Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/200

 "Yes, I've considered it," I replied, "and it's a pleasure that never palls."

"It is so much more than pleasure," said my friend Annabel Lee. "It is a necessity and an art and a relaxation and an unburdening—and, dear me, it brings one up to the level of kings or of the beasts that perish.

"I have fancied," said my friend Annabel Lee, "a deal table set three times every day under a beautiful yew-tree in a far country. The yew-tree would be in a pasture where cattle are grazing, and always when I sat eating at the deal table the cows would stand about watching me. Sometimes on the deal table there would be brown bread and honey; sometimes there would be salt and cantaloupe; sometimes there would be lettuce with vinegar and pepper and oil; sometimes there would be whole-wheat bread and curds and cream in a brown earthen dish;