k was Mr.
Brown's _Old John, and other Poems_, published but a few days back by
Messrs. Macmillan & Co. The morning was spent in a very small garden
overlooking a harbor. Hazlitt's conditions were fulfilled. I had
enjoyed enough food and sleep to last me for some little time: few
people, I imagine, have complained of the cold, these last few weeks:
and the book was not only new to me for the most part, but certain to
please. Moreover, a small incident had already put me in the best of
humors. Just as I was settling down to read, a small tug came down the
harbor with a barque in tow whose nationality I recognized before she
cleared a corner and showed the Norwegian colors drooping from her
peak. I reached for the field-glass and read her name--_Henrik Ibsen_!
I imagined Mr. William Archer applauding as I ran to my own flag-staff
and dipped the British ensign to that name. The Norwegians on deck
stood puzzled for a moment, but, taking the compliment to themselves,
gave me a cheerful hail, while one or two ran aft and dipped the
Norwegian flag in response. It was still running frantically up and
down the halliards when I returned to my seat, and the lines of the
bark were softening to beauty in the distance--for, to tell the truth,
she had looked a crazy and not altogether seaworthy craft--as I opened
my book, and, by a stroke of luck, at that fine poem, _The Schooner_.

"Just mark that schooner westward far at sea--
'Tis but an hour ago
When she was lying hoggish at the quay,
And men ran to and fro
And tugged, and stamped, and shoved, and pushed, and swore.
And ever an anon, with crapulous glee,
Grinned homage to viragoes on the shore.

"So to the jetty gradual she was hauled:
Then one the tiller took,
And chewed, and spat upon his hand, and bawled;
And one the canvas shook
Forth like a mouldy bat; and one, with nods
And smiles, lay on the bowsprit end, and called
And cursed the Harbour-master by his gods.

"And rotten from the gunwale to the keel,
Rat riddled, bilge bestank,
Slime-slobbered, horrible, I saw her reel
And drag her oozy flank,
And sprawl among the deft young waves, that laughed
And leapt, and turned in many a sportive wheel
As she thumped onward with her lumbering draught.

"And now, behold! a shadow of repose
Upon a line of gray
She sleeps, that transverse cuts th