But now even too much range was left, for that of the affectionate and poetic maiden, inasmuch as her mother lay asleep for hours with this fine communication to support her heart. There was nothing for Nicie to do, except to go to sleep patiently on her own account, and that she did in her own white bed, and saw a fair vision through tears of joy.
Behold, she was standing at the door, the sacred portal of Walderscourt, gazing at trees that were full of singing birds, with her milk-white pony cropping clover honey-sweet, and _Pixie_ teetotuming after his own tail. All the air was blossoming with dance of butterflies, and all the earth was laughing at the flatteries of the sun. And behold a very tall form arose, from beyond the weeping willow, leading a form yet taller, and looking back for fear of losing it. Then a loud voice shouted, and it was brother Tom's--"Here he is at last! No mistake about it. I have found the Governor--hurrah, hurrah!" The maiden sprang up with a bounding heart, to embrace her darling father. But alas, there was nothing, except the cold moon, and a pure virgin bosom that glistened with tears.
When Tom's letter came to the reading at last, there was plenty of blots in it, and brown sand, but not a blessed bit of poetry. The youth had been at Eton, and exhausted there all the tendency of his mind towards metre. Even now people, who ought to know better, ask why poetry will not go down with the tall, and imaginative, and romantic public. It must be from the absence of the spark divine among them. Nay rather because ere they could spell, their flint was fixed for life, with the "fire" used up by Classic hammer.
Of these things the present Sir Thomas Rodrigo Waldron had neither thought nor heed. For him it was enough to be released; and the less he saw of book and pen, for the rest of his natural life, the better for the book, the pen, and him. So that on the whole he deserved much credit, and obtained even more (from his mother) as the author of the following fine piece of correspondence. Though all the best bits were adapted from a book, entitled "The young man's polite letter-writer, to his parents, sisters, sweethearts, friends, and the Minister of his native parish, etc., etc.--also when applying for increase of wages."