"You begin with five drops," he said, solemnly. "Or three, if you like, and work up to ten. It soon gets easy to take. You'll soon pick up. But I doubt if you'll get a keg of the crude oil in this country; you'll have to send over for it. I _haate_ to hear anybody cough"--and so we parted. He was so much in earnest, that if I had egged him on, I verily believe he would have got the keg for me himself. It seemed laughable at the time; but I don't laugh now. I almost think that good-natured American was right; he certainly meant well. Crude petroleum! Could anything be more nauseous? But probably it acts as a kind of cod-liver oil. Sometimes I wish I had tried it. Like him, I hate to hear anybody cough! Better take a ten-gallon keg of petroleum. Alere's crude petroleum was the Goliath ale, and he had hardly begun to approach the first hoop, when, as I tell you, he was heard to hum old German songs; it was the volatile principle. Songs about the Pope and the Sultan But yet he's not a happy man, He must obey the Alcoran, He dares not touch one drop of wine, I'm glad the Sultan's lot's not mine. Songs about the rat that dwelt in the cellar, and fed on butter till he raised a paunch that would have done credit to Luther; songs about a King in Thule and the cup his mistress gave him, a beautiful old song that, none like it-- He saw it fall, he watched it fill, And sink deep, deep into the main; Then sorrow o'er his eyelids fell, He never drank a drop again. Or his thought slipped back to his school-days, and beating the seat in the summer-house with his hand for time, Alere ran on:-- Horum scorum suntivorum, Harum scarum divo, Tag-rag, merry derry, perriwig, and a hatband, Hic hoc horum genitivo-- To be said in one breath. Oh, my Ella--my blue bella, A secula seculorum, If I have luck, sir, she's my uxor, O dies Benedictorum! Or something about: Sweet cowslips grace, the nominative case, And She's of the feminine gender. Days of Valpy the Vulture, eating the schoolboy's heart out, Eton Latin grammar, accidence--do _not_ pause, traveller, if you see _his_ tomb! "Play to me," said Amaryllis, and the Fleet-Street man put away his pipe, and took up his flute; he breathed soft and low--an excellent thing in a musician--delicious airs of Mozart chiefly. The summer unfolded itself at their knees, the high buttercups of the meadow came to the very door, the apple-bloom poured itself out before them; music all of it, music in colour, in light, in flowers, in song of happy birds. The soothing flute strung together the flow of their thoughts, they were very silent, Amaryllis and Amadis Iden--almost hand in hand--listening to his cunning lips. He ceased, and they were still silent, listening to their own hearts.