an all the hamlet put together.

Luce, the maid, had worked since six, and would go on hours longer.

Alere Flamma was smoking and sipping Goliath ale in the summer-house; he
could eat, and drink, and walk about as a man should.

Amaryllis was as strong as a young lioness; he had seen her turn the
heavy cheese-tub round as if it were a footstool.

He alone was weak, pale, contemptible; unable to eat strong meat; unable
to drink strong drink; put down to sip milk as an infant; unable to walk
farther than Plum Corner in the garden; unable to ride even; a mere
shadow, a thing of contempt.

They told him he was better. There was just a trifle of pink in his
face, and he could walk to Plum Corner in the garden without clinging to
Amaryllis's arm, or staying to steady himself and get his balance more
than three or four times. He had even ventured a little way up the
meadow-path, but it made him giddy to stoop to pick a buttercup. They
told him he was better; he could eat a very little more, and sip a
wine-glassful of Goliath.

Better! What a mockery to a man who could once row, and ride, and shoot,
and walk his thirty miles, and play his part in any sport you chose! It
was absinthe to him.

He could not stoop to turn the churn--he had to sip milk in the presence
of strong men drinking strong drink; to be despised; the very
servant-maid talking of him as in a decline.

And before Amaryllis; before whom he wished to appear a man.

And full of ideas, too; he felt that he had ideas, that he could think,
yet he could scarce set one foot safely before the other, not without
considering first and feeling his way.

Rough-headed Jearje, without a thought, was as strong as the horses he
led in the waggon.

Round-headed Bill Nye, without an idea, could mow all day in the heat of
July.

He, with all his ideas, his ambitions, his exalted hopes, his worship of
Amaryllis--he was nothing. Less than nothing--a shadow.

To despise oneself is more bitter than absinthe.

Let us go to Al Hariri once again, and hear what he says. The speaker
has been very, very ill, but is better:--

And he prostrated himself long in prayer: then
raised his head, and said:--

"Despair not in calamities of a gladdening that shall wipe away
thy sorrows;
For how many a simoom blows, then turns to a gentle breeze, and
is changed!
How many a hateful cloud arises, then passes away, and pours