Mr. Homer waved the subject to its conclusion, and hurried on: "You have also known Pindar from childhood, and have always felt--may I not say kindly, toward the wayward but high-souled lad?"
"Oh, yes!" murmured Miss Bethia, softly, with another gentle sigh.
"This being so," Mr. Homer went on, "I may say to you without hesitation that this whole matter of the celebration is a--is a nightmare to me! I have led a secluded life, Bethia, as befits a votary of the Muse. Blest with a limited but sufficient number of congenial friends, principally ladies,--though William Jaquith and Thomas Candy have been as sons to me of late, as sons,--I have kept, Miss Bethia, the noiseless tenor of my way,--the expression is Gray's, as you are well aware, and is commonly misquoted, _even_ tenor being the customary, though wholly incorrect version;--a--where was I? Oh, yes, as I was about to say, I have kept the noiseless tenor of my way, in peace and pleasantness, hitherto.
"'For indeed,' as the lamented Keats observes in an early poem which is too little known:
"'For indeed, 'tis a sweet and peculiar pleasure, (And blissful is he who such happiness finds,) To possess but a span of the hour of leisure In elegant, pure, and aerial minds.'
That peculiar pleasure, Miss Bethia, has been mine up to the present time. My brother Pindar's course has been far different. At an early age, as you are aware, he sought the maddening throng; the--a--busy hum; the--a--in short, the roaring mart. I understand that much of his time has been devoted to music, and the remainder to histrionic art. He is permanently employed, as I understand, at a--a metropolitan place of amusement, where he occasionally takes part in Shakespearian representations (he has played the Ghost in 'Hamlet,' he tells me), and at other times performs upon the--in short, the kettledrums. You will readily perceive, my dear friend, that such a life conduces to the development of ideas which are discrepant;--a--divergent from,--a--devoid of commensurability with, the _genius loci_, the spirit which hovers, or has hitherto hovered, over Elm--I would say Quahaug. Miss Bethia, we are not a dramatic community. With the exception of Mrs. Jarley's Wax Works, some thirty years ago, and an Old Folks' Concert at a somewhat later period, I am unable to recall any occurrence of a--of a histrionic nature in our--shall I say midst? And now,--Miss Bethia, I love my brother tenderly, and am anxious, deeply anxious, to respond to the feeling, the--a--propendency, the--kindling of affection's torch, which has led him to seek his early home. I also respect,--a--revere,--a--entertain the loftiest sentiments in regard to the Muse; but when I am asked to appear in public, clad in draperies which--in short, of domestic origin,"--he waved further detail delicately away,--"and crowned with bays, I--Miss Bethia, I assure you my spirit faints within me. Nor can I feel that the proposed demonstration would in any way have commended itself to my cousin Marcia. It is borne in upon me--strenuously, I may say--that, if my cousin Marcia were present at this time in the--a--fleshly tabernacle, she would receive this whole matter in a spirit of--levity; of--a--derision; of--a--contumely. Am I wrong in this supposition, Miss Bethia?"