CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET 



pride of the parish the county the land the earth 

 is our partner and long mayest thou, O moon! 

 remain behind thy cloud when the parting kiss is 

 given and the love-letter, at that tenderest moment, 

 dropped into her bosom! 



But we have lost the thread of our discourse, and 

 must pause to search for it, even like a spinster of 

 old, in the disarranged spindle of one of those pretty 

 little wheels now heard no more in the humble ingle, 

 hushed by machinery clink-clanking with power-looms 

 in every town and city of the land. Another year, and 

 we often found ourselves alone or with one chosen 

 comrade; for even then we began to have our sympa- 

 thies and antipathies, not only with roses and lilies, 

 or to cats and cheese, but with or to the eyes, and 

 looks, and foreheads, and hair, and voices, and mo- 

 tions, and silence, and rest of human beings, loving 

 them with a perfect love we must not say hating 

 them with a perfect hatred alone or with a friend, 

 among the mists and marshes of moors, in silent and 

 stealthy search of the solitary curlew, that is, the 

 Whawp ! At first sight of his long bill aloft above the 

 rushes, we could hear our heart beating quick time in 

 the desert; at the turning of his neck, the body being 

 yet still, our heart ceased to beat altogether and we 

 grew sick with hope when near enough to see the wild 

 beauty of his eye. Unfolded, like a thought, was then 

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