ogether
To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
O'er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old moustache as I am
Is not a match for you all?

I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeons
In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

THREE-MILE CROSS.

It seems but yesterday, although more than thirteen years have gone
by, since I first opened the little garden-gate and walked up the path
leading to Mary Russell Mitford's cottage at Three-Mile Cross. A friend
in London had given me his card to the writer of "Our Village," and I
had promised to call on my way to Oxford, and have a half-hour's chat
over her geraniums with the charming person whose sketches I had read
with so much interest in my own country. Her cheerful voice at the
head of the stairs, telling her little maid to show me the way to her
sitting-room, sounded very musically, and I often observed in later
interviews how like a melody her tones always appeared in conversation.
Once when she read a lyrical poem, not her own, to a group of friends
assembled at her later residence, in Swallowfield, of which number it
was my good-fortune to be one, the verses came from her lips like an
exquisite chant. Her laugh had a ringing sweetness in it, rippling out
sometimes like a beautiful chime of silver bells; and when she told
a comic story, which she often did with infinite tact and grace, she
joined in with the jollity at the end, her eyes twinkling with delight
at the pleasure her narrative was always sure to bring. Her enjoyment of
a joke was something delicious, and when she heard a good thing for
the first time her exultant mirth was unbounded. As she sat in her
easy-chair, listening to a Yankee story which interested her, her "Dear
me! dear me! dear me!" (three times repeated always)

"Rang like a golden jewel down a golden s