l take it,
too--conscientiously. Don't eat me, King. Perhaps, he'll be a K.C.B.'

Ten o'clock struck and the Army class boys in the further studies coming
to their houses after an hour's extra work passed along the gravel path
below. Some one was chanting, to the tune of 'White sand and grey sand,'
_Dis te minorem quod geris imperas_. He stopped outside Mullins' study.
They heard Mullins' window slide up and then Stalky's voice:

'Ah! Good-evening, Mullins, my _barbarus tortor_. We're the waits. We
have come to inquire after the local Berserk. Is he doin' as well as can
be expected in his new caree-ah?'

'Better than you will, in a sec, Stalky,' Mullins grunted.

'Glad of that. We thought he'd like to know that Paddy has been carried
to the sick-house in ravin' delirium. They think it's concussion of
the brain.'

'Why, he was all right at prayers,' Winton began earnestly, and they
heard a laugh in the background as Mullins slammed down the window.

''Night, Regulus,' Stalky sang out, and the light footsteps went on.

'You see. It sticks. A little of it sticks among the barbarians,' said
King.

'Amen,' said the Reverend John. 'Go to bed.'

A TRANSLATION

HORACE, Bk. V. _Ode 3_

There are whose study is of smells,
And to attentive schools rehearse
How something mixed with something else
Makes something worse.

Some cultivate in broths impure
The clients of our body--these,
Increasing without Venus, cure,
Or cause, disease.

Others the heated wheel extol,
And all its offspring, whose concern
Is how to make it farthest roll
And fastest turn.

Me, much incurious if the hour
Present, or to be paid for, brings
Me to Brundusium by the power
Of wheels or wings;

Me, in whose breast no flame hath burned
Life-long, save that by Pindar lit,
Such lore leaves cold: I am not turned
Aside to it

More than when, sunk in thought profound
Of what the unaltering Gods require,
My steward (friend but slave) brings round
Logs for my fire.

The Edge of the Evening

(1913)

Ah! What avails the classic bent,
And what the chosen word,
Against the undoctored incident
That actually occurred?

And what is Art whereto we press
Through paint and prose and rhyme--
When Nature in her nakedness
Defeats us every time?