ould murmur of summer
and the bee, to summon the wind into a sentence, to conjure the odor of
the night into the surge and fall and harmony of a line; this was the
tale of the long evenings, of the candle flame white upon the paper and
the eager pen.

He remembered that in some fantastic book he had seen a bar or two of
music, and, beneath, the inscription that here was the musical expression
of Westminster Abbey. His boyish effort seemed hardly less ambitious,
and he no longer believed that language could present the melody and the
awe and the loveliness of the earth. He had long known that he, at all
events, would have to be content with a far approach, with a few broken
notes that might suggest, perhaps, the magistral everlasting song of the
hill and the streams.

But in those far days the impossible was but a part of wonderland that
lay before him, of the world beyond the wood and the mountain. All was to
be conquered, all was to be achieved; he had but to make the journey and
he would find the golden world and the golden word, and hear those songs
that the sirens sang. He touched the manuscript; whatever it was, it was
the result of painful labor and disappointment, not of the old flush of
hope, but it came of weary days, of correction and re-correction. It
might be good in its measure; but afterwards he would write no more for a
time. He would go back again to the happy world of masterpieces, to the
dreams of great and perfect books, written in an ecstasy.

Like a dark cloud from the sea came the memory of the attempt he had
made, of the poor piteous history that had once embittered his life. He
sighed and said alas, thinking of his folly, of the hours when he was
shaken with futile, miserable rage. Some silly person in London had made
his manuscript more saleable and had sold it without rendering an account
of the profits, and for that he had been ready to curse humanity. Black,
horrible, as the memory of a stormy day, the rage of his heart returned
to his mind, and he covered his eyes, endeavoring to darken the picture
of terror and hate that shone before him. He tried to drive it all out of
his thought, it vexed him to remember these foolish trifles; the trick of
a publisher, the small pomposities and malignancies of the country folk,
the cruelty of a village boy, had inflamed him almost to the pitch of
madness. His heart had burnt with fury, and when he looked up the sky was
blotched, and scarlet as if it