CHRISTOPHER IX 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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