There is magic in the words. They set a man thinking of his past, his bills, and things which he has done and wishes he had left undone. All at once it seems as if it were going to rain. The wind turns colder. The cushions of the canoe change to brickbats. Somebody nearly runs into me, and I drop my pipe, and remember I never posted that letter after all. I look at my watch, and, of course, it’s stopped. Mainspring broken, probably. The way that woman talked was enough to destroy the works of a steam-engine. And I have a twinge in my side which I am quite sure is heart disease. I had not hoped for Westminster Abbey quite so soon. “Deeply lamented. No flowers, by request.” And all this is due to the fearful words which that woman spoke, or it may be merely reaction. If one gets too high, or too low, one pays for it afterwards; and the commonplace praises of _aurea mediocritas_ are properly founded. The quietist never pays, because he incurs no debts. All the rest pay, and there is no dun like a Natural Law. It may agree to renew for a short time, on the consideration of that small glass of brandy, perhaps, or a week’s rest; but one has to pay for the accommodation, and the debt must be discharged in the end. Do you remember that quaint old story told by Kapnides in his third book of Entertainments? Well, Kapnides is not enough read at Oxford or Cambridge. I doubt if he is read at all. He is a little artificial, perhaps, but he has his points. It is the story of a Greek boy. No; it is not the story of the Spartan boy who lied about a fox, and subsequently died of the lies which were told about himself. It is the story of an Athenian boy, who in the month of June sat quite alone in a thin tent by night. And the tent was pitched under the shadow of the long wall, and the night was hot and stifling. He sat alone, for dead men are no company. His father and his eldest brother were in the tent with him; but he was alone. He had not been afraid to tend them in their sickness, for he had himself recovered from the pestilence; but it had taken away from him his beauty and his memory. He had been very beautiful, and his mind had been very full of fair memories. All were gone now. He kept only the few bare facts which his dying father had told him, that his mother had died long before; that they had lived in the country and had been ordered into the city; that Pericles had made a remarkably fine speech in the preceding year; and that his only surviving relation was his twin-brother, who had gone away into Eubœa with the sheep. On these few poor facts, and on the two dead manly bodies before him, he pondered as he sat. And the night grew late, and yet he could hear outside the tent people passing busily, and quarrels, and long horrible cries.