Page:My Friend Annabel Lee (1903).pdf/42

 and contemplate it. And always one can bide one's time.

"My contemplation of it has interested me.

"The air of Boston is a mingling of very ancient and very modern things and ways of thinking that are picturesque and at times lead to something. The ancient things date back to Confucius and others of his ilk—and the modern ones are tinted with Lilian Whiting and newspapers and the theater.

"One is half-conscious of this as one contemplates, and one's thought is, 'Woe is me that I have my habitation among the tents of Kedar!' One exclaims this not so much that one considers oneself benighted, but that one is very sure that the air of Boston considers one so. To be sure, it ought to know, but, somehow, as yet one is content to bide one's time.

"But yes. There is a beatified quality