on me then."

"Well, don't let it make any now. Everything will come all right."

"Yes, it will. I have walked with many an experiment, but at last there
is such a thing as facing a certainty."

"Have you anything in view?"

"Oh, yes. And everything will be all right."

"I hope so."

"I don't hope--I know. But enough of that. It is a philosopher who can
say, 'Ha! old Socrates, pass your cup this way.' They have hushed their
song. Even the poor and the ignorant grow weary of singing; then who can
expect music from the wise? What have you there? Old Whittier? He died,
and they gave him a stingy column in the newspapers, squeezed by the
report of the prize fight at New Orleans. If a poet would look to his
fame, let him die when there is no other news. But some have died in a
spread of newspaper glory--Eugene Field, the sweetest lisper of a boy's
mischief, the tuner of tenderest lyrics, but with a laugh for man that
cut like a scythe. And some of the rich whom he had laughed at,
scrambled for a place at his coffin to bear it to the grave--tuneless
clay, scuffling over tuneful dust! Oh, hypocrisy, stamp thy countenance
with a dollar!"

"It's raining now," said Milford, seeking to draw his mind from the
darkness of its wandering.

"Yes, the falling of water, rhythmic, poetry--all poets have been as
water. I will class them for you. Keats, the rivulet; Shelley, the
brook; Byron, the creek; Tennyson, the river; Wordsworth, the lake;
Milton, the bay; and Shakespeare, the waters of all the world, the sea.
But I will not keep you up. You are a working-man, and must rest."

"Don't go; I'm not tired; I haven't done a thing to-day. Shall I fill
the jug?"

"No, enough. Let me take up my gilded trash," he said, reaching for his
bundle.

"I wish you'd stay longer. Let me go home with you."

"No, I prefer to walk alone. You remember in the old reader, the dog
went out to walk alone."

"It was the cat that walked alone," said Milford. "The dog sat down to
gnaw his bone. Don't you recollect?"

The old man touched his forehead, and shook his head. "So it was the cat
that walked alone. But we will reverse it. The dog will walk alone
to-night."

"I wish you'd let me go with you."

"Plead not your friendship, or I shall yield. But I want to be alone."

"Then you shall be."

"I thank you, and good-night." He strode off, with his bundle and stick;
and out in the darkness he cried: "Don't forget my classification of the