This hour, when all things which are not at rest
Are cheerful; while this multitude of flies
Is filling all the air with melody;
Why should a tear be in an old man's eye?'

O Wilks, but this beats cock-fighting; 'Why should a tear be in an old
man's eye?' Sorra a bit do I know, barring it's the multitude of flies.
O Wordy, Wordy, bard of Rydal Mount, it's sick with laughing you'll be
making me. All things not at rest are cheerful. Dad, if he means the
flies, they're cheerful enough, but if it's my dear friend, Farquhar
Wilkinson, it's a mistake the old gentleman is making. See, this is more
like it, at the very beginning of 'The Excursion':--

Nor could my weak arm disperse
The host of insects gathering round my face,
And ever with me as I paced along.

That's you, Wilks, you to a dot. What a grand thing poetic instinct is,
that looks away seventy years into the future and across the Atlantic
Ocean, to find a humble admirer in the wilds of Canada, and tell how he
looked among the flies. 'Why should a tear be in an old man's eye?' O,
holy Moses, that's the finest line I've sighted in a dog's age. Cheer
up, old man, and wipe that tear away, for I see the clouds have rolled
by, Jenny."

"Man, clod, profaner of the shrine of poesy, cease your ignorant
cackle," cried the irate dominie. Silently they bathed faces and hands
in the brook, donned their knapsacks, and took to the road once more.

The clouds had not all passed by as the pedestrians found to their cost,
for, where there are clouds over the bush in July, there also are
mosquitoes. Physically as well as psychically, Wilkinson was
thin-skinned, and afforded a ready and appetizing feast to the
blood-suckers. His companion still smoked his pipe in defence, but for a
long time in silence. "The multitude of flies" made him gurgle
occasionally, as he gazed upon the schoolmaster, whose blue and yellow
silk handkerchief was spread over the back of his head and tied under
his chin. To quote Wordsworth then would have been like putting a match
to a powder magazine. The flies were worst on the margin of a pond
formed by the extension of a sluggish black stream. "Go on, Wilks, my
boy, out of the pests, while I add some water plants to my collection;"
but this, Wilkinson's chivalrous notions of friendship would not allow
him to do. He broke off a leafy branch from a young maple, and slashed
it about him, while the botanist ran alon