"Ah, Keats! Glad you like Keats, Bessie. We needn't be great readers, but
it's important that what we do read should be all right. I don't know
him, not _really_ know him, that is. But he's quite all right--A1 in
fact. And he's an example of what I've always maintained, that knowledge
should be brought within the reach of all. It just shows. He was the son
of a livery-stable keeper, you know, so what he'd have been if he'd
really had chances, been to universities and so on, there's no knowing.
But, of course, it's more from the historical standpoint that I'm
studying these things. Let's have a look--"

He opened the book where a hairpin between the leaves marked a place.
The firelight glowed on the page, and he read, monotonously and
inelastically:

"_And as I sat, over the light blue hills
There came a noise of revellers; the rills
Into the wide stream came of purple hue--
'Twas Bacchus and his crew!
The earnest trumpet spake, and silver thrills
From kissing cymbals made a merry din--
'Twas Bacchus and his kin!
Like to a moving vintage down they came,
Crowned with green leaves, and faces all on flame
All madly dancing through the pleasant valley
To scare thee, Melancholy!"_

It was the wondrous passage from _Endymion_, of the descent of the wild
inspired rabble into India. Ed plucked for a moment at his lower lip, and
then, with a "Hm! What's it all about, Bessie?" continued:

_"Within his car, aloft, young Bacchus stood,
Trifling his ivy-dart, in dancing mood,
With sidelong laughing;
And little rills of crimson wine imbrued
His plump white arms and shoulders, enough white
For Venus' pearly bite;
And near him rode Silenus on his ass,
Pelted with flowers as he on did pass,
Tipsily quaffing."_

"Hm! I see. Mythology. That's made up of tales, and myths, you know. Like
Odin and Thor and those, only those were Scandinavian Mythology. So it
would be absurd to take it too seriously. But I think, in a way, things
like that do harm. You see," he explained, "the more beautiful they are
the more harm they might do. We ought always to show virtue and vice in
their true colours, and if you look at it from that point of view this is
just drunkenness. That's rotten; destroys your body and intellect; as I
heard a chap say once, it's an insult to the beasts to call it beastly. I
joined the Blue Ribbon when I was fourteen and I haven't been sorry for
it yet. No. Now there's Vedder; he 'went off on a bend,' as