t will be seen that she had now drawn a step nearer, signing her name, and as my "friend." It will also be noticed that I had sounded her about certain American authors, then much read; and that she knew how to put her own criticisms in a very trenchant way. With this letter came some more verses, still in the same birdlike script, as for instance the following --

 Your riches taught me poverty,
      Myself a millionnaire
 In little wealths, as girls could boast,
      Till broad as Buenos Ayre,
 You drifted your dominions
      A different Peru,
 And I esteemed all poverty
      For life's estate with you.

 Of mines, I little know, myself,
      But just the names of gems,
 The colors of the commonest,
      And scarce of diadems
 So much that, did I meet the queen,
      Her glory I should know:
 But this must be a different wealth,
      To miss it, beggars so.

 I'm sure 't is India all day,
      To those who look on you
 Without a stint, without a blame,
      Might I but be the Jew!
 I'm sure it is Golconda,
      Beyond my power to deem,
 To have a smile for mine, each day,
      How better than a gem!

 At least, it solaces to know
      That there exists a gold,
 Although I prove it just in time
      Its distance to behold;
 Its far, far treasure to surmise
      And estimate the pearl
 That slipped my simple fingers through
      While just a girl at school!

Here was already manifest that defiance of form, never through carelessness, and never precisely from whim, which so marked her. The slightest change in the order of words -- thus, "While yet at school, a girl" -- would have given her a rhyme for this last line; but no; she was intent upon her thought, and it would not have satisfied her to make the change. The other poem further showed, what had already been visible, a rare and delicate sympathy with the life of nature: --

  A bird came down the walk;
  He did not know I saw;
  He bit an angle-worm in halves
  And ate the fellow raw.

  And then he drank a dew
  From a convenient grass,
  And then hopped sidewise to the wall,
  To let a beetle pass.

  He glanced with rapid eyes
  That hurried all around;
  They looked like frightened beads, I thought;
  He stirred his velvet head

  Like one in danger, cautious.
  I offered him a crumb,
  And he unrolled his feathers
  And rowed him softer home

  Than oars divide the ocean,
  Too silver for a seam --
  Or butterflies, off banks of noon,
  Leap, plashless as they swim.

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