THE POET'S DAY-DKEAM. 47 



to the last word of the last line of the last fair copy, which 

 was about to be exchanged for notes and notice. 



The poet wiped his pen with an air of complacency, then 

 wiped his thin face, threw himself back in his rush-bottomed 

 chair, and with half-closed eyes still bent upon his manuscript, 

 his bulky embodiment of thought, indulged in a delicious 

 reverie. Few sounds from the world without ever reached 

 the back garret of No. 2, Court, but from the little world 

 within itself, frequent voices and rumblings from below often 

 reminded the dweller on its upper surface, of vital agencies at 

 work beneath him. Yet on this blessed day of August, " every 

 sound was at rest," the dancing master and his class had made 

 a party to practice the polka on the deck of a Eichmond 

 steamer, the tailor had also been tempted to seek the water, 

 and his journeymen, taking advantage of his absence, had 

 given the goose a holiday on dry land. For once, all conspired 

 to encourage the poet's day-dream, when it was suddenly broken 

 by the unlooked-for entrance of his tea. In general, our son 

 of the Muses was compelled to descend, himself, from his high 

 Parnassus to the lower regions, and invoke the stern Proser- 

 pine there presiding for his share of the boiling Phlegethon, but 

 this day it so happened, that in the absence of its betters, the 

 garret was remembered, and that at the moment when most it 

 wished itself forgotten. The black kettle was placed on the red 

 rusted hob, a quarter of a pound of salt butter, fresh from the 

 shop, was deposited plateless (but, mind ye, not paperless) on 



