42 ON A CERTAIN CONDESCENSION IN FOREIGNERS. 



coming dark would so soon fold me in the secure privacy of 

 its disguise all things combined in a result as near absolute 

 peace as can be hoped for by a man who knows that there is 

 a writ out against him in the hands of the printer s devil. 

 For the moment I was enjoying the blessed privilege of 

 thinking without being called on to stand and deliver what I 

 thought to the small public who are good enough to take any 

 interest therein. I love old ways, and the path I was walking 

 felt kindly to the feet it had known for almost fifty years. 

 How many fleeting impressions it had shared with me ! 

 How many times I had lingered to study the shadows of the 

 leaves mezzotinted upon the turf that edged it by the moon, 

 of the bare boughs etched with a touch beyond Rembrandt 

 by the same unconscious artist on the smooth page of snow ! 

 If I turned round, through dusky tree-gaps came the first 

 twinkle of evening lamps in the dear old homestead. On 

 Corey s hill I could see these tiny pharoses of love and home 

 and sweet domestic thoughts flash out one by one across the 

 blackening salt-meadow between. How much has not 

 kerosene added to the cheerfulness of our evening landscape ! 

 A pair of night-herons flapped heavily over me toward the 

 hidden river. The war was ended. I might walk townward 

 without that aching dread of bulletins that had darkened the 

 July sunshine, and twice made the scarlet leaves of October 

 seemed stained with blood. I remembered with a pang, 

 half proud, half painful, how so many years ago I had walked 

 over the same path and felt round my finger the soft pressure 

 of a little hand that was one day to harden with faithful grip 

 of sabre. On how many paths, leading to how many homes 

 where proud Memory does all she can to fill up the fireside 

 gaps with shining shapes, must not men be walking in just 

 such pensive mood as I ? Ah, young heroes, safe in im 

 mortal youth as those of Homer, you at least carried your 

 ideal hence untarnished ! It is locked for you beyond moth 

 or rust in the treasure-chamber of Death. 



Is not a country, I thought, that has had such as they in 

 it, that could give such as they a brave joy in dying for it, 

 worth something, then ? And as I felt more and more the 

 soothing magic of evening s cool palm upon my temples, as 

 my fancy came home from its reverie, and my senses, with 

 reawakened curiosity, ran to the front windows again from 

 the viewless closet of abstraction, and felt a strange charm 



