A Day in the Country.
IS name was Brown-Smith—he wrote it with a hyphen, and was hurt when people in familiar converse neglected to mark that fact—J. Brown-Smith. He was a poet, not a very fine one perhaps, but certainly not a very bad one. Years of practice had given him the literary trick, which goes for more than an uninstructed person would be apt to fancy, and he had a good heart and an unaffected love for all things beautiful and gracious. He wore a slouched hat and a long paletot, and sported a big russet beard and moustache, so that he looked rather like a brigand out of business, until his mild and beneficent eye bewrayed him. He was generally to be seen with the amber stem of a big meerschaum between his lips, and he talked a good deal in a harmless way about Bohemia. When he had been younger Bohemia had had an actual existence, but Brown-Smith lived in the lights and shadows of a day which had for some time departed, and was faithful to traditions which were scorned by the majority of his compeers.
"He hailed a hansom."
He had been in love, probably more than once in his time, but once at least. He had been already middle-aged when he had made his final choice, and now his temples were grizzled and he was bald on top, and there were lines of silver in the russet beard. The lady on whom he had be owed his affections had been but half his age, and had elected to marry a much younger man. Brown-Smith proposed to her when she had been a month engaged, and, learning the truth, went away sorrowful, and made his verses his wife, and the cronies of his club his family circle.
It befell upon an autumn morning that the breath of the dying year put him in mind of the country as he sat in his London lodgings, and awoke a craving in his mind for the sight of yellowing trees and misty pastures. Everybody he knew lived in town, and of late years, though he wrote a great deal about rural things, he had hardly seen the country at all. He hated constitutional walks and journeys without a purpose, and for awhile he could think of nowhere to go to. But on a sudden he bethought him of his old sweetheart, who was settled fifteen or sixteen miles away from London, and he fancied that it would not be an unpleasant thing to go down and look at her abiding-place. He had no idea of calling upon her, or of intruding himself in any way. His clumsy and futile courtship was now a matter of ancient history, and the probabilities were that he was long ago forgotten. He had a notion that in one way the theme might be fruitful. His muse of late had been a little sterile, and perhaps the journey might prove to have a set of verses in it. That is the way of poets, and, indeed, of men of letters in general. Any little flower of emotion we may grow goes to market, and is more or less consciously nurtured and watered to that end. When we have been long at the business we are market gardeners pure and simple, and grow rose, lily, and forget-me-not side by side with mandragora and the deadly hellebore, culling them and arranging them into bouquets to suit the fashion or
