as frank as you are curious."

"But that does not satisfy me. You say you know more about me than I have thought it necessary or desirable to impart to you. What is it that you know?"

"Little," he returned with a singularly disagreeable smile.

"Then it will be the sooner told. What is that little?" and I uttered the last word with rather a bitter and satirical emphasis.

Forrester drew up gravely at this, and replied to me slowly,

"That little is all. All that has ever happened to you, and the whole may be expressed in a single word. Your life has scarcely had enough of

## action in it to stir the surface; it has been a life of inward strife."

"You have described it truly. My world has not been like that of other men."

"Nor mine; but I have come out of the mist, and you are in it still."

"You speak riddles, and involve me in deeper obscurity than ever. But I am resolved to be satisfied, and will be trifled with no longer. What is that which you said, nay, pledged yourself I should soon learn?"

"You must not be impatient. Do not fear that I will not keep my pledge. If you knew all, you would understand that I dare not break it. To-morrow night, at this hour precisely, meet me on this spot, and you shall be made wiser; happier, I will not promise. Better it should never be, than that it should be too late. This is dark to you now, it will soon be clear enough."

We shook hands after the promise of meeting on the following night, and so parted. Neither of us was in a condition to join the cynics at the tavern.

After a night of feverish suspense I rose early the next morning, my brain full of the prospect, clouded as it was, of the interview with Forrester. The day was passed in a ferment of agitation; I could not remain at home; I wandered abroad, forgot to dine, and was racked with a presentiment that my fate, for good or evil, hung upon the issue of the night.