Let us illustrate the subject by an imaginary example . A venerable gentleman -- one Mr. Smith -- who had long been regarded as a pattern of moral excellence was warming his aged blood with a glass or two of generous wine . His children being gone forth about their worldly business and his grandchildren at school , he sat alone in a deep luxurious arm-chair with his feet beneath a richly-carved mahogany table . Some old people have a dread of solitude , and when better company may not be had rejoice even to hear the quiet breathing of a babe asleep upon the carpet . But Mr. Smith , whose silver hair was the bright symbol of a life unstained except by such spots as are inseparable from human nature -- he had no need of a babe to protect him by its purity , nor of a grown person to stand between him and his own soul . Nevertheless , either manhood must converse with age , or womanhood must soothe him with gentle cares , or infancy must sport around his chair , or his thoughts will stray into the misty region of the past and the old man be chill and sad . Wine will not always cheer him . Such might have been the case with Mr. Smith , when , through the brilliant medium of his glass of old Madeira , he beheld three figures entering the room . These were Fancy , who had assumed the garb and aspect of an itinerant showman , with a box of pictures on her back ; and Memory , in the likeness of a clerk , with a pen behind her ear , an inkhorn at her buttonhole and a huge manuscript volume beneath her arm ; and lastly , behind the other two , a person shrouded in a dusky mantle which concealed both face and form . But Mr. Smith had a shrewd idea that it was Conscience . How kind of Fancy , Memory and Conscience to visit the old gentleman just as he was beginning to imagine that the wine had neither so bright a sparkle nor so excellent a flavor as when himself and the liquor were less aged ! Through the dim length of the apartment , where crimson curtains muffled the glare of sunshine and created a rich obscurity , the three guests drew near the silver-haired old man . Memory , with a finger between the leaves of her huge volume , placed herself at his right hand ; Conscience , with her face still hidden in the dusky mantle , took her station on the left , so as to be next his heart ; while Fancy set down her picture-box upon the table with the magnifying-glass convenient to his eye . We can sketch merely the outlines of two or three out of the many pictures which at the pulling of a string successively peopled the box with the semblances of living scenes . One was a moonlight picture , in the background a lowly dwelling , and in front , partly shadowed by a tree , yet besprinkled with flakes of radiance , two youthful figures , male and female . The young man stood with folded arms , a haughty smile upon his lip and a gleam of triumph in his eye as he glanced downward at the kneeling girl . She was almost prostrate at his feet , evidently sinking under a weight of shame and anguish which hardly allowed her to lift her clasped hands in supplication . Her eyes she could not lift . But neither her agony , nor the lovely features on which it was depicted , nor the slender grace of the form which it convulsed , appeared to soften the obduracy of the young man . He was the personification of triumphant scorn .
Now , strange XXXXX say , as old Mr. Smith peeped through the magnifying-glass , which made the objects start out from the canvas with magical deception , he began to recognize the farmhouse , the tree and both the figures of the picture .
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