It is not, therefore, surprising that at one time he had gorgeous earthly dreams. But with an oddity of which nothing will cure him, he is much troubled by this pomp which he desires not to see save in celestial things. And now he allows sleep nightly but a brief victory over him.
A very pretty companion for Jones was Owen, the innkeeper, a robust man of words, who called himself the preacher's best customer, because he needed so much of his charity.
He was a perfect Celt, according to the English superstition. For never was there such a failure who was also such a swaggerer as he. He had fair hair, blue eyes, and a small, elegant beard, which
Business could not make dull, nor passion wild.
He was bullied by a contemptuous wife; he was ridiculed by all his regular customers, rallied by the rest. But the beard was always neat and fair, a symbol of his unconquerable mind. No matter how he was trodden down, he smelt sweet. He had humour, for he could laugh at himself, though he lacked the common gift of being able to laugh at others, and had no repartee. The more lusty the Saturday night thrusts at him, the more vivid was his reply, and it was commonly a piece of egoism and self-exposure, which, if not so long and so wonderfully draped, would have called for a repetition of the very blow he was parrying. Once when he had been sold up and had little more than a wife and a walking-stick in the world, and his position attracted some trifling compliments and condolences from his old harriers, he stood up, and, wielding his stick and motioning to his wife to be silent, gave an inventory of the things he had lost with such decoration as would have abashed an auctioneer. There is a Welsh proverb, "A Welshman keeps nothing until he has lost it"; and the now invisible and inaccessible furniture called up such a tumult of admiration that he cared not that it was no longer his. How rich he looked! As the words flowed on and it was time for his hearers to be going, it was clear that if he had forgotten anything, he had invented more; but though he ended in no better company than that of his wife, who picked something from his coat and held it between the tips of two fingers for his humiliation, he but wiped his forehead and cursed because he had forgotten the ancient horse-trappings of brass that used to hang over the mantelpiece at the —— Arms.