Tom yielded to the haunting, and
it was in part the fault of those eyes that he used such hard
words to his wife in the morning. Wives have not seldom to suffer
sorely for discomforts and wrongs in their husbands of which they
know nothing. But the thing will be set right one day, and in a
better fashion than if all the woman's-rights' committees in the
world had their will of the matter.
About this time, from the top, left-hand corner of the last page
of "The Firefly," it appeared that Twilight had given place to
Night; for the first of many verses began to show themselves, in
which Twilight, or Hesper, or Vesper, or the Evening Star, was no
more once mentioned, but only and al-ways Nox, or Hecate, or the
dark Diana. _Tenebrious_ was a great word with Tom about
this time. He was very fond, also, of the word _interlunar_.
I will not trouble my reader with any specimen of the outcome of
Tom's new inspiration, partly for this reason, that the verses
not unfrequently came so near being good, nay, sometimes were
really so good, that I do not choose to set them down where they
would be treated with a mockery they do not in themselves
deserve. He did not direct his wife's attention to them, nor did
he compose them at home or at the office. Mostly he wrote them
between acts at the theatre, or in any public place where
something in which he was not interested was going on.
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