there was difference of opinion whether there should be toast in it;
some were for toast, because that was the old-fashioned way, and
others were against it, "because it does not taste good" in cider.
Herbert said there, was very little respect left for our forefathers.

More wood was put on, and the flame danced in a hundred fantastic
shapes. The snow had ceased to fall, and the moonlight lay in
silvery patches among the trees in the ravine. The conversation
became worldly.




THIRD STUDY


I

Herbert said, as we sat by the fire one night, that he wished he had
turned his attention to writing poetry like Tennyson's.

The remark was not whimsical, but satirical. Tennyson is a man of
talent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked with
cleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon
like good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of
"pay-dirt;" one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able man
can make himself almost anything that he will. It is melancholy to
think how many epic poets have been lost in the tea-trade, how many
dramatists (though the age of the drama has passed) have wasted their
genius in great mercantile and mechanical enterprises. I know a man