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158
Adventures in Contentment
·
David Grayson
46
That
evening
friend
Horace
came
in.
I
was
glad
to
see
him.
Horace
is
or
was
a
famous
chopper.
I
placed
him
at
the
fireplace
where
his
eye,
sooner
or
later,
must
fall
upon
my
axe-helve.
Oh,
I
worked
out
my
designs!
Presently
he
saw
the
helve,
picked
it
up
at
once
and
turned
it
over
in
his
hands.
I
had
a
suffocating,
not
unhumorous,
sense
of
self-consciousness.
I
know
how
a
poet
must
feel
at
hearing
his
first
poem
read
aloud
by
some
other
person
who
does
not
know
its
authorship.
I
suffer
and
thrill
with
the
novelist
who
sees
a
stranger
purchase
his
book
in
a
book-shop.
I
felt
as
though
I
stood
that
moment
before
the
Great
Judge.
Horace
"hefted"
it
and
balanced
it,
and
squinted
along
it;
he
rubbed
it
with
his
thumb,
he
rested
one
end
of
it
on
the
floor
and
sprung
it
roughly.
"David,"
he
said
severely,
"where
did
you
git
this?"
Once
when
I
was
a
boy
I
came
home
with
my
hair
wet.
My
father
asked:
"David,
have
you
been
swimming?"
I
had
exactly
the
same
feeling
when
Horace
asked
his
question.
Now
I
am,
generally
speaking,
a
truthful
man.
I
have
written
a
good
deal
about
the
immorality,
the
unwisdom,
the
short-sightedness,
the
sinful
wastefulness
of
a
lie.
But
at
that
moment,
if
Harriet
had
not
been
present--and
that
illustrates
one
of
the
purposes
of
society,
to
bolster
up
a
man's
morals--I
should
have
evolved
as
large
and
perfect
a
prevarication
as
it
lay
within
me
to
do--cheerfully.
But
I
felt
Harriet's
moral
eye
upon
me:
I
was
a
coward
as
well
as
a
sinner.
I
faltered
so
long
that
Horace
finally
looked
around
at
me.
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