waiter with an smile and his head on one side young gentlemen generally has been with i commanded him in my deepest voice to order a and potatoes and all things fitting and to inquire at the bar if there were any letters for � which i knew there were not and couldn t be but thought it manly to appear to expect he soon came back to say that there were none at which i was much surprised and began to lay the cloth for my dinner in a box by the fire while he was so engaged he asked me what i would take with it and on my replying half a pint of thought it a favourable opportunity i am afraid to extract that measure of wine from the stale at the of several small i am of this opinion because while i was reading the newspaper i observed him behind a low wooden which was his private apartment very busy pouring out of a number of those vessels into one like a and making up a when the wine came too i thought it flat and it certainly had more english in it than were to be expected in a foreign wine in anything like a pure state but i was enough to drink it and say nothing being then in a pleasant frame of mind from which i infer that is not always disagreeable in some stages of the process i resolved to go to the play it was garden theatre that i chose and there from the back of a centre box i saw caesar and the new to have all those noble alive before me and walking in and out for my entertainment instead of being the stern they had been at school was a most novel and delightful effect but the mingled reality and mystery of the whole show the influence upon me of the poetry the lights the music the company the smooth changes of glittering and brilliant scenery were so dazzling and opened up such regions of delight that when i came out into the rainy street at twelve o clock at night i felt as if i had come from the clouds where i had been leading a romantic life for ages to a link lighted umbrella struggling muddy miserable world i had emerged by another door and stood in the street for a little while as if i really were a stranger upon earth but the pushing and that i received soon recalled me to myself and put me in the road back to the hotel whither i went revolving the glorious vision all the way and where after some porter and i sat revolving it still at past one o clock with my eyes on the coffee room fire i was so filled with the play and with the past � for it was in a manner like a shining through which i saw my earlier life moving along � that i don t know when the figure of a handsome well formed young op david man dressed with a easy which i have reason to remember very well became a real presence to me but i recollect being conscious of his company without having noticed his coming in � and my still sitting musing over the coffee room fire at last i rose to go to bed much to the relief of the sleepy waiter who had got the in his legs and was twisting them and them and putting them through all kinds of in his small in going towards the door i passed the person who had come in and saw him plainly i turned directly came back and looked again he did not know me but i knew him in a moment at another time i might have wanted the confidence or the decision to speak to him and might have put it off until next day and might have lost him but in the then condition of my mind where the play was still running high his former protection of me appeared so deserving of my gratitude and my old love for him my breast so and that i went up to him at once with a fast beating heart and said won t you speak to me he looked at me � just as he used to look sometimes � but i saw no recognition in his face you don t remember me i am afraid said i my god he suddenly exclaimed it s little i grasped him by both hands and could not let them go but for very shame and the fear that it might him i could have held him round the neck and cried i never never never was so glad my dear i am so to see you and i am rejoiced to see you too he said shaking my hands heartily why old boy don t be overpowered and yet he was glad too i thought to see how the delight i had in meeting him affected me i brushed away the tears that my utmost resolution had not been able to keep back and i made a clumsy laugh of it and we sat down together side by side why how do you come to be here said clapping me on the shoulder i came here by the coach to day i have been adopted by an aunt down in that part of the country and have just finished my education there how do i ou come to be here well i am what they call an oxford man he returned that is to say i get bored to death down there � and i am on my way now to my mother s you re a devilish amiable looking fellow just what you used to be now i look at you not altered in the least i knew ou immediately i said 