Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1913
WOMEN THREE HEAVY HUSBANDS A GLASS OF BEER ONE AND ONE THREE WOMEN WHO WEPT THE TRIANGLE THE DAISIES THREE ANGRY PEOPLE THE THREEPENNY PIECE BRIGID THREE YOUNG WIVES THE HORSES MISTRESS QUIET EYES THREE LOVERS WHO LOST THE BLIND MAN SWEET-APPLE THREE HAPPY PLACES THE MOON THERE IS A TAVERN IN THE TOWN
Listen! If but women were Half as kind as they are fair There would be an end to all Miseries that do appal.
Cloud and wind would fly together In a dance of sunny weather, And the happy trees would throw Gifts to travellers below.
Then the lion, meek and mild, With the lamb would, side by side, Couch him friendly, and would be Innocent of enmity.
Then the Frozen Pole would go, Shaking off his fields of snow, To a kinder clime and dance Warmly with the girls of France.
These; if women only were Half as kind as they are fair.
He had a high nose. He looked at one over the collar, so to speak. His regard was very assured, and his speech was that short bundle of monosyllables which the subaltern throws at the orderly. He had never been questioned, and, the precedent being absent, he had never questioned himself. Why should he? We live by question and answer, but we do not know the reply to anything until a puzzled comrade bothers us and initiates that divine curiosity which both humbles and uplifts us.
He wanted all things for himself. What he owned he wished to own completely. He would give anything away with the largest generosity, but he would share with no one--
"Whatever is mine," said he, "must be entirely mine. If it is alive I claim its duty to the last respiration of its breath, and if it is dead I cannot permit a mortgage on it. Have you a claim on anything belonging to me? then you may have it entirely, I must have all of it or none."
He was a stockbroker, and, by the methods peculiar to that mysterious profession, he had captured a sufficiency of money to enable him to regard the future with calmness and his fellow-creatures with condescension--perhaps the happiest state to which a certain humanity can attain.
So far matters were in order. There remained nothing to round his life into the complete, harmonious circle except a wife; but as a stated income has the choice of a large supply, he shortly discovered a lady whose qualifications were such as would ornament any, however exalted, position--She was sound in wind and limb. She spoke grammar with the utmost precision, and she could play the piano with such skill that it was difficult to explain why she played it badly.
