o, sir.
You may make shoes, you may run engines, you may carry coals; you may
blow the huntsman's horn, hurl the base-ball, follow the plough, smite
the anvil; your face may be brown, your veins knotted, your hands
grimed; and yet you may be a hero. And, on the other hand, you may
write verses and be a clown. It is not necessary to feed on ambrosia
in order to become divine; nor shall one be accursed, though he drink
of the ninefold Styx. The Israelites ate angels' food in the
wilderness, and remained stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and
ears. The white water-lily feeds on slime, and unfolds a heavenly
glory. Come as the June morning comes. It has not picked its way
daintily, passing only among the roses. It has breathed up the whole
earth. It has blown through the fields and barnyards and all the
common places of the land. It has shrunk from nothing. Its purity has
breasted and overborne all things, and so mingled and harmonized all
that it sweeps around your forehead and sinks into your heart as soft
and sweet and pure as the fragrancy of Paradise. So come you, rough
from the world's rough work, all out-door airs blowing around you, and
all your earth-smells clinging to you, but with a fine inward grace, so
strong, so sweet, so salubrious that it meets and masters all things,
blending every faintest or foulest odor of earthliness into the
grateful incense of a pure and lofty life.

Thus I read and mused in the soft summer fog, and the first I knew the
cars had stopped, I was standing on the platform, and Coventry and his
knight were--where? Wandering up and down somewhere among the
Berkshire hills. At some junction of roads, I suppose, I left them on
the cushion, for I have never beheld them since. Tell me, O ye
daughters of Berkshire! have you seen them,--a princely pair, sore
weary in your mountain-land, but regal still, through all their
travel-stain? I pray you, entreat them hospitably, for their mission
is "not of an age, but for all time."

PART II.

The descent from Patmore and poetry to New York is somewhat abrupt, not
to say precipitous, but we made it in safety; and so shall you, if you
will be agile.

New York is a pleasant little Dutch city, on a dot of island a few
miles southwest of Massachusetts. For a city entirely unobtrusive and
unpretending, it has really great attractions and solid merit; but the
superior importance of other places will not permit me to tarry long
wi