ORLANDO
sheet, and was frequently interrupted by the laughter or the comments of the others. Were these taverns, were these wits, were these poets? she asked of Captain Bartolus, who obligingly informed her that even now—if she turned her head a little to the left and looked along the line of his first finger—so—they were passing the Cocoa Tree where,—yes, there he was—one might see Mr. Addison taking his coffee; the other two gentlemen—"there, Ma'am,a little to the right of the lamp post, one of 'em humped, t'other much the same as you or me"—were Mr. Dryden and Mr. Pope.[1] "Sad dogs," said the Captain, by which he meant that they were Papists, "but men of parts, none the less," he added, hurrying aft to superintend the arrangements for landing.
"Addison, Dryden, Pope," Orlando repeated as if the words were an incantation. For one moment she saw the high mountains above Broussa, the next, she had set her foot upon her native shore.
But now Orlando was to learn how little the most tempestuous flutter of excitement avails against the iron countenance of the law; how harder than the stones of London Bridge it is, and than the lips of a cannon
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- ↑ The Captain must have been mistaken, as a reference to any textbook of literature will show; but the mistake was a kindly one, and so we let it stand.
