—­He had a good groatsworth of wit, Stephen said, and no truant memory.  He carried a memory in his wallet as he trudged to Romeville whistling the girl I left behind me.  If the earthquake did not time it we should know where to place poor Wat, sitting in his form, the cry of hounds, the studded bridle and her blue windows.  That memory, Venus and Adonis, lay in the bedchamber of every light-of-love in London.  Is Katharine the shrew illfavoured?  Hortensio calls her young and beautiful.  Do you think the writer of Antony and Cleopatra, a passionate pilgrim, had his eyes in the back of his head that he chose the ugliest doxy in all Warwickshire to lie withal?  Good:  he left her and gained the world of men.  But his boywomen are the women of a boy.  Their life, thought, speech are lent them by males.  He chose badly?  He was chosen, it seems to me.  If others have their will Ann hath a way.  By cock, she was to blame.  She put the comether on him, sweet and twentysix.  The greyeyed goddess who bends over the boy Adonis, stooping to conquer, as prologue to the swelling act, is a boldfaced Stratford wench who tumbles in a cornfield a lover younger than herself.

And my turn?  When?

Come!

—­Ryefield, Mr Best said brightly, gladly, raising his new book, gladly, brightly.

He murmured then with blond delight for all: 

    Between the acres of the rye
    these pretty COUNTRYFOLK would lie.

Paris:  the wellpleased pleaser.

A tall figure in bearded homespun rose from shadow and unveiled its cooperative watch.

—­I am afraid I am due at the homestead.

Whither away?  Exploitable ground.

—­Are you going?  John Eglinton’s active eyebrows asked.  Shall we see you at Moore’s tonight?  Piper is coming.

—­Piper!  Mr Best piped.  Is Piper back?

Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper.

—­I don’t know if I can.  Thursday.  We have our meeting.  If I can get away in time.

Yogibogeybox in Dawson chambers.  Isis unveiled. Their Pali book we tried to pawn.  Crosslegged under an umbrel umbershoot he thrones an Aztec logos, functioning on astral levels, their oversoul, mahamahatma.  The faithful hermetists await the light, ripe for chelaship, ringroundabout him.  Louis H. Victory.  T. Caulfield Irwin.  Lotus ladies tend them i’the eyes, their pineal glands aglow.  Filled with his god, he thrones, Buddh under plantain.  Gulfer of souls, engulfer.  Hesouls, shesouls, shoals of souls.  Engulfed with wailing creecries, whirled, whirling, they bewail.

    In quintessential triviality
    for years in this FLESHCASE A SHESOUL dwelt.

—­They say we are to have a literary surprise, the quaker librarian said, friendly and earnest.  Mr Russell, rumour has it, is gathering together a sheaf of our younger poets’ verses.  We are all looking forward anxiously.