darkened greyly, slashed on the western sky by fierce cold red, his uncle passed sheaf after sheaf of his verse to him, sniggering nosily, and prodding the boy with his great fingers, while his aunt cleared the table or listened to the music. The great majority of these verses, laboured and pedantic as they were, were variations of the motif of agnosticism, the horn on which his ministry in the Church had fatally gored itself—and still a brand that smouldered in his brain—not now so much from an all-mastering conviction, as from some desire to justify himself. These verses, which he asserted were modelled on those of his great hero, Matthew Arnold, were all remarkably like this one:
MY CREED
“Is there a land beyond the starsWhere we may find eternal day, Life after death, peace after wars?Is there? I cannot say.Shall we find there a happier life, All joy that here we never know, Love in all things, an end of strife?Perhaps: it may be so.”
And so on.
And sniggering down his nose, Bascom would prod the young man stiffly with his great fingers, saying, as he slyly thrust another verse into his hand:
“Something in a lighter vein, my boy. Just a little foolishness, you know. (Phuh! Phuh! Phuh! Phuh! Phuh)” Which was:
“Mary had a little calf, It followed up her leg, And everywhere that Mary went, The boys were sure to beg.”
And so on.
Uncle Bascom had hundreds of them: Poems—Chiefly Religious, he sent occasionally to the morning papers. They were sometimes printed in the Editor’s Correspondence or The Open Forum. But Poems—Chiefly Profane he kept apparently for his own regalement.
Then, as it darkened, toward five o’clock, the boy would depart, leaving them at times bitterly involved in a political wrangle, with the strewn Sunday numbers of The Boston Herald and The Boston Post around
