Power seemed to reside
in him exhaustless; we saw him stoop to play with us, but held him
marked for higher destinies; we loved his notice; and I have rarely
had my pride more gratified than when he sat at my father's table,
my acknowledged friend. So he walked among us, both hands full of
gifts, carrying with nonchalance the seeds of a most influential
life.
The powers and the ground of friendship is a mystery; but, looking
back, I can discern that, in part, we loved the thing he was, for
some shadow of what he was to be. For with all his beauty, power,
breeding, urbanity and mirth, there was in those days something
soulless in our friend. He would astonish us by sallies, witty,
innocent and inhumane; and by a misapplied Johnsonian pleasantry,
demolish honest sentiment. I can still see and hear him, as he
went his way along the lamplit streets, LA CI DAREM LA MANO on his
lips, a noble figure of a youth, but following vanity and
incredulous of good; and sure enough, somewhere on the high seas of
life, with his health, his hopes, his patrimony and his self-
respect, miserably went down.
From this disaster, like a spent swimmer, he came desperately
ashore, bankrupt of money and consideration; creeping to the family
he had deserted; with broken wing, never more to rise. But in his
face there was a light of knowledge that was new to it.
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