or make a more or less brave effort to eat whenever he had the wherewithal to settle for the same.  Breakfast over and gone the young man returned to his Eyrie, and in due course was at his writing table, and at work upon the weekly article that had been appearing in the Sunday issue of one of the popular Dailies for an indefinite period, and the price of which had on several occasions kept him from becoming a conspicuous object of charity.

Having written himself out for the day, as he was apt to in a few hours, he wandered down to the Club for a bit of refreshment which was sure to be forthcoming, for his friends there were ever ready to dine him, or more frequently to wine him, merely for the pleasure of his company.

[Illustration:  San Francisco in 1856]

So the afternoon waned and the dinner hour approached; fortunately this hour was usually bespoken and for a little while at least he was lapped in luxury.  On his way home he was very apt to turn in at the wicker gates of a typical German Rathskellar where he was unmolested; where the blustering pipes of a colossal orchestrion brayed through an aria from Trovatore with more sound than sentiment and all unmindful of modulation.

He was at home by midnight, for the beer and the bravura ceased to flow at the witching hour.  Then he lounged in the easy chair, gradually and not unconsciously shedding all the worldly influences that had been clothing him as with a hair-shirt even since he first went forth that morning.  Safely he sank into the silence of the place.  Every breath he drew was balm; every moment healing.  So he passed into the silence, enfolded by invisible arms that led him gently to his pillow where he sank to sleep with the trustful resignation of a tired babe.

If this routine was ever varied it was a variation with a vengeance.  “From grave to gay, from lively to severe” might have been engraved upon his escutcheon.  It chanced that the family motto was Festina Lente; this also was appropriate; had he not all his life made haste slowly?  For this very reason he had been accounted one of the laziest of his kind; his indolence was a byword merely because he did not throw himself into an easy chair at the Club, of an evening, and bewail his fate; because he did not puff and blow and talk often of the work he had accomplished, was accomplishing, or hastening forward to accomplishment.  With all his faults, thank heaven, that sin cannot be charged against him.

III.

BALM OF HURT WOUNDS

He was scrimping in every way; his case was growing desperate.  The books, the pictures, the bric-a-brac so precious in his eyes, he was loath to part with; moreover, he was well aware that if he were to trundle his effects down to an auction-room they would not bring him enough to cover his expenses for a single week.  “Better to starve in the midst of my household gods,” thought he, “than to part with them for the sake of prolonging this misery.”  The situation was in some respects serio-comic.  While he seemed to have everything, he really had almost nothing; he was in a certain sense at the mercy of his friends and dependent upon them.