m that was ever written came out of a grey pulpy mass such as we
make brain sauce of.

And with these grave thoughts for grace let us sit down to dinner.

Dinner!

CHAPTER VIII

STILL PRANDIAL

What wine shall we have? I confess I am no judge of wines, except when
they are bad. To-night I feel inclined to allow my choice to be
directed by sentiment; and as we are on so pretty a pilgrimage, would
it not be appropriate to drink Liebfraumilch?

Hock is full of fancy, and all wines are by their very nature full of
reminiscence, the golden tears and red blood of summers that are gone.

Forgive me, therefore, if I grow reminiscent. Indeed, I fear that the
hour for the story of my First Love has come. But first, notice the
waitress. I confess, whether beautiful or plain,--not too
plain,--women who earn their own living have a peculiar attraction for
me.

I hope the Golden Girl will not turn out to be a duchess. As old
Campion sings,--

"I care not for those ladies
Who must be wooed and prayed;
Give me kind Amaryllis,
The wanton country-maid."

Town-maids too of the same pattern. Whether in town or country, give me
the girls that work. The Girls That Work! But evidently it is high
time woe began a new chapter.

CHAPTER IX

THE LEGEND OF HEBE, OR THE HEAVENLY HOUSEMAID

Yes, I blush to admit it, my First Love was a housemaid. So was she
known on this dull earth of ours, but in heaven--in the heaven of my
imagination, at all events--she was, of course, a goddess. How she
managed to keep her disguise I never could understand. To me she was so
obviously dea certe. The nimbus was so apparent. Yet no one seemed to
see it but me. I have heard her scolded as though she were any
ordinary earthly housemaid, and I have seen the butcher's boy trying to
flirt with her without a touch of reverence.

Maybe I understood because I saw her in that early hour of the morning
when even the stony Memnon sings, in that mystical light of the young
day when divine exiled things, condemned to rough bondage through the
noon, are for a short magical hour their own celestial selves, their
unearthly glory as yet unhidden by any earthly disguise.

Neither fairies nor fauns, dryads nor nymphs of the forest pools, have
really passed away from the world. You have only to get up early
enough to meet them in the meadows. They rarely venture abroad after
six. All day long they hide in uncouth encha