Page:Whyte-Melville--Bones and I.djvu/258

 How many people have I known, and these not the least endearing and capable of their kind, over whose whole lives the shadow of a memory, though growing fainter day by day, has yet been dark enough to throw a gloom that the warmest rays of friendship and affection were powerless to dispel! Sometimes, indeed, that darkness seems dearer to them than the glories of the outer world; sometimes, and this is the hardest fate of all, they cling to it the closer that they feel the illusion has been to them a more reliable possession than the reality. There is a world of tender longing, bitter experience, and sad, suggestive pathos in Owen Meredith's lament—