Explore "The Fever of Life" by Fergus Hume on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"In a garden fair you met me, And I told you all my woes. Then, in case you might forget me, I bestowed on you a rose. / "Love had captive to you brought me, For I felt his arrow's smart; So in mercy quick you sought me, And bestowed on me a heart. "
Oh, wonderful! wonderful! and thrice wonderful was the soul of Vicar Clendon seeing that in this mummified body, battered by the assaults of sixty years, it still kept itself fresh and green in the very heyday of perennial youth. In spite of his grubbing among dusty books; in spite of the hardening process of continually celebrating marriages; in spite of the pessimistic ideas which come with old age, he could still feel sympathetic thrills when he heard the sighings of two lone lovers. He should have frowned and looked askance on such youthful foolery; he should have forgotten the days when Plancus was consul, and he wooed Amaryllis with bashful courtesy; he should have preached sermons a mile long on the sin of going to the temple of Venus, but, strange to tell, he did not. This withered old husk encased a fresh young soul, and the venerable clergyman felt a boyish pleasure in the courting of these young men.