I wonder how often the executors of old college fellows, or of hard-faced bankers and bureaucrats, have been aggravated by finding in that most secret drawer, which ought to have held a codicil or a jewel, a tress, a glove, or a flower?  The searcher looks at the object for a moment, and then throws it into the rubbish-basket, with a laugh if he is good-natured, with a curse if he is vicious and disappointed.  Let it lie there—­though the dead miser valued it above all his bank-stock, and kissed it oftener than he did his living and lawful wife and children—­what is it worth now?  Say, as the grim Dean of St. Patrick wrote on his love-token, “Only a woman’s hair.”

Now these men, unknown to their best friend perhaps, had gone through the affliction which is so common that it is hard to speak of it without launching into truisms.  This sorrow has made some men famous, by forcing them out into the world and shutting the door behind them.  It has made the fortunes of some poets, who choose the world for their confidant, setting their bereavement to music, and bewailing Eurydice in charming volumes, that are cheap at “3_s._ 6_d._ in cloth, lettered.”  It has made some—­I think the best and bravest—­somewhat silent for the rest of their lives.  I read some lines the other day wise enough to have sprung from an older brain than Owen Meredith’s.

     “They were pedants who could speak—­
     Grander souls have passed unheard;
     Such as felt all language weak;
     Choosing rather to record
     Secrets before Heaven, than break
     Faith with angels, by a word—­”

Yes, many men have their Rachel; but—­there being a prejudice against bigamy—­few have even the Patriarch’s luck, to marry her at last; for the wife de convenance generally outlives her younger sister; and so, one afternoon, we turn again from a grave in Ephrata-Green Cemetery, somewhat drearily, into our tent pitched in the plains of Belgravia, where Leah—­(there was ever jealousy between those two)—­meets us with a sharp glance of triumph in her “tender eyes.”

We have known pleasanter tete-a-tetes—­have we not?—­than that which we undergo that evening at dinner, though our companion seems disposed to be especially lively.  We have not much appetite; but our carissima sposa tells us “not to drink any more claret, or we shall never be fit to take her to Lady Shechem’s conversazione.”  Of all nights in the year, would she let us off duty on this one?  “There are to be some very pleasant people there,” she says, “though none, perhaps, that you particularly care about.” (Thank you, my love; I understand that good-natured allusion perfectly, and am proportionately grateful.) Her voice sounds shriller than usual as she says this, and leaves us to put some last touches to her toilette.  So we order a fresh bottle, notwithstanding the warning, and fall to thinking.  How low and soft that