The Truth About Tristrem Varick

poet has held that the most pleasurable thing imaginable is to awake on a summer morning with the consciousness of being in love. Even in winter the sensation ought not to be

the sorceries of a sempiternal spring. The winds, articulate with song, choired to the skies ululations and messages of praise. Each vista held a promise. The horizon was a prayer fulfilled. He sa

and of the accompanying necessity of making those duties known to those to whom he was related. Then, after a breakfast of sliced oranges and coffee, he rang for the serv

istrem asked; "what w

, and he didn't say nothing; he was feeding the bird. But I could tell, sir; wh

idn't loo

e didn't tu

wonder, when I tell him, whether he will look at me." And the me

profusion of roses-the room itself was vast and chill. One wall was lined, the entire length, with well-filled book-shelves. In a corner was a square pile of volumes, bound in pale sheep, which a lawyer would have recognized as belonging to the pleasant literature of his p

ant to say." He was looking at his father, but his father was not looking at him. "It is this," he continued, irri

Varick fluttered the pape

hands were torturing it at will. The mouth, cheeks, and eyelids quivered and twitched, and then abruptly Mr. Varick raised the bro

istrem exclaimed,

ioned him back. "It is nothing," he an

ged to Mis

aughte

. He was minister somewhere-to

h the wires. The bird ruffled its feathers, cocked its head, and edged gingerly along the perch, reproving the intrusive finger with the sco

do," he said, "woul

Tristrem an

o be marri

re Novemb

t, of course, you know your own business best. If I remember rightly,

speak of,

ny. In such matters, it is usual for the young lady to be coy, but it is for the man to be pressing and resolute. I only regret that her father could not know of it. In regard to money, your allowance will have to be increased-well, I will attend to that. There is nothing else, is there? Oh, do me the favor not to om

of himself-"Miss Raritan, I mean," he continued aloud, "you would think me fortunate as a king's cousin." He paused. "I am sure," he reflected, "I don't know what I am talking about

things that you get so accustomed to that it is accepted, like baldness, as a matter of course, as a thing which had to be and could not be otherwise. To his grandfather, who was at once the most irascible and gentlest of men, and whom he had loved instinctively, from the first, with the unreasoning faith that children have-to him

her something that was not dislike-rather the contented look of one

gh apologizing for the lameness of the conclusion. And thereupon he left the

enthusiasm. He laughed sagaciously at Tristrem's glowing descriptions of the bride that was to be, and was for g

re. The letters were old-fashioned indeed. Some of the sentences were enlivened with the eccentricities of orthography which were in vogue in the days of the Spectator. The handwriting was infam

my love. I gave it to your mother on her wedding day, and now it should go to her." From a little red case he took a diamond brooch, set in silver, which

lar tenor, again and again, but, somehow, he never heard them too often. There was nothing wearisome to him in such chronicles; and as he sat listening, and now and then prompting with some forgotten detail

." And with that he displayed a ruby, unset, that was like a clot of blood. "I shall have it put in a ring," he explained, "

gth, and then between two fingers, to the light, that he might the better

ou would not give he

hat if

is not

th the bravery that comes of

ed, "that's what it is. And if Viola

nt me an opal I would swear so hard that if the dev

e old gentleman, amused in spite of himself at the

the rank and appanages of the married state. Tristrem dined with his grandfather that evening, and when Mr

o Central Park and back again. "Divinities of Pindar," he kept exclaiming-

d, as all true lovers do, on air and