They remained with me six months, and were known to most men, who came to idle or labor, as “Tobin's Monument.” They stood on a book-shelf, with other monuments thought to be aere perennius, more enduring than brass, and disappeared at the end of the year, when the janitor reigned supreme. There seemed to be some far-off and final idea in the title, some thesis which never got itself rightly stated. Horatius Flaccus was kept on the shelf beside them in the notion that the statement should somehow be worked out between them. And there was no definite result; but I thought he grew more diffident with that companionship.
“Exegi monumentum. I suppose there is no doubt about that,” he would remark. “Ære perennius. It seems a trifle pushing, so to trespass on the attention of posterity. I would rather talk of my Sabine farm.”
THE CONCLUSION BY THE WAYFARERS
All honest things in the world we greet
With welcome fair and free;
A little love by the way is sweet,
A friend, or two, or three;
Of the sun and moon and stars are glad,