The Cream of the Jest; A Comedy of Evasions

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1917. Excerpt: ... 37 Considerations toward Sunset THEN Kennaston went for a meditative walk in the abating glare of that day's portentous sunset, wherein the tree-trunks westward showed like the black bars of a grate. It was in just such a twilight that Horvendile had left Storisende. . . . And presently he came to a field which had been mowed that week. The piled hay stood in rounded heaps, suggestive to Kennaston of shaggy giant heads bursting through the soil, as in the old myth of Cadmus and the dragon's teeth; beyond were glittering cornfields, whose tremulous green was shot with brown and sickly yellow now, and which displayed a host of tassels like ruined plumes. Autumn was at hand. And as Kennaston approached, a lark--as though shot vehemently from the ground --rose singing. Straight into the air it rose, and was lost in the sun's abating brilliance; but still you could hear its singing; and then, as suddenly, the bird dropped earthward. Kennaston snapped his fingers. Aha, my old acquaintance! he said, but now I envy you no longer! Then he walked onward, thinking. . . . What did I think of? he said, long afterward -- oh, of nothing with any real clarity. You see-- I touched mystery everywhere. . . . But I thought of Kathleen's first kiss, and of the first time I came to her alone after we were married, and of our baby that was born dead. . . . I was happier than I had ever been in any dream. ... I saw that the ties of our ordinary life here in the flesh have their own mystic strength and sanctity. I comprehended why in our highest sacrament we prefigure with holy awe, not things of the mind and spirit, but flesh and blood. ... A man and his wife, barring stark severance, grow with time to be one person, you see; and it is not so much the sort of person as the indivisibility that...