This Was, Of
Course, A Hardship, And One Thought Things Of That Bell Which The Monks
Were Too Good To
Say; but being awake, and while one was reading one's
self to sleep again, one could hear the beginning of
The bird singing in
the modern garden in the rear which followed upon the bell-ringing. I do
not know what make or manner of bird it was that mostly sang among the
palms and laurels and statues, but it had a note of liquid gold, which
it poured till a certain flageo-lettist, whom I never saw, came to the
corner under the villa wall and blew his soul into one end of his
instrument and out of the other in the despondent breathings of most
melancholy music. Then, having attuned the spirits of his involuntary
listeners to a pensive sympathy, he closed with that international hymn
which does not rightly know whether it is "My Country, 'tis of Thee," or
"God Save the King," but serves equally for the patriotism of any
English or Americans in hearing. I do not know why this harmless hymn,
which the flageolettist gave extremely well, should always have seemed
to provoke the derision of the donkey which apparently dwelt in harmony
with the birds in that garden, but the flageolettist had no sooner ended
than the donkey burst into a bray, loud, long, and full of mockery, with
a close of ironical whistling and most insolent hissing; you would think
that some arch-enemy of the Anglo-Saxon race was laughing the new-felt
unity of the English and Americans to scorn.
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