have come next
in the programme, but for the presence of a third party, is matter of
conjecture; but what did come next was a mighty awkward look on the part
of Susan Posey, and the following short speech: "Mr. Lindsay, let me
introduce Mr. Hopkins, my friend, the poet I 've written to you about.
He was just reading two of his poems to me. Some other time, Gifted--Mr.
Hopkins."

"Oh no, Mr. Hopkins,--pray go on," said Clement. "I 'm very fond of
poetry."

The poet did not require much urging, and began at once reciting over
again the stanzas which were afterwards so much admired in the "Banner
and Oracle,"--the first verse being, as the readers of that paper will
remember,

"She moves in splendor, like the ray
That flashes from unclouded skies,
And all the charms of night and day
Are mingled in her hair and eyes."

Clement, who must have been in an agony of impatience to be alone with
his beloved, commanded his feelings admirably. He signified his
approbation of the poem by saying that the lines were smooth and the
rhymes absolutely without blemish. The stanzas reminded him forcibly of
one of the greatest poets of the century.

Gifted flushed hot with pleasure. He had tasted the blood of his own
rhymes; and when a poet gets as far as that, it is like wringing the bag
of exhilarating gas from the lips of a fellow sucking at it, to drag his
piece away from him.

"Perhaps you will like these lines still better," he said; "the style is
more modern:--

"'O daughter of the spiced South,
Her bubbly grapes have spilled the wine
That staineth with its hue divine
The red flower of thy perfect mouth.'"

And so on, through a series of stanzas like these, with the pulp of two
rhymes between the upper and lower crust of two others.

Clement was cornered. It was necessary to say something for the poet's
sake,--perhaps for Susan's; for she was in a certain sense responsible
for the poems of a youth of genius, of whom she had spoken so often and
so enthusiastically.

"Very good, Mr. Hopkins, and a form of verse little used, I should think,
until of late years. You modelled this piece on the style of a famous
living English poet, did you not?"

"Indeed I did not, Mr. Lindsay,--I never imitate. Originality is, if I
may be allowed to say so much for myself, my peculiar forte. Why, the
critics allow as much as that. See here, Mr. Lindsay."

Mr. Gifted Hopkins pu