crying for a
sentiment. She is of the serviceable, red-handed, broad-and-high-
shouldered type; one of those imported female servants who are
known in public by their amorphous style of person, their stoop
forwards, and a headlong and as it were precipitous walk,--the
waist plunging downwards into the rocking pelvis at every heavy
footfall. Bridget, constituted for action, not for emotion, was
about to deposit a plate heaped with something upon the table, when
I saw the coarse arm stretched by my shoulder arrested,--motionless
as the arm of a terra-cotta caryatid; she couldn't set the plate
down while the old gentleman was speaking!

He was quite silent after this, still wearing the slight flush on
his cheek. Don't ever think the poetry is dead in an old man
because his forehead is wrinkled, or that his manhood has left him
when his hand trembles! If they ever WERE there, they ARE there
still!

By and by we got talking again.--Does a poet love the verses
written through him, do you think, Sir?--said the divinity-student.

So long as they are warm from his mind, carry any of his animal
heat about them, _I_ KNOW he loves them,--I answered. When they
have had time to cool, he is more indifferent.

A good deal as it is with buckwheat cakes,--said the young fellow
whom they call John.

The last words, only, reached the ear of the economically organized
female in black bombazine .--Buckwheat is skerce and high,--she
remarked. [Must be a poor relation sponging on our landlady,--pays
nothing,--so she must stand by the guns and be ready to repel
boarders.]

I liked the turn the conversation had taken, for I had some things
I wanted to say, and so, after waiting a minute, I began again.--I
don't think the poems I read you sometimes can be fairly
appreciated, given to you as they are in the green state.

--You don't know what I mean by the GREEN STATE? Well, then, I
will tell you. Certain things are good for nothing until they have
been kept a long while; and some are good for nothing until they
have been long kept and USED. Of the first, wine is the
illustrious and immortal example. Of those which must be kept and
used I will name three,--meerschaum pipes, violins, and poems. The
meerschaum is but a poor affair until it has burned a thousand
offerings to the cloud-compelling deities. It comes to us without
complexion or flavor,--born of the sea-foam, like Aphrodite, but
colorless as pallida Mors herself. T