Lashing and tearing With rage unsparing, To beat down the stay In the deadly fray; And then, for more ruin, to hurry away; But the hill stouthearted The water has parted, And away in a sever’d stream they tear Like famish’d lions fresh from their lair, Devouring, destroying, and bearing away Each barrier, bank, or each timber’d stay; Till they slacken their race by the sandy verge Of the parent sea, whose wild, restless surge Lashes the shore. Towards her breast leap the rivers in eager guise, Lost in the billows that hurrying rise To welcome the treasures they pour. 

Chapter Ten.

A Horror of Horrors.

“Very, very glad to see you, my boy,” said my friend Broxby, as I reached his house quite late on Christmas-eve, when he introduced me to his wife, a most amiable woman of an extremely pleasing countenance; to Major and Mrs Major Carruthers, a very pimply-faced gentleman, with a languishing wife troubled with an obliquity of vision, which worried me greatly that evening from her eye seeming to be gazing upon me, while its owner wore a perpetual smile upon her lip. Mrs Major Carruthers’ brother was also there, a young man, like myself, of a poetic turn, and troubled with headaches, besides several others, ladies and gentlemen, who occupied divers relative distances in connection with my friend Broxby and his charming wife.

“Why you’re as nervous and bashful as ever, my boy,” said Broxby, in his rough, good-natured way, and I tried to laugh it off, particularly as it was said before so many people in the well-lit drawing-room; but even before the fearful shock my nerves received I always was of a terribly nervous temperament, a temperament which makes me extremely susceptible.

As I am now forty I have given up all hopes of ever getting the better of it, even as I have felt compelled to give up the expectation of whiskers, curling hair, and—well no, not yet, for, as the poet says, “We may be happy yet,” and some fond, loving breast may yet throb for me in the future. I may add that my hair is fair, my face slightly freckled, and that I have a slight lisp, but it is so slight that you do not notice it when you get used to me.

After a long, cold ride down by train to Ancaster, and a six miles’ ride in Broxby’s dog-cart from the station, where I was met by his groom, the well-lit drawing-room seemed so cheering and comfortable, and as I grew a little more at home I began to be glad that I had left my chambers to their fate for the time, and come down to bask awhile 

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