A Struggle For Life

A Struggle For Life, by Thomas
Bailey Aldrich

The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Struggle For Life, by Thomas
Bailey Aldrich This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost
and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it
away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License
included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: A Struggle For Life
Author: Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Release Date: November 6, 2007 [EBook #23356]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A
STRUGGLE FOR LIFE ***

Produced by David Widger

A STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.
By Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Boston And New York Houghton Mifflin Company

Copyright, 1873, 1885, and 1901
One morning as I was passing through Boston Common, which lies
between my home and my office, I met a gentleman lounging along
The Mall. I am generally preoccupied when walking, and often thread
my way through crowded streets without distinctly observing any one.
But this man's face forced itself upon me, and a singular face it was.
His eyes were faded, and his hair, which he wore long, was flecked
with gray. His hair and eyes, if I may say so, were sixty years old, the
rest of him not thirty. The youthfulness of his figure, the elasticity of
his gait, and the venerable appearance of his head were incongruities
that drew more than one pair of curious eyes towards him, He excited
in me the painful suspicion that he had got either somebody else's head
or somebody else's body. He was evidently an American, at least so far
as the upper part of him was concerned--the New England cut of
countenance is unmistakable--evidently a man who had seen something
of the world, but strangely young and old.
Before reaching the Park Street gate, I had taken up the thread of
thought which he had unconsciously broken; yet throughout the day
this old young man, with his unwrinkled brow and silvered locks,
glided in like a phantom between me and my duties.
The next morning I again encountered him on The Mall. He was resting
lazily on the green rails, watching two little sloops in distress, which
two ragged ship-owners had consigned to the mimic perils of the Pond.
The vessels lay becalmed in the middle of the ocean, displaying a
tantalizing lack of sympathy with the frantic helplessness of the owners
on shore. As the gentleman observed their dilemma, a light came into
his faded eyes, then died out leaving them drearier than before. I
wondered if he, too, in his time, had sent out ships that drifted and
drifted and never came to port; and if these poor toys were to him types
of his own losses.
"That man has a story, and I should like to know it," I said, half aloud,
halting in one of those winding paths which branch off from the
pastoral quietness of the Pond, and end in the rush and tumult of
Tremont Street.

"Would you?" exclaimed a voice at my side. I turned and faced Mr.
H------, a neighbor of mine, who laughed heartily at finding me talking
to myself. "Well," he added, reflectingly, "I can tell you this man's
story; and if you will match the narrative with anything as curious, I
shall be glad to hear it."
"You know him, then?"
"Yes and no. That is to say, I do not know him personally; but I know a
singular passage in his life. I happened to be in Paris when he was
buried."
"Buried!"
"Well, strictly speaking, not buried; but something quite like it. If you
've a spare half hour," continued my friend H------, "we 'll sit on this
bench, and I will tell you all I know of an affair that made some noise
in Paris a couple of years ago. The gentleman himself, standing yonder,
will serve as a sort of frontispiece to the romance--a full-page
illustration, as it were."
The following pages contain the story Which Mr. H------ related to me.
While he was telling it, a gentle wind arose; the miniature sloops
drifted feebly about the ocean; the wretched owners flew from point to
point, as the deceptive breeze promised to waft the barks to either shore;
the early robins trilled now and then from the newly fringed elms; and
the old young man leaned on the rail in the sunshine, little dreaming
that two gossips were discussing his affairs within twenty yards of him.
*****
Three persons were sitting in a salon whose one large window
overlooked the Place Vendôme. M. Dorine, with his back half turned
on the other two occupants of the apartment, was reading the Journal
des Débats in an alcove, pausing from time to