The Argosy — page 238: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Letters from Majorca. 225 Cockcrowing and caterwauling mingle their sweet sounds. The old watchman has passed by many a time since I took up my pen. All the town is in silence, and all the stars are travelling homewards. To-morrow—or rather to-day—we leave this beautiful old place, perhaps for ever. I shall do so with infinite regret. The lordly barouche is to be here at twelve o’clock to bear us away—like the Swan in Lohengrin, but the car is not quite so gilded, nor are the steeds so poetical. But I have a presentiment that something will happen : either it will break down on the road; or it will never come at all; or we shall be laid up with stiff joints and rheumatic fever, the result of Mallorcan mists on the Puig Major. But whatever it may be, this must form the burden of my next letter—if I survive to write you another. For the present the pen falls from the hand, the eyelids refuse to remain open. H. C. declares that he cannot tell perpendicular from horizontal. I can quite believe it. Six empty soda water bottles, not one of which has fallen to my share, tell their own tale. Yet, mystery of mysteries! I go over to examine his work, and it is perfect. A humorous sketch of us all, sitting under the dry wall on the Puig Major. We look intensely miserable and shivering. H. C. has his foot vindictively planted on A.’s prostrate form. I am in the agonies of a stiff neck. Afar off, most poetically put in, rising out of the mist like Aphrodite from the foam of the sea, appears a most perfect likeness of Rosita, who, like a ministering angel, is holding up a flat iron. —S SES = SWEET SUMMER HOURS. SWEET summer hours! with fragrance filled, The sunshine falls upon the lea ; The world is gay with music trilled From every wayside bush and tree. Could more melodious notes be heard Than yonder lark’s’ triumphant strain ? Yet, listening, my heart is stirred To something less of joy than pain. Sweet summer hours! Ah, wherefore must Your fleeting charm our fall betray, So swift to feed the cruel lust Of earth’s grim enemy, decay ? In vain with blind persistence strange We think to hold time’s treasures fast, For even in our grasp they change To tender memories of the past. Sweet summer hours! bright The glamour lies o’er land and sea: Too quickly merged in winter’s night Your presence here must ever be. But give again your gracious store, And win our thoughts to that blest clime, Where death shall grieve us never more, And beauty live untouched by time. Too briefly SYDNEY GREY. CORMNELMO© cS (GO)