"Look here," cried Mr. Williams in his voice of a man not to be
trifled with. "Look here, if you've--"
He was silenced by sight of what seemed to be a young sapling sprung
up from the ground within a yard of him--a young sapling tremulous,
with a root of steel. Then a thread-like shadow skimmed the air, and
another spear came impinging the ground within an inch of his feet.
As he turned in his flight he saw the goods so neatly arranged at
his orders, and there flashed through him, even in the thick of the
spears, the thought that he would be a grave loss to his employers.
This--for Mr. Williams was, not less than the goods, of a kind easily
replaced--was an illusion. It was the last of Mr. Williams illusions.
A RECOLLECTION
_By_
EDM*ND G*SSE
"And let us strew
Twain wreaths of holly and of yew."
WALLER.
One out of many Christmas Days abides with peculiar vividness in my
memory. In setting down, however clumsily, some slight record of
it, I feel that I shall be discharging a duty not only to the two
disparately illustrious men who made it so very memorable, but also to
all young students of English and Scandinavian literature. My use of
the first person singular, delightful though that pronoun is in the
works of the truly gifted, jars unspeakably on me; but reasons of
space baulk my sober desire to call myself merely the present writer,
or the infatuated go-between, or the cowed and imponderable young
person who was in attendance.
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