The female help weeps
after the noisy fashion of untutored handmaids.
Now this is all very well as charity, but do let the kind visitors
remember they get their money's worth. If you pay a quarter for _dry
crying_, done by a second-rate actor, how much ought you to pay for real
hot, wet tears, out of the honest eyes of a gentleman who is not acting,
but sobbing in earnest?
All I meant to say, when I began, was, that this was _not_ a
surprise-party where I read these few lines that follow:--
We will not speak of years to-night;
For what have years to bring,
But larger floods of love and light
And sweeter songs to sing?
We will not drown in wordy praise
The kindly thoughts that rise;
If friendship owns one tender phrase,
He reads it in our eyes.
We need not waste our schoolboy art
To gild this notch of time;
Forgive me, if my wayward heart
Has throbbed in artless rhyme.
Enough for him the silent grasp
That knits us hand in hand,
And he the bracelet's radiant clasp
That locks our circling band.
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