and went on
droning off the lines, and grinning as he read. When he had finished,
he took her pretty hand in his gnarly, bony one and patted the white
firm flesh tenderly as he peered back through the years. "U-h-m, that
was years and years ago, Jeanette--years and years ago, and Nellie
had just bought me my rhyming dictionary. It was the first time I had
a chance to use it." The lyrical artist drummed with his fingers on
the mahogany arm of the sofa. "My goodness, child--what a long column
there was of words rhyming with 'ette.'" He laughed to himself as he
mused: "You know, my dear, I had to let 'brevet' and 'fret' and
'roulette' go, because I couldn't think of anything to say about them.
You don't know how that worries a poet." He looked at the verses in
the book before him and then shook his head sadly: "I was young
then--it seems strange to think I could write that. Youth, youth," he
sighed as he patted the fresh young hand beside him, "it is not by
chance you rhyme with truth."

His eyes glistened, and the girl put her cheek against his and
squeezed the thin, trembling hand as she cried, "Oh, Uncle Watts,
Uncle Watts, you're a dear--a regular dear!"

"In his latter days," writes Colonel Culpepper, in the second edition
of the Biography, "those subterranean fires of life that flowed so
fervently in his youth and manhood smouldered, and he did not write
often. But on occasion the flames would rise and burn for a moment
with their old-time ardour. The poem 'After Glow' was penned one night
just following a visit with a young woman, Jeanette, only daughter of
Honourable and Mrs. John Barclay, whose birth is celebrated elsewhere
in this volume under the title 'When the Angels brought Jeanette.' The
day after the poem 'After Glow' was composed I was sitting in the
harness shop with the poet when the conversation turned upon the
compensations of age. I said: 'Sir, do you not think that one of our
compensations is that found in the freedom and the rare intimacy with
which we are treated by the young women? They no longer seem to fear
us. Is it not sweet?' I asked. Our hero turned from his bench with a
smile and a deprecating gesture as he replied softly, 'Ah,
Colonel--that's just it; that's just the trouble.' And then he took
from a box near by this poem, 'The After Glow,' and read it to me. And
I knew the meaning of the line--

"'Oh, drowsy blood that tosses in its sleep.'

"And so we fell to talking of other days.