Prose Fancies

lf apparent in the type of the publisher. It would almost seem as if the two are changing places. Instead of the poet humbly waiting, hat in hand, kicking his heels for half a day

ary. There is no way of circumventing the dreamer so subtle as to flatter his business qualities. We all like to be praised for the something we cannot do. It i

mmon-sense, in that scene in Pendennis where Pen and Warrington walk home together from the Fleet prison, after hearing Captain Shandon read that brilliant prospectus of the Pall Mall Gazette, which he had written for bookseller Bungay, a

rite articles, read books, and deliver a judgment upon them; the talk of professional critics and writers is not a whit more brilliant, or profound, or amusing than that of any other society of educated people. If a lawyer, or a soldier, or a parson outru

hecies of the ideal rather than descriptions of the actual. Yet, fairly dealt with, the history of publishing would show a much nearer living up to them on the part of publishers than the poets and their sentimental sympathisers are inclined to admit. We hear a great

of life. Wordsworth says that 'we live by admiration, joy, and love.' So doubtless we do: but we live far more by butcher's meat and Burton ale. Poetry is but a preparation of opium distilled by a minority for a minority. The poet may test the case by the relative amounts he pays his butcher and his bookseller. So far as I know, he pays as little for his poetry as possible, and never buys a volume by a broth

oney from Murray for his poems, successful as they were. He had a proper sense of the indignity of selling the children of his soul. The incongruity is much as though we might go to Portland Road and buy an angel, just as we buy a parrot. The transactions of poetry and of sale are on two different planes. But so soon as, shall we say, you debase poetry by bringing it down to the lower plane, it becomes subject to the laws of that plane. An unprinted poem is a spiritual thing, but a printed poem is subject to the laws of matter. In the h

r-not to speak of Phyllis and Dulcinea. At any rate, take that one sonnet. For an evening with Clarinda, for which alone you would have paid the sum, and for a beggarly half-hour's work, you receive as much as many a City clerk earns by six hard days' work, eight hours to the dreary day, with perhaps a family to keep and a railway contract to pay for. Half-an-hour's work, and if you can live on ￡2, 2s. a week, the rest of your time is free as air! Moreover, you have the option of going about with a feeling that you are a being vastly superior to your fellows, because forsooth you can string fourteen lines together in decent Petrarcan form, and they

which unfortunately the world has conspired from time immemorial to confirm. He has been too long the spoiled child, to

ting of poetry, and often, I am afraid, a great deal more so. This scorn of the common man is but another instance of the poet's ignorance of the facts of life and the relations of things. The hysterical bitterness with which certain sections of modern people of taste are constantly girding at the bourgeois-which, indeed, as Omar Khayyám says,

er of the omnibus is as likely as not Mr. So-and-So, the distinguished poet; and who but those with the divining-rod

ics were wiped off the earth to-morrow, the world would be hardly conscious of the loss. Nay, if even the entire artistic accumulation of the past were to be suddenly swallowed up, it would be li

O'S M

d idealistically to ask, 'Ought poets to sell?' What can poets want

oneydew

the milk o

e obligation. Far better let her give it you-for the love of beauty-as very likely, if you explained the incongruity, she would be glad to do: for flower-girls, no doubt, like every one else, can only have chosen their particular profession because of its being a joy for ever. There might be fitness in offerin

surely natural to wonder in like manner of the poet. What have we to offer in exchange for his priceles

k, I have

were to

copper i

silver e

tic than that; they realised the absurdity of payin

ch gold upon

ered all

s with a go

poetry should be paid. We should, of c

was appropriate. The ratio between the thing sold and the price given was fairly equal. And, at all times, it is far less absurd for a poet to pay for the earthly thing with his poem (thus leaving us to keep the change), than that we should think to pay him for his incorruptible with our corruptible. There would, no doub

ful thing: by beautiful praise, by a beautiful smile, by a well-shaped tear, by a ros

w away so soon as we are round the corner. If the reader has ever published a volume of verse, he must often have chuckled with an unnatural glee over the number of absolutely unpoetic good souls who, from various motives-the unhappy accident of relationship, perhaps-have 'subscribed.' Mos

rmer unto the farmer-'Mr. Oats, you care for children, don't you?' 'Ay, ay,' would answer the farmer, a little doubtfully, 'when they're little'uns.' 'Well, you know I'm what they call a poet.' To this Mr. Oats would respond with a good round laugh, as of a man enjoying a good thing. This was very subtle of the poet, for it put the farmer on good terms with himself. He wondered, as he had his laugh over again, how a man could choose to be a poet, when he might have been a farmer. 'Well, I'm bringing out a book of poems all about children-here is one of them!' and the poet would read some humorous thing, such as 'Breeching Tommy.' Then another-such simple pictures of humanity at the age of two, that the farmer could not but be moved to that primary artistic delight, the recognition of the familiar. Then the farm

tine is a delusion, a false security. And the demand, a well-known publisher has told us, is an intelligent one, for poetry of the markedly idealistic, or markedl

se engaged in growing dre

IUS' SUP

ayment in full for every species of obligation, and if a man were a great poet he might probably still ruin a woman's life, and some, in secret at least, would deem that he did God service. There are perhaps even more women than ever nowadays who woul

d have reached the sane conclusion is somewhat surprising. Because, indeed, it does pay the world to allow genius to do its pleasure: its victims even have little to complain of; they wear the martyr's crown, and if a few tradesmen or a few women are the worse, it has been

n serve God o

in the end to a

t sorrow was granted her to die with: it was only the selfish heart that could leave her thus to suffer and die that was the loser. Not in its relations with the world, fair or ill-such, like all external things, are important only as we

for great poets are rare, and really it is the smaller genius we have always with us that is likely to suffer most from those 'immunities'

ations, that call for condonation; but those offences against that code of daily inter

artificial fertiliser, it grows up with the idea that the duty which lies nearest to it is to write weary books, paint monotonous pictures, persevere in 'd--d bad acting'; and it fulfils that duty with an energy known only to mediocrity. The literary variety, probably, has the characteristics of the type most fully developed. No one takes himself with more touching seriousness. Day by day he grows in conceit, neglects his temper, especially at home, with a wife who is worth ten

toil of so many wasted days could breathe no breath of life, formless, uninspired, unnecessary. Think of the pathos of the illusion that has waved 'its purple wings' around these lifeless products, endowing with sensitive expression the wooden lineaments that have really been dead and unexpressi

when he has made any excuse, it has been 'art.' But, more likely, he has not been asked for excuse, he has lived under the shelter of the 'genius' superstition. He has worn the air of making great sacrifices for the goddess, and in these his intimates have felt a proud sense of awful participation, as of a family whom the gods love. They have never understood that art is a particular form

he, the colossal absorption of a Balzac. Their attitude offends one's sense of the relation of things, and we feel that, after all, we could have spared half their works for a larger share of that delicate instinct for proportion, which is one of the most precious attr

OWED S

AND MR

nking account nor employment, and your evening clothes are no longer accessible for the last, you will be in a position to understand the transfiguring properties of one small piece of gold. You leave your friend's rooms a different ma

e same world that was so cold and haughty ten minutes ago. The

want to stay out in them all night; though you didn't relish the prospect last e

odgings. But the snug little oyster-shops about Booksellers' Row are so tempting, and there is

every way to be preferred; and if you are paying eighteenpence you might as well pay three shillings, and what's the use of drawing the line at a roll and butter

fter all, because my dream had grown beautiful and troublesome, and I had really forgotten the oysters altogether. However, I ate

re character in it than usually falls to the lot of the English girl. There was experience in the sensitive refinement of her features, a silver to

this she looked every now and then, in the pauses of her writing, with a happy, trustful expression of quiet love. During one pause

s a poet who makes his poetry of his own bright face and body, acts it night after night to an audience, and the people laugh and cry as he plays, for his face is like a bubbling spring, full of laughing eddies on the surface, but ever so

brighter and brighter. Can you see it in London? It comes out here about six o'clock-first very pale, like a dream, and then fuller and fuller and warmer and warmer. Sometimes I say that it is the sovereigns we are p

en the oysters came, and that is why I w

aming. I looked into her eyes, felt ashamed for a moment, and then stepped into her dream. I

ks, and the burning candles, and the silver photograph shrine. She walked about very wistfully, and her eyes were full. So were mine, and I wanted to sob, but feared lest she should hear

a room that had a door white as ivory, and I caught a

an angel stood on the threshold, as I had seen it somewhe

more alone, I said 'Jim is working, Siss i

. Outside, above the street, a star was shining. I had filched a beam o

d that home. In my pocket it meant a sovereign's-worth more working and waiting. Pay it back again into that star, and it was a sovereign nearer home. Yes, it was a sovereign's-worth of that f

m, meant that to eat those borrowed oysters. Nevertheless, they had not been all an immo

im's theatre was close by, it was but a stone's-throw to the stage-door. Easy to leave him a note. What will he think, I w

was the oysters t

Y IN A

FOR SOC

t length gave it up in despair, and sat, with my head in my hands, hopeless. Presently I seemed to hear small voices talking in whispers, a curious papery tone, like the fluttering of leaves, and listening I heard distinctly these words:-'The great era o

e threepenny box and give it a good home in a respectable family of books. Certainly, it had so far filled the humble position of a shelf-liner, and its accidental elevation into daylight on

ning? We were born to be read as much as they, born to enjoy our share of the good things of this world as much as my Lord Folio, as much as any Honourable Quarto, or fash

o! we won't,' here en

. Miss this golden opportunity, and the cause we

ll and silenced him; but he had not spoken in vain, and from various sets of books about the room I heard the voices of excited agitator

n, I abdicate. You shall arrange yourselves as you please, but be

ocks, which I was at a loss to understand, till I bethought me how Mentzelius, long ago, sitting in the quiet of his library, had heard the bookworm 'crow like a cock unto his mate.' On looking I saw that the insurgents had indee

had had reference only to those who were already on an equality of that low estate which fears no fall. The only equality now offered to books above the rank of octavo was that of death, which, philosophers have long assured us, makes all men equal, by a short and simple method. There was but one other way-that the quartos should consent to be cut in two, and the folios quartered; but that, alas! meant death no less, for that which alone is of worth in both books an

little octavo, and then I saw that my tobacco-cut

r found hearing, that of a stou

t are made into servants, and called flunkies, and these wait upon the small men, who have all the money, which among men corresponds to brains among books. Why shouldn't we take a hint from

few, found no great favour. It was generally agreed that humour had no place in the discussion of a serious question. Another speaker advocated the retention of the conde

them had of their own importance-especially two or three of the minor poets. Then, again, many sentimental demands, quite unforeseen, added to the general anarchy. Collected editions, which had long groaned in the bondage of an arbitrary relationship, saw an opportunity in the general overturn to break away from their sets and join their natural fellows. Sex was naturally the most unruly element of all. Volumes that h

ancholy, which (he said) he never could tolerate, proved the last straw to the Committee of the Hundred Thousand, who immediately resigned their offices in anger and despair. Thereupon, tenfold chaos once more returning, I thought it time to inter

Duchess, because he was a hum

HY OF 'LIMIT

e commonplaces. Christian mysteries are debased in the streets to the sound of drum and trumpet, and the sensitive ear of the telephone is but a servile drudge 'twixt speculative bacon merchants. And Books!-those miraculous memories of high thoughts and golden moods; those magical shells tremulous with the secrets of the ocean of life; those love-letters that pass from hand to hand of a thousand lovers that never meet; those honeycombs of dreams; those orchards of

It has gone, it is to be feared, with those Memnonian mornings we sleep through with so determin

herefore, he would not have it degraded by, so to say, an indiscriminate breeding, such as has also made the children of men cheap and vulgar to each other. We pity the desert rose that is born to unappreciated beauty, th

ere should be at least one lover for each woman. In the higher life of books the ideal is similar. No book should be brought into the world which is not sure of love and lodging on some comfortable shelf. If writers and publishers only gave a thought to what they are doing when they generate such large families of books, careless as the salmon with its million young, we should have no such sad alms-houses of learning as

ok was st

stful man

ething thro

ike a hum

-lands, chases, and blowing woodlands; days when kings would send anxious embassies across the se

ther of the ignoble rivalries of peace; and are not books worth a scrimmage?-books that are all those wonderful things so poetically set forth in a preceding paragraph! Lightly earned, lightly spurned, is the sense, if not the exact phrasing, of an old proverb. There is no telling how we should value many of our possessions if they were more arduously come by: our relatives, our husbands a

se decking the tables of the great? or the purple bilberry, or the boot-bright blackberry in the entremets thereof? Think what that 'common dog-rose' would bring in a limited edition! And new milk from the cow, or water from the well! Where would champagne be if those intoxicants were restricted by

numerable remainders. In fact, it is by her warning rather than by her example that we must be guided in this matter. Let us not vulgarise our books, as she has done her stars and flowers. Let us, if need be, make our e

R THE OLD

ld.' Does he never appeal to you with any more human significance, a significance tearful and uncomfortably symbolic? Or are you so ent

cannot quite conceal the hissing twinge of gout; and you are hardly seated

s,' he begins, 'but I saw Charles

ng him for reminiscences to turn into copy. Poor boy, you soon find that there is no need of pumping on your pa

er so much as turn the sixteenth part of an eye in his direction, for even as the oyster-man, should the poor mollusc heave the faintest sigh, is inside with his knife in the twinkling of a star;

eart to be the former must have meeting eyebrows, and will sooner or later be found canonised in wax at Madame Tussaud's. To be the latter, however, is by no means easy. It is one of the most poignant

of course, be the occasion you would select for your purpose: for the old playgoer, so to speak, collects Hamlets

ghshares. You can hardly hope always to pass through unscathed. You are as sure some night to

that, struggl

re eng

rave,' and 'there is much music' in this old f

t, may be, have been familiar to you for sixteen years, have been familiar to him for sixty. That is why he knows them off so well, why he repeats them under his breath-Look at his face!-like a Methodist praying, anticipating the actor in all the fine speeches. Do look at his face! How it shines, as

neysuckle fancy. He belongs to an age that had an instinct for beauty, and loved style-an age that, in the words

the leaves of the play, but for him it is stained through with the sweets

ost in Hamlet, to him there are fifty, and they all dance like

sages he is muttering in just the same way-sixty years ago, when she whose angel face he will kiss no more, unless it be in the heavenly fields, sat like a flow

ar at Polonius-who, you will remember, was an old playgoer himself-but, being a gentleman, it was n

ASURE

ally, I feel it most keenly in the company of my fellows, each one of whom seems to carry the victorious badge of manhood, as though to cry shame upon me. They make me shrink into myself, make me feel that I am but an impostor in their midst. Indeed, in that sensitiveness of mine you have the starting-point of my unmanliness. Look at that noble fellow there. He is six-foot odd in his stockings, straight, stalwart, and confident. His face is broad and strong, his close-cropped head is firm a

is of the absolute, their opinions wear the primary colours, and dream not of 'art shades.' Never have they been wrong in their lives, never shall they be wrong in the time to come. Never have they been known to conjecture that another may, after all, be wiser than they, handsomer, stronger, or more fortunate. They would kill a man rath

anhood. It is true that Apollo passed for a man-but that was long ago, and not in Britain. You have a pleasant, sympathetic voice. An excellent thing in woman. But you, my friend,-break it, I beseech you. Coarsen it with r

ion against me. 'Poor-spirited creature,' I said, 'where is thy valour? When a fool has struck thee I have seen thee pass on without a word, not so much as a momentary knitting of thy fist When ignorance has waxed proud, and pu

ook the blows

hee?' I continued my taunt. And suddenly my so

skin, darest thou strike a blow for the weak against his

suddenly sprang up within me, and, lo! i

the enemy of thy land? Surely thy valour would melt

y soul was like the

by this unwonted valour of my soul, 'S

ells at evening. It seemed, indeed, as though it coul

than in the strong arm; that big words and ready blows may, like a display of bunting, betoken no true loyalty, and be but the gaudy sign to a sorry inn? Dr. Watts, it may be remembered, declared the mi

tall to rea

he ocean i

measured b

he standard

ue man of the two; and one seems to have heard of some 'fine,' 'manly' fellows, darlings of the football field and the American bar, whose actions somehow have not altogether justified those epithets, or, at any rate, certain readings o

wearing, or not wearing, the hair; it resides in the twirl of the moustache, or the cut of the trouser; yo

whose eyelid your tiny club 'man' would have expired on the instant. Threaten him with a Viking. Show him in a vision a band of blue-eyed pirates, with their wild hair flying in the breeze, as they sternly hasten across the Northern Sea. Summon Godiva's lord, 'his beard a yard before him, and his hair a yard behind.' Call up the brave picture of Rupert's l

ho deliver our opinions with mean-spirited diffidence, and are men of quiet voices and ways: for us there is hope. It may be that to love one's neighbour is also a part of manhood, to suffer quietly for another as true a piece of bravery as to

SEDNESS

f-satisfied male is that he is the lord of creation, that his is the better part which shall not be taken from him. Yet this does not prevent his telling his wife sometimes, when oppressed with the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches, that 'it is nice to be her. Nothing to worry her all day long. No responsibility.' For in his primitive vision of female existence, his wife languidly presides for ever at an eternal five-o'clock tea. And it is not

counts instead of merely incurring them; to be confined in Stygian city-blocks instead of silken bedchambers; to rise with the sparrow and leave by the early morning train. What fatuity! Some day, when woman has

horns. To be privileged to play Narcissus all day long with your mirror, to love yourself so much that you kiss the cold reflection, yet fear not to drown. To reveal yourself to yourself in a thousand lovely poses, and bird-like poises of the head. To kneel to yourself in adoration, to laugh and nod and beckon to yourself with your own smiles and dimples, to yearn in hopeless passion for your own lov

and much more of her as she once used to be among our far-off sires, Sibyl and Priestess. Is it but an insular fancy to suppose that Englishmen, beyond any other race, still retain the most living faith in the sanctity of womanhood? and, if so, can it be doubted that it is an inheritance from t

ng holy and supernal, with which woman undoubtedly inspires man. He is, of course, their god, but a god of the Greek pattern, with no little of the familiarising alloy of earth in his composition. He is strong, and swift, and splendid-but seems he holy? Is he angel a

but what is 'paternity' compared with motherhood? The very word wears a droll face, as though accustomed to banter. Let us venture on the bull: that, though it be possible for most men to be fathers, no man can ever be a mother. Maybe a recondite intention of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception was

the tender shoots of the young life striking out blade after blade, already living and wonderful, though as yet unsuspected of other eyes; to know the underground inarticulate spring, sweeter far than spring of bird and blossom, while as yet all seems barren winter in the upper air; to hear already the pathetic pleadings of th

S OF TH

dream of a recent scientist, is to make the 'homo' a creature whose legs are of no account, poor shrivelled vestiges of once noble calves and thighs; and whose entire significance will be a noseless, hairless head, in shape and size like an idiot's, which the scientist, gloating over the ugly duckling of his distorted imagination, describes as a 'bea

all things to be reminded of her womanhood, which she is constantly engaged in repressing with Chinese ferocity. Not, as we have hinted, that she thinks any better of man. Though she dresses as like him as possible, she is very angry if you suggest that she at all envies him hi

to present it to their patrons, within a very few years, in a form entirely devoid of certain physiological defects, with which the cussedness of human structure still uselessly burdens the Virago. As it is, of course, it is by no means uncommon for the virago to be born without that sentimental organ, the heart; and it can,

regarded it, a sanctifying privilege, but a shameful disability, of which not the Immaculate Conception, but the ignoble service for the 'purification' of women, is the significant symbol. It behoves not only the unmarried, but

n the sacred object itself, but in the superstitious 'decencies' that swaddle it, or that we

e have been indignantly assured, ever plays at Narcissus with her mirror. That all women find such pleasure in their reflections no one would think of saying. How could they, poor things? One is quite ready to admit that probably our virago looks in her glass as seldom as possible. But all se

t most inordinately vain of those. Of the two, so far as they are at present developed, is there any doubt that the woman with beauty is better off than the woman with brains? In some few hundred years, maybe, the brain of woman will be a joy to herself and the world: when she has got more used to its possession, and familiar with the fruitful control of it. At present, however, it is merely a discomfort, not to say a danger, to

of life (doubtless, to medicinal ends) but unable to bring it clear again. An eternal enigma herself, woman is eternally in love with enigmas. Like a child, she loves any one who will show her the 'works' of existence, and she is still in that inquisit

k with Silence is to apprehend the mystic meanings of simplicity. For this reason, mystics are more often found among men than women-a fact on which the Pioneer Club is at liberty to congratulate itself. What advanced woman understands that saying of Paracelsus: 'who tastes a crust of bread tastes the heavens and all the stars.' Else would she understand also that the 'humblest' ministrations of life, those nearest to nature, are the profoundest in their significance: that it means

OF THE

girl-heavens! what a relief. You praise her with almost hysterical gratitude. But if, as is far more likely, her beauty proves to be of that kind which exists only in the eyes of a single beholder, what a plight is yours! How you strive to look as if she were a new Helen, and how hopelessly unconvincing is your weary expression-as unconvincing as one's expression when, having weakly pr

d seem so stupid, so absolutely vulgar, when practised by others? The las

veness of her flaunting hat, she wears a straight fringe low down on her forehead, and endeavours to disguise her heavy ennui by an immovable simper. This pair loll one upon each other. Whether lights be high or low they hold each other's hands, hands hard and coarse with labour, with nails bitten down close to the quick. But, for all that, they, in their strange uncouth fashion, would seem to be loving each other. 'Not we alone have passions hymeneal,' sings an aristocratic poet

mentally devoted to his 'old Dutch'? If you answer the question in the negative, you are in this predicament: all the love and 'the fine feelings' remain with the infinitesimal residuum of the cultured and professionally 'refined.' Does that residuum actually incarnate all the love, devotio

truth about life is to be found on its grimy pock-marked surface. Over against the many robust developments of democracy, and doubtless inspired by them, is a marked spread of the aristocratic spirit-selfish, heartless, subtle, of mere physical 'refinement'; a spirit, too, all the more inhuman because it is for the most part not tempered by any intercours

things, and, as the surface of life is frequently rough and prickly, it is frequently uncomfortable. At such times it peevishly darts out its little sting, like a young snake angry with a farmer's boot. It is amusing to watch it venting its spleen in papers the bourgeois never read, in pictures they don't trouble to understand. John Bull's indifference to the 'new' criticism is one of the most pleasing features of the time. Probably he has not yet heard a syllable of it, and, if he should hear, he would probably waive it aside with, 'I have something more to think of than these megrims.' And so he has. While these superior folk are wrangling about Dégas and Mallarmé, about 'style' an

urgeois, is Shakespeare's, Dickens', Whitman's way-through the eye of a gentle sympathetic beholder-one who understands Nature's trick o

while the superior person stands by cogitating sarcasms on their swink'd and dusty appearances. More of the true spirit of romantic existence goes to the opening of a little g

ERABLE

I need hardly say that I do not assess myself at any extravagant value. I but venture to think that the devotion of one human creature, however humble, throughout a lifetime, is not a despicable offering. To use me as they would, to fetch and carry with me, to draw on me for whatever force resid

d? Then again I think of the ten thousand virgins who go mateless about the world, sweet women, with hearts like hidden treasure,

prim

rried, ere th

bus in his

, I surmised, nearly twenty-eight, she carried a roll of music, and I had a strong impression that she was the sole support of an invalid mother. I could hardly resist suggesting to one of my men companions what a good wife she was longing

g thirty. I have so much a year, a comfortable little home, and probably

and sat down to read Jane Austen to her mother, her mother would suddenly imagine roses in the room, and she would blushingly answer, 'Nay, mother-it is my cheeks!'; and presently the mother would ask, 'Where is that smell of viol

ross, and not one of us in the compa

, let us change places awhile. Here is my latch-key, my cheque-book, my joy and my leisure. Use them as lo

ce run dry-to stop him and say: 'See, here are thirty years; I have no use for them. Will you not take them? If you are quick, you may yet catch up Phyllis by the s

to gather buttercups, or make eyes at the church gallants. Oh, this were bet

ice! Alice!' and then whisper: 'The spring is here! Didn't you hear the birds calling you? I have come to tell you it is time to get ready. In two hours the church-bells will be ringing, and Edward will be waiting for you at the altar. The organist is already trying o

ow hush of the marriage service broke into the wild happy laughter of the organ, and the babbling sound of sweet girls stole through the church porch; then to lie back and to

t runs so sweetly by their feet, when you shall have stopped running will they rise? O sun that shines above their heads, when you have ceased from shining will they come to

ARITION

e the husk left behind as a dead length of hollow scale or skin. Would it were so. These sententious people, with all their information, have probably never gone through the process of which they speak. They have never changed from the beginning, but have been consistently their dull selves all through. To those, however, who can look back on many a metamorphosis, the quick-change artists of life, a fearful thing is known. The length of discarded snake lies glistering in the greenwood

A youth wished to see me. He would not give his name, but sent word that I knew him very well for all that. Being in a good humour, I consented to see him. He was a young man of about twenty, and his shabby clothes could not conceal that he was comely. He entered the

to care much about them. When we were together it used to

his hand. As it fell it opened, and faded violets rained from its leaves. The you

I asked, ironically. 'I'll giv

nd them in a corner of the dingle, where I had been reading the Sonnets to her, till in our book that day we read no more. As we parted she pressed them between the leaves and kissed th

to be slowly melting away. Five minutes before I had felt the most comfortable bourgeois in the world. There seemed nothing I was in need of, but there was something about this youth that

what have you been doing wit

iage and my partnersh

nd if you don't marry, what do you want with money? You used to despise it enough

id, for wive

e Sunshine?

d, 'not Ali

d Wi

t Maud

y Hop

Jenny H

Rain

t Lucy

remember them all. Ah, I remember

go. I am afraid you don't know my

Appleblossom,

I'm sure, and if you don't mind my saying so, I think I had better not int

eh?' said he, with a merr

forget each other's names in a twelvemonth, when Poll comes along, and so on. And neither

ran on. 'I suppose you forget Robert Louis' advic

ed himself,

op in for a pipe at "The Th

en near the place

! The Bass is su

wine with me?' I said. 'I have some

her. I don't care about cigars. Come to-night. Let's make a night of it. We'll begin at "The Three Tuns," then call at "The

avern t

passes

armful

art-full

impossible. I cannot. Come to my c

, but he drank it without spirit, and thus w

m sure-I offered him no less than ￡5000 and a share in the business for t

lieve me? He de

HETIC F

undred examples of the swagger of unreflecting life, did a little brass knocker in Gray's Inn warn me the other evening. I had knocked as no one should who is not a postman, with somewhat of a flourish. I had plainly said, in its metallic reverberations, that I was somebody. As I left my friends, I felt the knocker looking at me, and when

observed, to brave it out, and the electric lights in Holborn seemed certainly to have the best of it-as cheap jewellery is gaudiest in its glitter. One could much more easily believe that all these hansoms with t

done the same long ago-hasting down the self-same street, to the self-same theatre, with the very same sweet talk-all long since mouldering in their graves. I felt I

I forbore, and just then, glancing into an oyster shop, I was fascinated by the oysterman. He was rapidly opening a dozen for a new customer, and wore the while the solemnest face I ever saw. Oysters were so evidently, so pathetically, all the world to him. All his surroundings suggested oysters, legends of their prices and qualities made the art on his walls, printed price-lists on his counter made his literature, the prospects and rivalries of trade made his politics: oysters were, in fact, his raison d'être. His associations from boyhood had been oysters, I felt certain t

denly mystical as an astrological symbol. And, indeed, there was planetary influence in the thi

d I not myself that very night ignor

ionate seriousness and no more, not presuming on life as our natural birthright, but taking it with simple thankfulness as a boon which we have

rd, rejoicing

wn; before th

ridle-rein he s

strong captain

beneath his signature, who knocks just as much as he means on the knocker, bows just as much as he respects, smil

m, and he doesn't go well with flowers. Perhaps, after all, they are wisest who forget him, and happy indeed

land herself with blossom, and love's vows make light of death. He is a bad companion

VERN

ry tinkling bit of womanhood, a silly doll that says "Don't" when you squeeze it,-he actually mistook her for a goddess.' Ah! reader, don't you wish you could make such a spl

y the sea, bathed in sunset. Why do you call me? What are these wonderful things you are wh

t you. His heart is pure, his body sweet as apples. Oh, be fa

filment of the promise. The play was 'Pygmalion and Galatea.' I almost forget now how the scenes go, I only know that at the appearance of Galatea we knew that the overture h

ion!' 'Py

Cleopatra called

ives? Did not Galatea symbolise all the sleeping beauty of the world that was to awaken warm and fragrant at the

an thief, and we said to our beating hearts that we had the

stage of the embers of the sunset, a distant bridge of silver far down the street. Then we took it with us to the tavern: and, as I

Imagine us in one of the flashes, solemnly raising our glasses, hands clasped across the table, ea

p? It seemed as if I had got into a rosy sunset cloud in mistake for m

ave seen to read by

lds nothing. A mere cockleshell. And, oh! the raging sea it could not hold! Besides, being confessedly an art-form, duly licensed to lie, it is apt to be misunderstood. It could not say in plain English, 'Meet me

rom the post; and I should have said before that Tyre and Sidon face each other on op

away, and meet the return boat. So down down through the creaking house, gingerly, as though I were a Jason picking my way a

snoring in its sleep. I said to myself that this was Styx and the fare an obolus. As I jumped on board, with hot face and hotter he

ad began a restlessness in the clouds, as of a giant drowsily shuffling off some of his bed

a seagull that has the harbour to itself, and was not long in reaching the theatre. How desolate the playbills looked that had been so companionable but two or

g up the long street, I caught sight of an approaching figure that could hard

ELLONI'S

T MEMORY OF

I have since discovered!-that the pinewood wherein Sandra Belloni used to sing to her harp, like a nixie, in

Fields, down by the Law Courts, and so to Waterloo. I felt I must have a confidante, so I told the slate-coloured pigeons in the square where I was o

y is at the beginning of June. The first gush of green on our getting clear of Clapham was like the big drink

e, I simply nodded to the great pinewoods half a mile off, on the brow of long heathy downs to the left of the railway bridge-as who should say, 'I shall enjo

to live when we have written great novels; but I didn't care for the village inn,

sandwiches and some excellent ale. Of course I did not leave the place without the inevitable reflection on Lamb and the inns he had immortalised. Outside again my thoughts were oddly turned

rl with a bab

n and h

uth with a l

it the more

or any one who knows Mr. Meredith's t

eld ladies had heard her singing like a spirit in the heart of the moon-dapple

ee year. She shall be instructed as was not before. Zen a noise at La Scala. No-Paris! No-London! She shall as

d him for his patience in suffering so much classical music. Mr. Meredith certainly gives a description of the spot close enough for identification, with time and perseverance. But, reader, I had gone out this afternoon in the interest rather of fresh air than of se

ky green, but on the left a rough dark heath with a shaggy wilderness of pine for background, heightened here and there with a sudden surprise of gentle

setting all the budde

mones that flutter

de salt waves your qui

did you pass my sweeth

the da

nd! and

my sai

hisper

but you

my lo

d the little volume, charmingly entitled Whisper, was close under my arm as I turned from the road across the heath-a wild scramble of scr

t one green blade is uncanny. Its listening loneliness almost frightens one. Brurrhh! One must find a greenwood where things are companionable: birds within call, butterflies in waiting, and a bee now and again to bump one, and be off again with a grumbled 'Beg your pardon. Confound you!' So presently imagine me

well as a great one. The Leaves of Grass claims measurement with oaks; but Whisper I tried by speedwell and cinquefoil, and many other tiny sweet things for which I know no name, by all airs and sounds coming to me through the wood, quaint little notes

g mornings, lost sunsets, walks forgotten and unforgotten. Here a buttercup pressed like finely beaten brass, there a great yellow rose-in my Keats; my Chaucer is like his old meadow

died last year is the ro

I coined no such reflections dreaming there in the wood. It

l-that I had not learnt botany at school,

TE

ite in the wo

maide

ve tha

day within

thin thine h

ng so

J' with which I write to the dictation of the Muse of Daily Bread; but to-night it is different. Though it come not, I must make ready to receive a loftier inspiration. Whitest paper, newest pen, ear sensitive, tremulous; heart pure and mind open, broad and clear as the blue air for the most delicate gos

e is not to be bought. As animals are said to see spirits, children have, I think, an eye for souls. It is so easy to have an eye for beautiful surfaces. Such eyes are common enough. An eye for beautiful souls is rarer; and, unless you possess that eye for souls, you waste your time on White Soul. She has, of course, her external attractions, dainty features, refined contours; but these it would not be difficult to match in any morn

that pours all day long from her brows. There is something, as we say, almost supernatural about her-'a fairy's child.' The gypsies have a share in her blood, she boasts in her naive way, and with her love for

se behind the tower the three old men who live in the three yew-trees had come out and played cards upon a tomb in the moonlight, and one of them had beckoned to her and offered to t

ng for this world,' that fateful beauty which creates an atmosphere of doom about it. You cannot look at her without a queer involuntary feeling that she was born to di

and birth in strange uncanny forms; and she has met with unearthly creatures in the lonely corners of rooms. She is a 'seven

no doubt the materialist would be right in saying that all this 'spirituelle' nonsense is but a tr

ep inside them! how she talked to the unborn soul that none but she as yet could see! And all the time she 'knew' she was going to die, that she would never see the little immortal that was about to put on our mortality: 'people' had told her so in her dreams at night,-doubtle

in nuggets; they are minted into no current coin of fleeting fashion and shallow accomplishment. But if a face can mean more to you than the whole of Johnson's Dictionary, and the Encyclop?dia Britannica to boot, if a strain of music can convey to you the thrill of human life, with its heights and depths and romantic issues and p

in it one of those clear springs that bubble up from the eternal beauty, there must indeed be many who would miss the sou

om me, her memory would ever remain with me as one of those eternal realities of the spiri

ndeed, just to grow more worthy

E, Printers to Her Majesty at