ixture that is always ineffectual, and should
never have been attempted in the first place. And yet, once you
start a mistake, the trouble is done and you never know what is
going to come of it.

When I came to myself again and began to listen, I perceived that
I had lost another chapter, and that Alisande had wandered a long
way off with her people.

"And so they rode and came into a deep valley full of stones,
and thereby they saw a fair stream of water; above thereby was
the head of the stream, a fair fountain, and three damsels sitting
thereby. In this country, said Sir Marhaus, came never knight
since it was christened, but he found strange adventures--"

"This is not good form, Alisande. Sir Marhaus the king's son of
Ireland talks like all the rest; you ought to give him a brogue,
or at least a characteristic expletive; by this means one would
recognize him as soon as he spoke, without his ever being named.
It is a common literary device with the great authors. You should
make him say, 'In this country, be jabers, came never knight since
it was christened, but he found strange adventures, be jabers.'
You see how much better that sounds."

--"came never knight but he found strange adventures, be jabers.
Of a truth it doth indeed, fair lord, albeit 'tis passing hard
to say, though peradventure that will not tarry but better speed
with usage. And then they rode to the damsels, and either saluted
other, and the eldest had a garland of gold about her head, and
she was threescore winter of age or more--"

"The _damsel_ was?"

"Even so, dear lord--and her hair was white under the garland--"

"Celluloid teeth, nine dollars a set, as like as not--the loose-fit
kind, that go up and down like a portcullis when you eat, and
fall out when you laugh."

"The second damsel was of thirty winter of age, with a circlet of
gold about her head. The third damsel was but fifteen year of age--"

Billows of thought came rolling over my soul, and the voice faded
out of my hearing!

Fifteen! Break--my heart! oh, my lost darling! Just her age
who was so gentle, and lovely, and all the world to me, and whom
I shall never see again! How the thought of her carries me back
over wide seas of memory to a vague dim time, a happy time, so many,
many centuries hence, when I used to wake in the soft summer
mornings, out of sweet dreams of her, and say "Hello, Central!"
just to hear her dear voice come melting back to me with a
"