JACKANAPES DADDY DARWIN'S DOVECOT AND OTHER STORIES

JACKANAPES


CHAPTER I.


Last noon beheld them full of lusty life,
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay,
The midnight brought the signal sound of strife,
The morn the marshalling in arms--the day
Battle's magnificently stern array!
The thunder clouds close o'er it, which when rent
The earth is covered thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heaped and pent,
Rider and horse:--friend, foe,--in one red burial blent.

Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps than mine:
Yet one would I select from that proud throng.
----to thee, to thousands, of whom each
And one as all a ghastly gap did make
In his own kind and kindred, whom to teach
Forgetfuluess were mercy for their sake;
The Archangel's trump, not glory's, must awake
Those whom they thirst for.
--BYRON.

[Illustration]

Two Donkeys and the Geese lived on the Green, and all other residents of
any social standing lived in houses round it. The houses had no names.
Everybody's address was, "The Green," but the Postman and the people of
the place knew where each family lived. As to the rest of the world,
what has one to do with the rest of the world, when he is safe at home
on his own Goose Green? Moreover, if a stranger did come on any lawful
business, he might ask his way at the shop.

Most of the inhabitants were long-lived, early deaths (like that of the
little Miss Jessamine) being exceptional; and most of the old people
were proud of their age, especially the sexton, who would be ninety-nine
come Martinmas, and whose father remembered a man who had carried
arrows, as a boy, for the battle of Flodden Field. The Grey Goose and
the big Miss Jessamine were the only elderly persons who kept their ages
secret. Indeed, Miss Jessamine never mentioned any one's age, or
recalled the exact year in which anything had happened. She said that
she had been taught that it was bad manners to do so "in a mixed
assembly."