en can be--especially when wise enough to love us.
William does not shine in conversation; how we hate a magpie of a man.
William's chin is what is called receding, just the sort of chin a beard
looks well on. Bless you, Oberon darling, for that drug; rub it on our
eyelids once again. Better let us have a bottle, Oberon, to keep by us.

Oberon, Oberon, what are you thinking of? You have given the bottle to
Puck. Take it away from him, quick. Lord help us all if that Imp has the
bottle. Lord save us from Puck while we sleep.

Or may we, fairy Oberon, regard your lotion as an eye-opener, rather
than as an eye-closer? You remember the story the storks told the
children, of the little girl who was a toad by day, only her sweet dark
eyes being left to her. But at night, when the Prince clasped her close
to his breast, lo! again she became the king's daughter, fairest and
fondest of women. There be many royal ladies in Marshland, with bad
complexion and thin straight hair, and the silly princes sneer and ride
away to woo some kitchen wench decked out in queen's apparel. Lucky the
prince upon whose eyelids Oberon has dropped the magic philtre.

In the gallery of a minor Continental town I have forgotten, hangs a
picture that lives with me. The painting I cannot recall, whether good
or bad; artists must forgive me for remembering only the subject. It
shows a man, crucified by the roadside. No martyr he. If ever a man
deserved hanging it was this one. So much the artist has made clear.
The face, even under its mask of agony, is an evil, treacherous face.
A peasant girl clings to the cross; she stands tip-toe upon a patient
donkey, straining her face upward for the half-dead man to stoop and
kiss her lips.

Thief, coward, blackguard, they are stamped upon his face, but UNDER the
face, under the evil outside? Is there no remnant of manhood--nothing
tender, nothing, true? A woman has crept to the cross to kiss him:
no evidence in his favour, my Lord? Love is blind-aye, to our faults.
Heaven help us all; Love's eyes would be sore indeed if it were not
so. But for the good that is in us her eyes are keen. You, crucified
blackguard, stand forth. A hundred witnesses have given their evidence
against you. Are there none to give evidence for him? A woman, great
Judge, who loved him. Let her speak.

But I am wandering far from Hyde Park and its show of girls.

They passed and re-passed me, laughing, smiling, talking. Their eyes
were