“You might add the concluding lines of that noble poem,” I said.
“‘When can their glory fade?
Oh the huge charge they made!
All the world wondered.
Pay them the charge they made!
Pay them the bill they made!
Noble attorneys.’”
“Good. Very good. Do you smoke.”
And he added to the effect of his question by handing me a well filled case of choice cheroots. Soon we were both lazily puffing at our cigars, and dreamily enjoying ourselves as we drove along past woodland and meadow, up hill and down, over sparkling, bubbling streamlets, beside fields of waving grain.
The day was charming. The heat of the July sun was tempered by a cooling breeze which blew softly upon us as we journeyed. The dust had been laid to rest by the sprinkling of an early shower; the birds carolled gayly amid their leafy bowers; here and there the squirrel peeped forth from his hiding-place and chattered at us as we passed, or raced ahead along the zig-zag fence; at one moment fluttered by a
Butterfly ranging on his yellow wings.
A primrose gone alive with joy, to dance with living things;
then came large white ones “which looked as if the May-flower had caught life, and palpitated forth upon the winds.”
And my friend dreamily muttered, “Would that I were an insect! Fancy the fun of tucking one’s self up for a night in the leaves of a rose, and being rocked to sleep by the gentle sighs of summer air; and having nothing to do when you awake but to wash yourself in a dewdrop, and then eat your bedclothes.”
Ever and anon we heard the truly rural sounds of the whetstone against the scythe, and the lowing of the kine, or the plaintive cry of some wandering lamb. All these arcadian sights and sounds acted as a gentle lullaby upon our senses already soothed by nicotine, and we slept.