The chair was dragged hither half-an-hour ago by a
maiden all in white, who appeared half inclined to
share the mulberry shade with me. She did not


IN AN OLD GARDEN 219


continue long in that mind. In a lively manner, she
began speaking of some trivial thing; but after a
very few moments all interest in the subject evapor-
ated, and she sat humming some idle air, tapping
the turf with her fantastic shoe. Presently she picked
up one of my books, opened it at random, and read a
line or two, her vermilion under-lip curling slightly ;
then threw it down again, and glanced at me out
of the corners of her eyes; then hummed again,
and finally became silent, and sat bending forward
a little, her dark lustrous eyes gazing with strange
intentness through the slight screen of foliage into
the vacant space beyond. What to see? The poet
has omitted to tell us to what the maiden’s fancy
lightly turns in spring. Doubtless it turns to thoughts
of something real. Life is real; so is passion—the
quickening of the blood, the wild pulsation. But the
pleasures and pains of the printed book are not
real, and are to reality like Japanese flowers made of
coloured bits of tissue paper to the living fragrant
flowers that bloom to-day and perish to-morrow ;
they are a simulacrum, a mockery, and present
to us a pale phantasmagoric world, peopled with
bloodless men and women that chatter meaningless
things and laugh without joy. The feeling of un-
reality affects us all at times, but in very different
degrees, And perhaps I was too long a doer, herding
too much with narrow foreheads, drinking too


220 BIRDS IN TOWN AND VILLAGE


deeply of the sweet and bitter cup, to experience
that pure unfailing delight in literature which some
have. Its charm, I fancy, is greatest to those in whom
the natural man, deprived in early life of his proper
aliment, grows sickly and pale, and perishes at last
of inanition, There is ample room then for the latter
higher growth—the unnatural cultivated man. Lovers
of literature are accustomed to say that they find
certain works “ helpful’ to them; and doubtless,
being all intellect, they are right. 