282 THE LIFE OF RICHARD JEFFERIES 



always hankered after travel and adventure, but he did 

 not go farther than to receive, but not to accept, an 

 invitation to go out as correspondent to the Zulu War ; 

 lying ill in January, 1886, he regretted that he had not 

 gone. 



Alere worked until he had perhaps ten pounds, and then 

 paused, and smoked, and gave away his money. He ' did 

 not seem to trouble himself about the dogs ' in London 

 streets ; ' he saw so much of the human nuisances.' He 

 and Jefferies thought little of the organization of which 

 the one great advantage is that ' by no possible means 

 can you risk giving a penny to a man not of high moral 

 character, though he be perishing of starvation.' He 

 was no genius neglected or destroyed by intemperance : 

 he simply had no ambition and no ' business avarice,' 

 When the rats began to run up the waU in broad daylight, 

 he packed his carpet-bag and came to Coombe Oaks ; 

 and presently he began to sing old songs, student-songs, 

 songs from Goethe, and played * delicious airs of Mozart 

 chiefly ' for Amaryllis. 



' By Flamma's side there stood a great mug of the 

 GoHath ale, and between his lips there was a long church- 

 warden pipe. 



' The Goliath ale was his mineral water ; his gaseous, 

 alkaline, chalybeate liquor ; better by far than Kissingen, 

 Homburg, Vichy ; better by far than mud baths and hot 

 springs. There is no medicine in nature, or made by 

 man, like good ale. He who drinks ale is strong. 



' The bitter principle of the aromatic hops went to his 

 nervous system, to the much-suffering liver, to the clogged 

 and weary organs, bracing and stimulating, urging on, 

 vitalizing anew. 



' The spirit drawn from the joyous barley warmed his 

 heart ; a cordial grown on the sunny hill-side, watered 

 with dew and sweet rain, coloured by the light, a liquor 

 of sunshine, potable sunbeam. 



' Age mingling hops and barley in that just and equit- 

 able proportion, no cunning of hand, no science can 



