ions of the nervous cords
flashed the intelligence that the brain was kindling, and must be fed
with something or other, or it would burn itself to ashes.

And all the great hydraulic engines poured in their scarlet blood, and
the fire kindled, and the flame rose; for the blood is a stream that,
like burning rock-oil, at once kindles, and is itself the fuel. You
can't order these organic processes, any more than a milliner can make
a rose. She can make something that looks like a rose, more or less,
but it takes all the forces of the universe to finish and sweeten that
blossom in your button-hole; and you may be sure that when the orator's
brain is in a flame, when the poet's heart is in a tumult, it is
something mightier than he and his will that is dealing with him! As
I have looked from one of the northern windows of the street which
commands our noble estuary,--the view through which is a picture on an
illimitable canvas and a poem in innumerable cantos,--I have sometimes
seen a pleasure-boat drifting along, her sail flapping, and she seeming
as if she had neither will nor aim. At her stern a man was laboring to
bring her head round with an oar, to little purpose, as it seemed to
those who watched him pulling and tugging. But all at once the wind of
heaven, which had wandered all the way from Florida or from Labrador,
it may be, struck full upon the sail, and it swelled and rounded itself,
like a white bosom that had burst its bodice, and--

--You are right; it is too true! but how I love these pretty phrases! I
am afraid I am becoming an epicure in words, which is a bad thing to be,
unless it is dominated by something infinitely better than itself.
But there is a fascination in the mere sound of articulated breath; of
consonants that resist with the firmness of a maid of honor, or half or
wholly yield to the wooing lips; of vowels that flow and murmur, each
after its kind; the peremptory b and p, the brittle k, the vibrating r,
the insinuating s, the feathery f, the velvety v, the bell-voiced m, the
tranquil broad a, the penetrating e, the cooing u, the emotional o, and
the beautiful combinations of alternate rock and stream, as it were,
that they give to the rippling flow of speech,--there is a fascination
in the skilful handling of these, which the great poets and even
prose-writers have not disdained to acknowledge and use to recommend
their thought. What do you say to this line of Homer as a piece of
poetical