They crossed the road and peered in through the gate at the poet’s house, and John, in the rôle of guide, recited the customary catalogue of dates and facts.
“I shan’t repeat ‘The Day is Done,’ however,” he said, “although it is really the proper thing to do. I wonder how many persons have stood here and murmured soulfully!
“‘I see the lights of the village
Break through the rain and the mist.’”
“But that isn’t right!” protested Phillip. And so he recited the poem himself, prompted here and there by John, and ended to find the latter observing him quizzically.
“One more, Ryerson,” he said. “Don’t blush; you did it well, with just the right amount of repressed feeling. And besides, you couldn’t help it; everybody does it; it’s a—a sort of fatality. I went by here one day and found five Radcliffe girls murmuring it in unison, their eyes fixed mournfully upon the river and meadow.”
But Phillip was embarrassed by the other’s good-natured raillery and turned away and stared at the dignified old mansion sunning its well-preserved timbers up there on the terrace. Presently he said with something of awe in his voice:
“Just think! Washington himself may have walked down this graveled path and through this gate!”
“Yes,” answered John, “he probably did. I’ve always thought I’d like to have known Washington. I don’t believe he was the straight-laced old prig that the school histories try to make out. Between you and me, Ryerson, I fancy he was a regular old sport. Look at the way he could swear! Why, he could give cards and spades to a Nantucket skipper! The only really reprehensible thing that I can lay at his door,” continued John, as they turned and took up their walk, “is the way in which he established headquarters. I believe that if it hadn’t been for that weakness of his we’d have licked England long before we did. Consider the time he must have wasted. He was as bad as that old English queen—was it Bess?—that used to go through the country sleeping in people’s beds for them.”