to spin into the filmy fabric of a romance, and I handsomely make a present of it to the first comer.  If the dreamer is of the right quality he will know how to make the reader feel that with the universal longing to return to former conditions or circumstances it must always be a mistake to do so, and he will subtly insinuate the disappointment and discomfort of the stored personality in resuming its old relations.  With that just mixture of the comic and pathetic which we desire in romance, he will teach convincingly that a stored personality is to be desired only if it is permanently stored, with the implication of a like finality in the storage of its belongings.

Save in some signal exception, a thing taken out of storage cannot be established in its former function without a sense of its comparative inadequacy.  It stands in the old place, it serves the old use, and yet a new thing would be better; it would even in some subtle wise be more appropriate, if I may indulge so audacious a paradox; for the time is new, and so will be all the subconscious keeping in which our lives are mainly passed.  We are supposed to have associations with the old things which render them precious, but do not the associations rather render them painful?  If that is true of the inanimate things, how much truer it is of those personalities which once environed and furnished our lives!  Take the article of old friends, for instance:  has it ever happened to the reader to witness the encounter of old friends after the lapse of years?  Such a meeting is conventionally imagined to be full of tender joy, a rapture that vents itself in manly tears, perhaps, and certainly in womanly tears.  But really is it any such emotion?  Honestly is not it a cruel embarrassment, which all the hypocritical pretences cannot hide?  The old friends smile and laugh, and babble incoherently at one another, but are they genuinely glad?  Is not each wishing the other at that end of the earth from which he came?  Have they any use for each other such as people of unbroken associations have?

I have lately been privy to the reunion of two old comrades who are bound together more closely than most men in a community of interests, occupations, and ideals.  During a long separation they had kept account of each other’s opinions as well as experiences; they had exchanged letters, from time to time, in which they opened their minds fully to each other, and found themselves constantly in accord.  When they met they made a great shouting, and each pretended that he found the other just what he used to be.  They talked a long, long time, fighting the invisible enemy which they felt between them.  The enemy was habit, the habit of other minds and hearts, the daily use of persons and things which in their separation they had not had in common.  When the old friends parted they promised to meet every day, and now, since their lines had been cast in the same places again, to repair the ravage of the