The Argosy — page 70: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Fair Normandy. 57 The whole quay, the outlines of town and churches, awoke sad memories within us. What happy days we had spent here in our boyhood, with one whose pen was laid aside and whose voice was silent for ever. One whose beauty of face and gracefulness of spirit we had never seen equalled. One who day by day and year by year had borne a never-varying charm; whose price had been to us as far above rubies, and whose departure withdrew for ever all our sunshine. What inexpressibly sad and_ bitter-sweet memories those days now awoke within us. What numberless incidents and hours of pleasure and delight passed as the scenes of a panorama through the memory—that illimitable world with its inexhaustible caverns. Dieppe, at that period, was the most fashionable of all resorts on the seacoast. It was a long succession of ambassadors’ and other balls of almost regal splendour; of afternoon and evening receptions ; of picnics to the Chateau d’Arques, where wine and laughter mingled and flowed in light and sparkling streams; and a happy carelessness marked the hours, and youth gilded the very sunshine. And ghostly séances and spiritualistic manifestations did their best to convert the sceptical in these matters, but seldom suc- ceeded. And the Casino was ever gay with a refined crowd, and the sea for ever rolled and swished over its pebbly beach. It still rolls on. It is just the same as ever; as far as can be seen it has not advanced or receded by a span or a hair’s breadth. ‘The very bathing machines are unchanged; the pebbles on the shore might be the same as those of old. But the fun and laughter, the happy carelessness which thought that sorrow would never come, and nothing would ever change, and youth and comeliness would last for ever—where are they? Echo answers Where? and her voice is sad with the sadness of ‘‘a far-off wail as of souls in pain’”—but it is only the answering refrain of our own soul, labouring in sorrow for ‘““what might have been” in the intervening years: all the hopes unfulfilled, all the joys we have missed; all the tangled threads that once promised to remain so clear a skein in our keeping; all the future that promised to be so brilliant. What is the life of each one of us, compared with the anticipated triumphs of youth, but a long series of failures and delusions, of rude awakenings and hardening realities > And to us, above all changes: the beautiful eyes that were wont to gaze into our own; the silvery voice that took a yet softer and sweeter tone at our approach; the hand that would seek ours with gentle pressure; the words and thoughts and deeds that were ever full of a wisdom that was better than the wisdom of this world: all closed and silent with a silence that is death-like; leaving a vacancy that ever seems boundless as the realms of space ; a solitude measure- less as eternity. But nothing, as far as we could see of Dieppe itself, was changed. The quay, as of old, was lined with groups of people. There were fishermen with their baskets, and fishwomen with their white caps COMIC OOOKS.EO