THE TOWN. 87

 is that Love, with its hopes and promises, is only
 a tiresome bit of cruel humor, and that Life is
 nothing better. "It is not worth while!" for-
 getting what was to make it so, forgetting the
 wind which blows the worlds into order and
 orbit.
 These headstones mean nothing more than
the beginning and ending of Vanity, one thinks,
with the indifference of a dream. "Most of
them recorded," says Addison of the inscrip-
tions in Westminster Abbey, most of them
recorded of the buried person that he was born
upon one day and died upon another; the whole
history of his life being comprehended in those'
two circumstances." And for the moment, so it
seems.
 One needs to leave this flooding stillness
of noon, and brush the haze of golden light
aside, to see again all the dear and daily things
which lie between these two dates, "common to
all mankind." If some fresh wind would but
come up out of the violet silence of the sea,
and touch his drowsy eyes and listless hands, a
man might awake to see, serene and calm as a