blue water.




ON TWO CHILDREN IN BLACK.


Montaigne and "Howel's Letters" are my bedside books. If I wake at
night, I have one or other of them to prattle me to sleep again. They
talk about themselves for ever, and don't weary me. I like to hear them
tell their old stories over and over again. I read them in the dozy
hours, and only half remember them. I am informed that both of them tell
coarse stories. I don't heed them. It was the custom of their time, as
it is of Highlanders and Hottentots to dispense with a part of dress
which we all wear in cities. But people can't afford to be shocked
either at Cape Town or at Inverness every time they meet an individual
who wears his national airy raiment. I never knew the "Arabian Nights"
was an improper book until I happened once to read it in a "family
edition." Well, qui s'excuse. . . . Who, pray, has accused me as yet?
Here am I smothering dear good old Mrs. Grundy's objections, before she
has opened her mouth. I love, I say, and scarcely ever tire of hearing,
the artless prattle of those two dear old friends, the Perigourdin
gentleman and the priggish little Clerk of King Charles's Council. Their
egotism in nowise disgusts me. I hope I shall always like to hear men,
in reason, talk about themselves. What subject does a man know better?
If I stamp on a friend's corn, his outcry is genuine--he confounds my
clumsiness in the accents of truth. He is speaking about himself and
expressing his emotion of grief or pain in a manner perfectly authentic
and veracious. I have a story of my own, of a wrong done to me by