[Illustration:  “Ta-ra-ra-Boom!”]

In the morning, I had some idea that the sky was a great sapphire, and that I was inside it, and that the fields were some sort of velvet or wool-work, going round and round with the sun rioting over them, whatever that may mean, till my head ached.  I can’t quite understand all this now, but it seemed a very picturesque, impressionist description when I wrote it.  Then I went for a walk down Main Street.  I think it is about 400 miles long, for I got nowhere near the end, but this was perhaps owing to my uncertainty as to which side was the pleasanter to walk on.  At last I gave it up, and sat down on the side-walk.  Now, the wisdom of Vermont, not being at all times equal to grasping all the problems of everybody else’s life with delicacy, sometimes makes pathetic mistakes, and it did so in my ease.  I explained to the policeman that I had been sitting up half the night on a wild horse in New Zealand, and had only just come over for the day, but it was all in vain.

The cell at Vermont was horribly uncomfortable.  I dreamt that I was trying to boil snow in a thimble, to make maple syrup, and to swim on my head in deep water, with a life-belt tied to my ankles.  There was another man there, and in the early morning he told me about Mastodons and Plesiosauri in a wood near the town, and how he caught them by the tails and photographed them; and also that Ringandknock, a mountain near, was mentioned by EMERSON in a verse, which I remembered, because he made “co-eval” rhyme with “extended.”  Only a truly great Philosopher could have done that.

It was all new and delightful; and it must have been true, because my informant was a quiet, slow-spoken man of the West, who refrained from laughing at me.  I have met very few people who could do that.  Next day all the idleness and trifling were at an end, and my friends conveyed me back to New York.

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EPITAPH ON A DYER.

  This Dyer with a dire liver tried
  To earn a living dyeing, and he died.

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THE CONFESSIONS OF A DUFFER.

NO.  VIII.—­THE DUFFER AS A HOST.

Of course I don’t try to give dinners at home.  The difficulties and anxieties are too enormous.  First there is inviting the people.  I like to have none but very clever men and very pretty women, but nobody’s acquaintance is limited to those rare beings, and, if I did invite them, they would all have previous engagements:  I do not blame them.  But suppose that two or three of the wits and beauties accept, that is worse than ever, because the rest are a Q.C. (who talks about his cases) and his wife, who talks about her children.  An old school-fellow, who has no conversation that does not begin, “I say, do you remember old JACK WILLIAMS.”  This does not entertain the beauty, who sits next him.