And, while I lay and listened, oh the river’s sleepy tune
  Seemed to change its rippling music, like the cuckoo’s stave in June,
  And the cannon’s distant thunder and the engines’ warlike drone
  Seemed to mingle with its burthen in a solemn undertone:—­

  “Oh the stream runs to the river, and the river to the sea,
  And there’s war on land and water, and there’s work for you and me;
  And on many a field of glory there are gallant lives laid down
  As well for sleepy Bullington as mighty London Town.”

  So I roused me from my daydream, for I knew the song spoke true,
  That it isn’t time for dreaming while there’s duty still to do;
  And I turned into the highroad where it meets the flinty lane,
  And the world of wars and sorrows was about me once again.

  C.F.S.

* * * * *

REMEMBRANCE.

“Stop, Francesca,” I cried.  “Don’t talk; don’t budge; don’t blink.  Give me time.  I’ve all but—­”

“What are you up to?” she said.

“There,” I said, “you’ve done it.  I had it on the tip of my tongue, and now it has gone back for ever into the limbo of forgotten things, and all because you couldn’t keep silent for the least little fraction of a second.”

“My poor dear,” she said, “I am sorry.  But why didn’t you tell me you were trying to remember something?”

“That,” I said, “would have been just as fatal to it.  These things are only remembered in an atmosphere of perfect silence.  The mental effort must have room to develop.”

“Don’t tell me,” she said tragically, “that I have checked the development of a mental effort.  That would be too awful.”

“Well,” I said, “that’s exactly what you have done, that and nothing less.  I feel just as if I’d tried to go upstairs where there wasn’t a step.”

“Or downstairs.”

“Yes,” I said, “it’s equally painful and dislocating.”

“But you’re not the only one,” she said, “who’s forgotten things.  I’ve done quite a lot in that line myself.  I’ve forgotten the measles and sugar and Lord RHONDDA and the Irish trouble and your Aunt Matilda, and where I left my pince-nez and what’s become of the letters I received this morning, and whom I promised to meet where and when to talk over what.  You needn’t think you’re the only forgetter in the world.  I can meet you on that and any other ground.”

“But,” I said, “the thing you made me forget—­”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.”

“No, for you hadn’t remembered it.”

“Well, anyhow I shall put it on to you, and I want you to realise that it’s not like one of your trivialities—­”

“This man,” said Francesca, “refers to his Aunt Matilda and Lord RHONDDA as trivialities.”

“It is not,” I continued inexorably, “like one of your trivialities.  It’s a most important thing, and it begins with a ‘B.’”