o him.

Unable to make you see the Morris, how can I make you feel as I felt in
seeing it? I cannot explain even to myself the effect it had on me. My
critics have often complained of me that I lack 'heart'--presumably the
sort of heart that is pronounced with a rolling of the r; and I suppose
they are right. I remember having read the death of Little Nell on more
than one occasion without floods of tears. How can I explain to myself
the tears that came into my eyes at sight of the Morris? They are not
within the rubric of the tears drawn by mere contemplation of visual
beauty. The Morris, as I saw it, was curious, antique, racy, what you
will: not beautiful. Nor was there any obvious pathos in it. Often, in
London, passing through some slum where a tune was being ground from an
organ, I have paused to watch the little girls dancing. In the swaying
dances of these wan, dishevelled, dim little girls I have discerned
authentic beauty, and have wondered where they had learned the grace of
their movements, and where the certainty with which they did such
strange and complicated steps. Surely, I have thought, this is no trick
of to-day or yesterday: here, surely, is the remainder of some old
tradition; here, may be, is Merrie England, run to seed. There is an
obvious pathos in the dances of these children of the gutter--an
obvious symbolism of sadness, of a wistful longing for freedom and
fearlessness, for wind and sunshine. No wonder that at sight of it even
so heartless a person as the present writer is a little touched. But
why at sight of those rubicund, full-grown, eupeptic Morris-dancers on
the vernal highroad? No obvious pathos was diffusing itself from them.
They were Merrie England in full flower. In part, I suppose, my tears
were tears of joy for the very joyousness of these men; in part, of
envy for their fine simplicity; in part, of sorrow in the thought that
they were a survival of the past, not types of the present, and that
their knell would soon be tolled, and the old elm see their like no
more.

After they had drunk some ale, they formed up for the second dance--a
circular dance. And anon, above the notes of the flute and the jangling
of the bells and the stamping of the boots, I seemed to hear the knell
actually tolling, Hoot! Hoot! Hoot! A motor came fussing and fuming in
its cloud of dust. Hoot! Hoot! The dysard ran to meet it, brandishing
his wand of office. He had to stand aside. Hoot! The dancers had