“When I sailed: when I sailed.”
Ballad of Robert Kidd.
With the opening of spring my heart opens. My fancy expands with the flowers, and, as I walk down town in the May morning, toward the dingy counting-room, and the old routine, you would hardly believe that I would not change my feelings for those of the French Barber-Poet Jasmin, who goes, merrily singing, to his shaving and hair cutting.
The first warm day puts the whole winter to flight. It stands in front of the summer like a young warrior before his host, and, single-handed, defies and destroys its remorseless enemy.
I throw up the chamber-window, to breathe the earliest breath of summer.
“The brave young David has hit old Goliath square in the forehead this morning,” I say to Prue, as I lean out, and bathe in the soft sunshine.
My wife is tying on her cap at the glass, and, not quite disentangled from her dreams, thinks I am speaking of a street-brawl, and replies that I had better take care of my own head.
“Since you have charge of my heart, I suppose,” I answer gaily, turning round to make her one of Titbottom’s bows.
“But seriously, Prue, how is it about my summer wardrobe?”
Prue smiles, and tells me we shall have two months of winter yet, and I had better stop and order some more coal as I go down town.
“Winter—coal!”