Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/201

Rh he spoke of his final doubt of having in reality 'done well.' This temper is admirable, but it is not always that one can indulge in it. As an introduction to these 'ditties,' wherein at least he still faces the foot-lights of his well-beloved Anglo-India, he declares:

It is a feast of patter-songs, dispensed to the twang of the banjo in the bibulous atmosphere of the postprandial smoke-concert, that he presents to us here. Rarely shall we listen to chords struck in the minor key. More rarely still to the stirring vibrations of the march movement. Yet he cannot rise from his chair and retire without telling us—as it were, casually, quietly, and with shy, downward glances—that there are other instruments of the Muses besides the banjo on which he can, and will, he trusts, yet perform for us. Therefore (though not for the world would he have us derange our ease), 'to whom it may concern' be it known that he is well aware that the smoke is dying upon the altar, t,hat the flowers are decaying, and that the goddess has flown away. None the less, here, in this his town of banishment, where the amusement is rather too suggestive of man's latter end, and the diet is strictly limited, we still continue