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Your imagination is dazzled with his splendid chariots of ivory inlaid with silver; his unrivalled stud of Phasian horses; his harnesses of glittering brass; the golden armour which he loves to display at festivals; his richly-coloured garments, fresh from the looms of Sardis, and redolent with the perfumes of the East.

There was wisdom in the selection of this spot, and appropriateness, too it was secluded, near the heart of the town, and very close to the old thoroughfare whose very name was redolent of Catholicity. Friargate is a word which conveys its own meaning.

Inside that gate was a miniature farm redolent of homely, primitive life, a tumble-down house and stables and implements of agriculture and horticulture, broods of chickens, and growing pumpkins, and a thousand antidotes to the weariness of an artificial life.

All around us, upon the sloping hill-side, were delightful villas, painted in bright colors, and half buried in thrifty foliage, each located in an atmosphere redolent of fruits and flowers; its front ever open to that glorious sea-view. The broad piazzas of these smiling homes were hung with hammocks, telling of luxurious out-door life.

Of one thing I am certain, that the reader must be much delighted with the wholesome smell of the stable, with which many of these pages are redolent; what a contrast to the sickly odours exhaled from those of some of my contemporaries, especially of those who pretend to be of the highly fashionable class, and who treat of reception-rooms, well may they be styled so, in which dukes, duchesses, earls, countesses, archbishops, bishops, mayors, mayoresses not forgetting the writers themselves, both male and female congregate and press upon one another; how cheering, how refreshing, after having been nearly knocked down with such an atmosphere, to come in contact with genuine stable hartshorn.

Monday morning brought the deputation to close range. They interviewed me in my study, and the house was redolent of Southern courtesy and grace. Their accent had a foreign tang but their hearts' tone was that of universal love. This latter word is not too strong to use, for the Southerner has a rare genius for laying claim to your very heart by the surrender of his own.

'My dear, what a comparison! 'Redolent of the Old Court, and of Lily, waiting for her swan's nest among the reeds, till her stately warrior came, and made her day dreams earnest in a way that falls to the lot of few. I don't think his severity ever dismayed her for a moment, there was always such sweetness in it. 'True knight and lady! Yes. He is grown handsomer than ever, too!

It was a morning when the sky was a delicate violet-blue, when the sunlight came tempered through a tender land haze and a filmy mist from the still sea, when all the air was redolent with sweet smells of coming spring, and all the girls were gay in new attire. Dennis Quigg had been lounging outside the church door, his silk hat and green satin necktie glistening in the sun.

The day was warm and still, as the wind only came up with the going down of the sun, and the atmosphere was still redolent with the morning spicing of pine and hay and a stronger balm that seemed to fill his breast with sunshine.

Then Kurt plunged, blind in his passion, out of the door into the night. And as he went he heard his father cry out, brokenly: "My son! Oh, my son!" The night was dark and cool. A faint wind blew across the hills, and it was dry, redolent, sweet. The sky seemed an endless curving canopy of dark blue blazing with myriads of stars.