" (Larcher
remembered the talk of an inconstant woman.) "No, I have never been
anything like happy. My father was a cold man who chilled all around
him. He died when I was a boy, and left my mother and me to poverty. My
mother loved me well enough; she taught me music, encouraged my
studies, and persuaded a distant relation to send me to the College of
Medicine and Surgery; but her life was darkened by grief, and the
darkness fell over me, too. When she died, my relation dropped me, and
I undertook to make a living in New York. There was first the struggle
for existence, then the sickening affair of that play; afterward,
misfortune enough to fill a dozen biographies, the fatal reputation of
ill luck, the brief dream of consolation in the love of woman, the
awakening,--and the rest of it."
He sighed wearily and turned, as if for relief from a bitter theme, to
the book in his hand. He read aloud, from the sonnet out of which they
had already been quoting:
'Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising--
Haply I think on thee; and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love--'
He broke off, and closed the book. "'For thy sweet love,'" he repeated.
"You see even this unhappy poet had his solace. I used to read those
lines and flatter myself they expressed my situation. There was a silly
song, too, that she pretended to like. You know it, of course,--a little
poem of Frank L.
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