And then he was boxed in with the bed, and
covered with no end of warm garments, while the friendly darkness
closed him and his shelter all round. Except the faintest blue
gleam from one of the panes in the roof, there was soon no hint of
light anywhere; and this was only sufficient to make the darkness
visible, and thus add artistic effect to the operation of it upon
Shargar's imagination--a faculty certainly uneducated in Shargar,
but far, very far from being therefore non-existent. It was,
indeed, actively operative, although, like that of many a fine lady
and gentleman, only in relation to such primary questions as: 'What
shall we eat? And what shall we drink? And wherewithal shall we be
clothed?' But as he lay and devoured the new 'white breid,' his
satisfaction--the bare delight of his animal existence--reached a
pitch such as even this imagination, stinted with poverty, and
frost-bitten with maternal oppression, had never conceived possible.
The power of enjoying the present without anticipation of the
future or regard of the past, is the especial privilege of the
animal nature, and of the human nature in proportion as it has not
been developed beyond the animal. Herein lies the happiness of cab
horses and of tramps: to them the gift of forgetfulness is of worth
inestimable. Shargar's heaven was for the present gained.
CHAPTER V.
THE SYMPOSIUM.
Robert had scarcely turned out of the square on his way to find
Shargar, when a horseman entered it.
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