As he spoke, he fixed his eyes on the traveler, and bowed with much ceremony and condescension.  And the traveler thought what a fine thing it would be to become a Professor, and to be able to wear a great many bits of colored ribbon, and to be immensely learned, and know all the facts of the universe.  And, after all, what was a little singing bird, and a fairy Princess, in whose very existence the scientific gentlemen did not in the least believe, and who was, perhaps, really the shadow of a dream?  So he bowed in return, and said he was greatly honored; and Professor Effaress took the bird and twisted its neck gravely, and put the little corpse into his pocket.  And so the divine and beautiful song of the fairy minstrel was quenched, and instead of it I suppose the traveler got a great deal of learning and many fine decorations on his coat.

But the spirit of the slain bird fled away from that inhospitable city, and went back to the Princess and told her what had befallen.

IV.

As for the poet, he went on his way alone into the open country, and saw the peasants in the fields, reaping and gleaning and gathering fruit and corn, for it was harvest time.  And he passed through many hamlets and villages, and sometimes he rested a night or two at an inn; and on Sundays he heard the parish parson say prayers and preach in some quaint little Norman or Saxon church.

And at last he came to a brand-new town, where all the houses were Early English, and all the people dressed like ancient Greeks, and all the manners Renaissance, or, perhaps, Gothic.  The poet thought they were Gothic, and probably he was right.

In this town the talk was mostly about Art, and many fine things were said in regard to “sweetness and light.”  Everybody claimed to be an artist of some kind, whether painter, musician, novelist, dramatist, verse-maker, reciter, singer, or what not.  But although they seemed so greatly devoted to the Graces and the Muses, it was but the images of the Parnassian Gods that they worshipped.  For in the purlieus of this fine town, horrible cruelties and abuses were committed, yet none of the so-called poets lifted a cry of reform.  Every morning, early, before daybreak, there came through the streets long and sad processions of meek-eyed oxen and bleating lambs, harried by brutal drovers, with shouts and blows,—­terrible processions of innocent creatures going to die under the poleaxe and the knife in order to provide the “pleasures of the table” for dainty votaries of “sweetness and light.”  Before the fair faint dawn made rosy the eastern sky over the houses, you might have heard on every side the heavy thud of the poleaxe striking down the patient heifer on her knees,—­the heifer whose eyes are like the eyes of Here, say the old Greek song-books, that were read and quoted all day in this town of Culture and of Art.