le felt that
he had accomplished bliss. What has the world to offer equal to the
joy of gratified love? What triumph is there so triumphant as that
achieved by valour over beauty?

Take the goods the gods provide you.
The lovely Thais sits beside you.

Was not that the happiest moment in Alexander's life. Was it not
the climax of all his glories, and the sweetest drop which Fortune
poured into his cup? George Robinson now felt himself to be a second
Alexander. Beside him the lovely Thais was seated evening after
evening; and he, with no measured stint, took the goods the gods
provided. He would think of the night of that supper in Smithfield,
when the big Brisket sat next to his love, half hidden by her
spreading flounces, and would remember how, in his spleen, he had
likened his rival to an ox prepared for the sacrifice with garlands.
"Poor ignorant beast of the field!" he had said, apostrophizing the
unconscious Brisket, "how little knowest thou how ill those flowers
become thee, or for what purpose thou art thus caressed! They will
take from thee thy hide, thy fatness, all that thou hast, and divide
thy carcase among them. And yet thou thinkest thyself happy! Poor
foolish beast of the field!" Now that ox had escaped from the toils,
and a stag of the forest had been caught by his antlers, and was
bound for the altar. He knew all this, and yet he walked upon roses
and was happy. "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof," he said
to himself. "The lovely Thais sits beside me. Shall I not take the
goods the gods provide me?"

The lovely Thais sat beside him evening after evening for nearly
two months, up in Mr. Brown's parlour, but as yet nothing had
been decided as to the day of their marriage. Sometimes Mr. and
Mrs. Poppins would be there smiling, happy, and confidential; and
sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Jones careworn, greedy, and suspicious. On
those latter evenings the hours would all be spent in discussing the
profits of the shop and the fair division of the spoils. On this
subject Mrs. Jones would be very bitter, and even the lovely Thais
would have an opinion of her own which seemed to be anything but
agreeable to her father.

"Maryanne," her lover said to her one evening, when words had been
rather high among them, "if you want your days to be long in the
land, you must honour your father and mother."

"I don't want my days to be long, if we're never to come to an
understanding," she answered. "And