’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?

‘Hi!  Hi!  Hold your horses!  Stop!...  Well!  Well!’ A lean man in a sable-lined overcoat leaped from a private car and barred my way up Pall Mall.  ’You don’t know me?  You’re excusable.  I wasn’t wearing much of anything last time we met—­in South Africa.’

The scales fell from my eyes, and I saw him once more in a sky-blue army shirt, behind barbed wire, among Dutch prisoners bathing at Simonstown, more than a dozen years ago[3].  ‘Why, it’s Zigler—­Laughton O. Zigler!’ I cried.  ‘Well, I am glad to see you.’

[Footnote 3:  ‘The Captive’:  Traffics and Discoveries.]

’Oh no!  You don’t work any of your English on me.  “So glad to see you, doncher know—­an’ ta-ta!” Do you reside in this village?’

‘No.  I’m up here buying stores.’

’Then you take my automobile.  Where to?...  Oh, I know them!  My Lord Marshalton is one of the Directors.  Pigott, drive to the Army and Navy Cooperative Supply Association Limited, Victoria Street, Westminister.’