Ah! it is gone.
"Home, sweet home!" Poor Paine! like you, wandering in the friendless
streets of England's metropolis and listening to your own sweet song,
breathed from titled lips in palatial Homes, the listener to-day was
homeless. He thought of you and the convivial hours he had passed with
you, listening to the narrative of your vagrant life, and how happy you
were in the poetry of your own thoughts when you were a stranger to
every one, and your purse was empty, and you knew not where you were to
find your dinner.
Genius, thou art a fatal gift! Ever creating, never realizing; living
in a world of beauty etherialized in imagination's lens, and hating the
material world as it is; buffeted by fortune and ridiculed by fools
whose conceptions never rise above the dirt.
A little note, sweetly scented, is placed in his hand:
"Cousin and I propose a ride. Shall we have your company? You are aware
it is the Sabbath. You must not, for us, do violence to your
prejudices."
"Is this," thought he, "a delicate invitation to save my feelings, and
is the latter clause meant as a hint that they do not want me? Well,
the French always, when a compliment has as much bitter as sweet in it,
take the sweet and leave the bitter unappropriated.
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