TOILERS OF BABYLON.
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[CHAPTER I.]
The horse was very old, the caravan very dilapidated. As it was dragged slowly along the country roads it shook and creaked and wheezed, protesting, as it were, that it had performed its duty in life and that its long labors justly entitled it to permanent repose. The horse, with its burden behind it, had long ago given over complaining, and, although its plight was no less woful, was demonstrative only through physical compulsion. With drooping head, lustreless eyes, and laboring breath, it plodded on, with many a longing look at tempting morsels out of its reach.
At the present moment it was at rest, released from the shafts, and partaking of a spare meal, humanly provided, eking it out with sweet tid-bits, not too abundant, munched from the fragrant earth. Sitting on the ground at the back of the caravan was a man with a book in his hand, which sometimes he read with the air of one who was in the company of an old and beloved friend; at other times he gazed around with pensive delight upon the beauties of nature, which in no part of the world find more exquisite representation than in the county of Surrey. In the rear of the caravan were lovely stretches of woodland, through vistas of which visions of cathedral aisles could be seen by the poetical eye. Across the narrow road was a scene which brought to the man's mind some lines in the book he held. Turning over its pages, he called out, in a voice not strong, but clear:
"William Browne might have camped on this very spot, Nansie, and drawn its picture. The resemblance is wonderful." Then he read from the book:
"'Here the curious cutting of a hedge,
There, by a pond, the trimming of the sedge;
Here the fine setting of well-shading trees,
The walks there mounting up by small degrees;
The gravel and the green so equal lie,
They, with the rest, drawing on your lingering eye.
Here the sweet smells that do perfume the air,
Arising from the infinite repair
Of odoriferous buds; and herbs of price,
As if it were another paradise,
So please the smelling sense that you are fain,
Where you last walked, to turn and walk again.
There the small birds with their harmonious notes
Sing to a spring that smileth as it floats.'"
A practical flight of wooden steps at the back of the caravan afforded means of getting in and out, and when the man began to speak aloud a young woman issued from the interior of the conveyance, and stood upon the top of the little ladder, listening to his words.
"It is very beautiful, father," she said. "To think that it was written nearly three hundred years ago!"
"Yes, Nansie, in the days of Shakespeare; and it might be to-day. That is the marvel of it."