Bones and I by G.J. Whyte-Melville — Read

I have been burning old letters to-night; their ashes are fluttering in the chimney even now; and, alas! while they consume, fleeting and perishable like the moments they record, "each dying ember" seems to have "wrought its ghost" upon my heart. Oh! that we could either completely remember or completely forget. Oh! that the image of Mnemosyne would remain close enough for us to detect the flaws in her imperishable marble, or that she would remove herself so far as to be altogether out of sight. It is the golden haze of "middle distance" that sheds on her this warm and tender light. She is all the more attractive that we see her through a double veil of retrospection and regret, none the less lovely because her beauty is dimmed and softened in a mist of tears.

Letter after letter they have flared, and blackened, and shrivelled up. There is an end of them-they are gone. Not a line of those different handwritings shall I ever see again. The bold, familiar scrawl of the tried friend and more than brother; why does he come back to me so vividly to-night? The stout heart, the strong arm, the brave, kind face, the frank and manly voice. We shall never tread the stubble nor the heather side by side again; never more pull her up against the stream, nor float idly down in the hot summer noons to catch the light air off the water on our heated faces; to discourse, like David and Jonathan, of all and everything nearest our hearts. Old friend! old friend! wherever you are, if you have consciousness you must surely sometimes think of _me_; I have not forgotten _you_. I cannot believe you have forgotten me even _there_.