I quote again, I believe,
but from whom I am innocent. If I ever had a grief, I should have
along with it the decency to keep it to myself."
"I don't doubt you would, George," said his cousin, who seemed more
playfully inclined than usual. "But," she added, with a smile,
"would your silence be voluntary, or enforced?"
"What!" returned Bascombe, "you think I could not plain my woes to
the moon? Why not I as well as another? I could roar you as 'twere
any nightingale."
"You have had your sorrows, then, George?"
"Never anything worse yet than a tailor's bill, Helen, and I hope
you won't provide me with any. I am not in love with decay. I
remember a fellow at Trinity, the merriest of all our set at a
wine-party, who, alone with his ink-pot, was for ever enacting the
part of the unheeded poet, complaining of the hard hearts and
tuneless ears of his generation. I went into his room once, and
found him with the tears running down his face, a pot of stout half
empty on the table, and his den all but opaque with tobacco-smoke,
reciting, with sobs--I had repeated the lines so often before they
ceased to amuse me, that I can never forget them--
'Heard'st thou a quiver and clang?
In thy sleep did it make thee start?
'Twas a chord in twain that sprang--
But the lyre-shell was my heart.
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