Howells, Hay, Aldrich, Matthews, Stockton,
Cable, Remus--how their young hopes and ambitions come flooding back to
my memory now, out of the vague far past, the beautiful past, the
lamented past! I remember it so well--that night we met together--it was
in Boston, and Mr. Fiends was there, and Mr. Osgood, Ralph Keeler, and
Boyle O'Reilly, lost to us now these many years--and under the seal of
confidence revealed to each other what our boyhood dreams had been: reams
which had not as yet been blighted, but over which was stealing the grey
of the night that was to come--a night which we prophetically felt, and
this feeling oppressed us and made us sad. I remember that Howells's
voice broke twice, and it was only with great difficulty that he was able
to go on; in the end he wept. For he had hoped to be an auctioneer. He
told of his early struggles to climb to his goal, and how at last he
attained to within a single step of the coveted summit. But there
misfortune after misfortune assailed him, and he went down, and down, and
down, until now at last, weary and disheartened, he had for the present
given up the struggle and become the editor of the Atlantic Monthly.
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