years, have allowed to fall into ruins. The old town, with a childish Sunday feeling, becomes alive within me, peopled with a crowd of dear figures, some of which I still meet walking in the streets. Old teachers, who seemed already old when I was amongst their pupils, walk along in the same slow, or busily-tripping, way to the school. Worthy citizens, whose hospitable, smiling faces I still remember, from the days of their children's parties. Young men, in whose solemn 'breadwinner faces' I suddenly seem to catch a glimpse of a forgotten play-fellow's chubby features. I walk like Haroun al Raschid in the streets of Bagdad. Noticing, recognising, without being myself either noticed or recognised. Only now and again I seem to meet a slanting, curious glance, which says: 'Hulloa! we have got a stranger in the town!'
There are other figures which come to life in my memory as I study the signs in the shops. It seems to me, when I find the same shops with the same grocer, baker, and workmen names in the places where I last saw them, as if the old town had stopped its life and its development when we left. I have to reason with myself and say, 'But after all, it is only twenty years ago! for I feel like a very, very old man, who after having spent ages in the Troll's hill, returns to his home. I am quite unable to understand why everything is not changed, and why everybody I knew is not dead.
Of course many of them are. In some cases I know it from hearsay, in others I guess it through
T
