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Show GEFFROY'S TRIALS. 57 was that of one who had learned it from books rather than men ; his musical voice gave utterance to sentences loaded with poetic thoughts, and his lightest remark would have borne the test of severest criticism. To me he seemed a man of naturally ardent temperament and high aims, but thwarted and long repressed, with mind turned perhaps to unhealthful introspection. But to- day he was in an unusual mood ; he had just passed through one of his seasons of deep sadness, and, as it were, unconsciously, sought relief in friendly confidences. A light re-mark from me on the many uncertainties and disappointments of a miner's life led us on to a free discussion of the vexed questions of free will and destiny. " Are we," he asked, " indeed the authors of our course ? do we suc-ceed by our own endeavors or fail by our own errors? or is there a chain of circumstances running concurrent with our daily lives, and ever shaping them to alien issues ?" I defended with vehemence my views that we all make or mar our own fortunes. He listened calmly, and replied : " Hear, then, my story, and learn how often the great movements of war and politics crush the humblest lives, and that not his own acts merely, but the acts of all his contemporaries, determine one's destiny." Thus began a series of confidences, which, continued some evenings in our cabin, gave me the incidents of an eventful though humble life. * # # # * * # " I am, as you know, a native of beautiful Geneva, and my first rec-ollections are of grand mountains, mirror- like lakes, and old monu-ments. Mine was a childhood of rare happiness. My Swiss mother united to the earnest vigor of her race that wondrous insight into the nature and feelings of childhood, which seems a special gift of God to the German people. My French father, while he had none of that levity or cynic indifference to all religions which so many of that race affect, was yet happily free from superstition, jealous of priestcraft, and, for one in his position, quite a devotee of learning. From our English visitors and customers I early acquired a smattering of their language, and some vague ideas of that liberty which I then, in childish igno-rance, supposed they enjoyed. " Our family life is now present to my memory as a happy union of social love and intellect. My father recited the poems of Racine and Corneille, my mother rehearsed the fairy legends of her people ; both delighted in the heroic annals of the Genevese, and loved to dwell on the better days of that people. Around us was the sublime scenery of Switzerland; our associations were largely with cultivated travelers, |