Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/56

44 of it, but the lines on which he at last prepared to answer Daniel's cordial and even affectionate invitation to come and visit him were laid down more or less under the direct influence of the conscience of the other friend far away.

He wrote at first slowly and with effort, tearing up more than one false start, but at last his actual feeling became clear to him, and the pen raced.

'My dear Daniel,' he said, 'your letter gave me great pleasure. It brought back the full flood-tide of the memories of our boyhood and youth together. You cannot think how vividly some of our last nocturnal walks and talks still present themselves to me. I can still see us and hear us as we wandered about on that peerless summer's night through St. John's Wood (do you remember?), and stood and watched the dawn break from the upper ground by Primrose Hill. And again, that night down at Ventnor, when we went off for our winter holiday, how the downs were covered with a thin cloak of white snow, glistening faintly in the faint light of the crescent moon and the myriad stars; and then how we tramped all along the shore of the much-resounding sea to Luccombe Chine, and came back in the glorious dawn through the Landslip.

'Ah! those were careless and delightful days, such as neither you (I expect) nor I shall ever quite regain.