"Oh, the waiting in the watches of the night! In the darkness, desolation, and contrition and affright; The awful hush that holds us shut away from all delight; The ever-weary memory that ever weary goes, Recounting ever over every aching loss it knows, The ever-weary eyelids gasping ever for repose-- In the dreary, weary watches of the night!"
"The flower that smiles to-day To-morrow dies; All that we wish to stay Tempts, and then flies. What is this world's delight? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright."
One day, shortly after the ragman's call, old Mr. Carroll came to have a talk with Mr. Deans. He did this often. It was not that he had any particular liking for Henry Deans or his wife, but the forced inaction of the former left him unoccupied all day long, and Mr. Carroll dearly liked "to have his talk out" when once he commenced. As a prelude to the talk proper, they discussed for an hour or so the affairs of the village, the crops of their neighbors, the scarcity of pasture and the great number of tramps. Into this part of the conversation Mrs. Deans entered heartily. After these matters were canvassed thoroughly, the men settled themselves more easily in their chairs, and took up the more serious business of the hour.
Now there were only two subjects that Mr. Carroll thoroughly enjoyed talking about--politics and war; the former he regarded as the "root of all evil," the latter as the only means of reform. Mr. Deans only cared to discuss religion and crops.
Each talked in his own strain about his own hobby, without regard to what his companion was saying. While one was speaking the other waited, absent-eyed, for the first pause for breath, when he promptly took up his parable where he had left off when forced to pause for breath himself. The one never heard what the other said, each being too much occupied in thinking what he should say next to bother about listening to any one else. They derived much of the same mutual benefit and amusement from these conversations as two dogs do when they race madly up and down opposite sides of a fence, barking at each other. Many learned arguments, held in high places, are conducted upon these same lines.
The sunny afternoon wore along. Mrs. Deans had yawned several times, yawned audibly and significantly; but her husband, in full cry after the errors of the Catholics and the bigotry of the Church of England, disregarded the danger signal, and went on his conversational way rejoicing. Mr. Carroll, winding his way through the intricacies of the bribery and corruption and scandals of the last election, was oblivious of her yawns, their meaning, and even--ungallant as it may seem--of her presence.