OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 

 yawns amain. He consults his watch, and closes it with 

 a click in the midst of the great silence of the roomthe 

 silence made more sensible, rather than disturbed, by the 

 recurrent splutter of a pen-nib, or the turning of a leaf of 

 Epitome. 



That Epitome Historiae Sacrae was a primer adapted 

 to first year boysa small buckram-bound book com- 

 pendized, poetically expurgated, and made in truth singularly 

 attractive to the young imagination more attractive even, 

 I fancy, than those Fables of La Fontaine and of Florian 

 that, read in the light of "short stories/' were such 

 favourites. It was, by the way, called Epitome Sacrae 

 or even Sacrae pure and simple, in the same manner as the 

 volumes allotted to the two subsequent years were known 

 respectively as Latinae and Graecae. 

 I would give a fairly large coin of our present money for a 

 copy now, could I come across one in some old bookstall on 

 the quays. But, from their very nature, the cheapest 

 books are among the rarest things to recover at second 

 hand. 



It was within the pale green covers of that queer little 

 tome that I tasted for the first time the literary savour of 

 the various genres in tale-telling / of pastoral and romance, 

 of idyll and tragedy. One could not truly say that any 

 very strong impression of a sacred character was conveyed 

 through the collection of Holy Scripture stories. But it is 

 doubtful whether anything read in after-life was stamped 

 so clearly on the imagination as the poetry of Ruth amid 

 the ears of barley, of Rebecca and the pitcher of water, of 

 Rachel / as the romance of Joseph and his brethren / as the 

 tragedy of Samson and Delilah/ as the war pictures of 

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