_Milverton_. There was a gathering together of creatures hurtful and terrible to man, to name their king. Blight, mildew, darkness, mighty waves, fierce winds, Will-o’-the-wisps, and shadows of grim objects, told fearfully their doings and preferred their claims, none prevailing. But when evening came on, a thin mist curled up, derisively, amidst the assemblage, and said, “I gather round a man going to his own home over paths made by his daily footsteps; and he becomes at once helpless and tame as a child. The lights meant to assist him, then betray. You find him wandering, or need the aid of other Terrors to subdue him. I am, alone, confusion to him.” And all the assemblage bowed before the mist, and made it king, and set it on the brow of many a mountain, where, when it is not doing evil, it may be often seen to this day. _Dunsford_. Well, I like that fable: only I am not quite clear about the meaning. _Ellesmere_. You had no doubt about mine. _Dunsford_. Is the mist calumny, Milverton? _Ellesmere_. No, prejudice, I am sure. _Dunsford_. Familiarity with the things around us, obscuring knowledge? _Milverton_. I would rather not explain. Each of you make your own fable of it. _Dunsford_. Well, if ever I make a fable, it shall be one of the old-fashioned sort, with animals for the speakers, and a good easy moral. _Ellesmere_. Not a thing requiring the notes of seven German metaphysicians. I must go and talk a little to my friends the trees, and see if I can get any explanation from them. It is turning out a beautiful day after all, notwithstanding my praise of its solidity. CHAPTER VII. WE met as usual at our old spot on the lawn for our next reading. I forget what took place before reading, except that Ellesmere was very jocose about our reading “Fiction” in-doors, and the following “November Essay,” as he called it, “under a jovial sun, and with the power of getting up and walking away from each other to any extent.” ON THE ART OF LIVING WITH OTHERS. The “Iliad” for war; the “Odyssey” for wandering; but where is the great domestic epic? Yet it is but commonplace to say, that passions may rage round a tea-table, which would not have misbecome men dashing at one another in war-chariots; and evolutions of patience and temper are performed at the fireside, worthy to be compared with the Retreat of the Ten Thousand. Men have worshipped some fantastic being for living alone in a wilderness; but social martyrdoms place no saints upon the calendar.