Page:Far from the Maddening Girls.djvu/189

 childhood of us all, certain odds and ends of costume which lent a vivid colour to such roles of our assumption as Kidd or Crusoe. We will not have seen these properties for years; but in our memories they stand out, against the background of the merely commonplace, as the insignia of a pomp and circumstance which has retained something of its ingenuous splendour through all the sordid course of later experience. In them arrayed, we paced the decks of pirate ships, were cast ashore on cannibal-infested isles, and trod in battle, blood, and booty, beyond the imaginings of a Stevenson or a Poe. Surely, it is not strange that, in our fancy, the accessories to these enchantments should be as eloquent to-day as in our first decade.

But there comes the day when the fond delusion crumbles about our ears to piteous ruin. We have found, in some long-closed chest, these props to infant imagery, and, with that sudden contraction of heart which