"Ha, early to work is the thing," he said, stepping into the room and glancing about. "More pictures of famous players, I see. Well, we'll have them strutting about our stage the first thing they know. How do you feel?" he asked, drawing up a chair and sitting down.
"First rate—too well, I might say. This air makes me content to sit and dream."
"Good; it is better to find contentment even in a dream than to snap our nerves in two with chasing what we might regard substantial happiness. Why, confound it all, Belford, there is no such thing as substantial happiness. Anything substantial is too material, too gross; and happiness is a certain spiritual condition of the mind. Therefore, I say, let the old South dream if she feels like it. There used to be an old fellow that lived about here—Mose Parish. Well, the time came for Mose to die; but he wasn't scared, not a bit of it. A preacher came to talk to him, and old Mose listened for a while, and then he said: 'Oh, no, I never did much of anything—never built a steamboat nor a house, but I've had a good deal of fun, and I hold that when a man is having fun he can't have it all alone; he's helping some other fellow.'"
We talked about hundreds of things, and touched occasionally upon our business venture, but nothing led to a subject which I felt, and which he seemed to feel, was too delicate to be mentioned. He gossiped of young Elkin's affection for Miss Rodney; he said that Elkin's love put him in mind of an ass with gilded ears. He spoke of the coming election and the surety with which he and Tom Estell would win; but when he took his leave he did not invite me to call at the house. I met him day after day, in the office, in the street, in the rotunda of the hotel; and he always greeted me with a warm and earnest cordiality, but at parting he would say, "I'll see you again soon;" and never that I should come to see him.
I walked a great deal, musing over my play, and more than once in rebellion my feet wandered from their usual path to tread the sacred and forbidden ground that lay in the neighborhood of the Senator's home. Near the close of day, I sometimes saw him sitting on the portico, with his chair tipped back, his feet against a classic pillar, smoking his pipe—a vandalic American indulging a national posture to the shame of a Grecian memory. Once I saw his daughter standing near him, where the fading sunlight fell, gazing afar off, shading her eyes with her hand. And she might have seen me had I not bent behind a bush; had I been less a thief.
One hot afternoon the Senator came into the office, fanning himself with his hat.
"No dreaming now, Belford," said he. "It's too hot even to doze. What's all that you've got spread out there?"
"Our play," I answered.
"Oh, yes. And, by George, there seems to be enough of it. Let me hear a chapter or two. Isn't in chapters, though, is it? Fire away and let me hear what it sounds like. You look like a commissioner of deeds, with all this stuff scattered about you. But go ahead."
"I'd rather wait, Senator, until it's completed. In fact, I'd rather you'd wait and see it played," I replied, remembering what he had said about elevating the stage and fearing that he might object to some of my characters.