rgotten how
he turned into a parable the tale of the cross-eyed maid in the Morris
Shop in Red Lion Square, whose eyes were knocked straight by a shock
the company of Morris, Marshall, and Faulkner administered deliberately,
and then were knocked crooked again by a shock they had not provided for
or against. And, as Sandys recalled them, the strange beasts in
"Gabriel's" house and garden might have been let loose from out of the
Apocalypse. But Sandys's voice has been stilled forever and the
anecdotes have been published oftener, I do believe, than any others in
the world's rich store of _cliches_. The great of his day had all the
Boswells they wanted--a retinue of admirers and cuffs ready--at their
head William Michael Rossetti to pour out book after book about his
brother, to leave little untold about the group that revolved round
"Gabriel." Even the third generation, with Ford Madox Hueffer to lead,
has taken up the task. The anecdotes have grown familiar, but it is
something to have heard them from the men who were their heroes.

IX

Well--our Thursdays were pleasant, an inspiration while they lasted, and
for a time I thought they must last as long as we did. But nothing
pleasant endures forever, the bravest inspiration flickers and dies
almost before we realize its flaring. The stern duty of Friday morning
always haunted me in anticipation, for I have never been able to take
lightly the work I do with so much difficulty, and Friday morning itself
often brought even J. up with a sharp turn to face the fact that man was
born into the world to labour in the sweat of his brow, and not simply
to talk all night until no work was left in him.

That may have been one reason for our giving up so agreeable a custom.
Another perhaps came from the discovery that the freedom of our Thursday
nights was sometimes abused. A certain type of Englishman would travel a
mile and more for anything he did not have to pay for, even if it was
for nothing more substantial than a cigarette, a sandwich, a
whiskey-and-soda. There were evenings when, looking round the packed
dining-room, it would occur to me that I did not recognise half the
people in it. Friends introduced friends and they introduced other
friends until, in bewilderment, I asked myself if our Thursday night was
ours or somebody else's. And I fancied a tendency to treat it as if it
were somebody else's,--to take an ell when we meant to give no more than
an inch, and J. was