but it is not at these precise moments in life that tired, depressed men in modest positions are wafted by Uncle Sam to great and desirable heights; but to Mrs. Hamilton it appeared that her husband was simply indolent, unambitious, and unlucky; not at all that he needed to be believed in, or loved, or comforted, or helped, or braced!  It might have startled her, and hurt her wifely pride, if she had seen her lonely husband drinking in little Nancy Carey’s letter as if it were dew to a thirsty spirit; to see him set the photograph of the Carey group on his desk and look at it from time to time affectionately, as if he had found some new friends.  It was the contentment, the hope, the unity, the pluck, the mutual love, the confidence, the ambition, of the group that touched his imagination and made his heart run out to them.  “Airs from the Eden of youth awoke and stirred in his soul” as he took his pen to answer Nancy’s first business communication.

Having completed his letter he lighted another cigar, and leaning back in his revolving chair clasped his hands behind his head and fell into a reverie.  The various diplomatic posts that might be opened to him crossed his mind in procession.  If A or B or C were possible, his wife would be content, and their combined incomes might be sufficient to bring the children together, if not quite under one roof, then to points not so far separated from each other but that a speaking acquaintance might be developed.  Tom was the farthest away, and he was the dearest; the only Hamilton of the lot; the only one who loved his father.

Mr. Hamilton leaned forward abstractedly, and fumbling through one drawer of his desk after another succeeded in bringing out a photograph of Tom, taken at seventeen or eighteen.  Then by a little extra search he found his wife in her presentation dress at a foreign court.  There was no comfort or companionship in that, it was too furbelowed to be anybody’s wife,—­but underneath it in the same frame was one taken just after their marriage.  That was too full of memories to hold much joy, but it stirred his heart, and made it beat a little; enough at any rate to show it was not dead.  In the letter case in his vest pocket was an almost forgotten picture of the girls when they were children.  This with the others he stood in a row in front of him, reminding himself that he did not know the subjects much more intimately than the photographers who had made their likenesses.  He glanced from one family to the other and back again, several times.  The Careys were handsomer, there was no doubt of that; but there was a deeper difference that eluded him.  The Hamiltons were far more stylishly dressed, but they all looked a little conscious and a little discontented.  That was it; the Careys were happier!  There were six of them, living in the forgotten Hamilton house in a half-deserted village, on five or six hundred dollars a year, and doing their own housework, and they were happier than his own brood, spending forty