All in a garden fair; the simple story of three boys ... - University Library

204
ALL LV A GARDEN FAIR.
thirty years in exile. My daughter, tlie educa-
tion of a poet must include a knowledge of the
stage, and I had overlooked it.'
'Surely it is not too late.'
'No; we must, however, lose no tune.
And there are pictures, nnisic, sculpture,
architecture— there is the whole Avorld of
Art. Good heavens ! we
time.'
must indeed lose no
On the following Saturday the yoimg men
stayed in town and met Claire and her father
in the evening. They all went together to the
pit, where one sees best and pays least. The
joy of children at a pantomime is supposed to
be a pleasant sight for older eyes ; yet no
children at any pantomime ever fell into a
greater rapture than ^did these two lads of
eighteen—an age when many boys are sated
with such sitihts—and the ufirl who sat be-
tween them. They were carried out of tliem-
selves ; they were no longer in [\ theatre, hot,
close, and crowded ; they wei'e in the forest,
on the sea, in palaces among great nobles.