I conceive, also, that these twenty years would appear in the retrospect scarcely longer than the week to which Wakefield had at first limited his absence.  He would look on the affair as no more than an interlude in the main business of his life.  When, after a little while more, he should deem it time to re-enter his parlor, his wife would clap her hands for joy on beholding the middle-aged Mr. Wakefield.  Alas, what a mistake!  Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should be young men—­all of us—­and till Doomsday.

One evening, in the twentieth year since he vanished, Wakefield is taking his customary walk toward the dwelling which he still calls his own.  It is a gusty night of autumn, with frequent showers that patter down upon the pavement and are gone before a man can put up his umbrella.  Pausing near the house, Wakefield discerns through the parlor-windows of the second floor the red glow and the glimmer and fitful flash of a comfortable fire.  On the ceiling appears a grotesque shadow of good Mrs. Wakefield.  The cap, the nose and chin and the broad waist form an admirable caricature, which dances, moreover, with the up-flickering and down-sinking blaze almost too merrily for the shade of an elderly widow.  At this instant a shower chances to fall, and is driven by the unmannerly gust full into Wakefield’s face and bosom.  He is quite penetrated with its autumnal chill.  Shall he stand wet and shivering here, when his own hearth has a good fire to warm him and his own wife will run to fetch the gray coat and small-clothes which doubtless she has kept carefully in the closet of their bedchamber?  No; Wakefield is no such fool.  He ascends the steps—­heavily, for twenty years have stiffened his legs since he came down, but he knows it not.—­Stay, Wakefield!  Would you go to the sole home that is left you?  Then step into your grave.—­The door opens.  As he passes in we have a parting glimpse of his visage, and recognize the crafty smile which was the precursor of the little joke that he has ever since been playing off at his wife’s expense.  How unmercifully has he quizzed the poor woman!  Well, a good night’s rest to Wakefield!

This happy event—­supposing it to be such—­could only have occurred at an unpremeditated moment.  We will not follow our friend across the threshold.  He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which shall lend its wisdom to a moral and be shaped into a figure.  Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that by stepping aside for a moment a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place for ever.  Like Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the outcast of the universe.

A RILL FROM THE TOWN-PUMP.

(SCENE, the corner of two principal streets,[1] the TOWN-PUMP talking through its nose.)