we, in that
he was alleged to have written a real book. 'Heaps o' books,' Martha, my
informant, said; but I knew the exact rate of discount applicable to
Martha's statements.

We passed eventually through a dark hall into a room which struck me at
once as the ideal I had dreamed but failed to find. None of your
feminine fripperies here! None of your chair-backs and tidies! This man,
it was seen, groaned under no aunts. Stout volumes in calf and vellum
lined three sides; books sprawled or hunched themselves on chairs and
tables; books diffused the pleasant odour of printers' ink and bindings;
topping all, a faint aroma of tobacco cheered and heartened exceedingly,
as under foreign skies the flap and rustle over the wayfarer's head of
the Union Jack--the old flag of emancipation! And in one corner,
book-piled like the rest of the furniture, stood a piano.

This I hailed with a squeal of delight. 'Want to strum?' inquired my
friend, as if it was the most natural wish in the world--his eyes were
already straying towards another corner, where bits of writing-table
peeped out from under a sort of Alpine system of book and foolscap.

'O but may I?' I asked in doubt. 'At home I'm not allowed to--only
beastly exercises!'

'Well, you can strum here, at all events,' he replied; and murmuring
absently, '_Age, dic Latinum, barbite, carmen_,' he made his way,
mechanically guided as it seemed, to the irresistible writing-table. In
ten seconds he was out of sight and call. A great book open on his knee,
another propped up in front, a score or so disposed within easy reach,
he read and jotted with an absorption almost passionate. I might have
been in Boeotia, for any consciousness he had of me. So with a light
heart I turned to and strummed.

Those who painfully and with bleeding feet have scaled the crags of
mastery over musical instruments have yet their loss in this: that the
wild joy of strumming has become a vanished sense. Their happiness
comes from the concord and the relative value of the notes they handle:
the pure, absolute quality and nature of each note in itself are only
appreciated by the strummer. For some notes have all the sea in them,
and some cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance and a smell of
greenery; in some fauns dance to the merry reed, and even the grave
centaurs peep out from their caves. Some bring moonlight, and some the
deep crimson of a rose's heart; some are blue, some red, while others
will