Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/319

1858.] much the reader's business as mine to settle these casuistries. I only undertook to tell him who it was that paid for the Prima Donna,— and I have done it.

that a good story," said the Consul, when he had finished the narration out of which I have compounded the foregoing,—"and, what is not always the case with a good story, it is a true one."

I cordially concurred with my honored friend in this opinion, and if the reader should unfortunately differ from me on this point, I beg him to believe that it is entirely my fault. As the Consul told it to me, it was an excellent good story.

"Poor Mynheer Van Holland," he added, laughing, "never got over that adventure. Not that the loss was material to him; he was too rich for that; but the provocation of his fifty thousand dollars going to a parcel of Mexican ladrones, after buying an opera-singer for a Frenchman on its way, was enough to rouse even Dutch human-nature to the swearing-point. He could not abide either Frenchmen or opera-singers, all the rest of his life. And, by Jove, I don't wonder at it!"

Nor I, neither, for the matter of that.

summer voice, Musketaquit,

Repeats the music of the rain;

But sweeter rivers pulsing flit

Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain.

Thou in thy narrow banks art pent:

The stream I love unbounded goes

Through flood and sea and firmament;

Through light, through life, it forward flows.

I see the inundation sweet,

I hear the spending of the stream

Through years, through men, through nature fleet,

Through passion, thought, through power and dream.

Musketaquit, a goblin strong,

Of shard and flint makes jewels gay;

They lose their grief who hear his song,

And where he winds is the day of day.

So forth and brighter fares my stream,—

Who drink it shall not thirst again;

No darkness stains its equal gleam,

And ages drop in it like rain.