ties, she did not hunt words out of countenance. They
were natural to her. She wanted most their simple beauty, and she
succeeded. She had dignity, a rare gift in these times. She raises
herself above the many by her fine feeling for the precision. That is
her artistry, the word, the thing of beauty and the joy forever with
her.

It is to be regretted that Adelaide Crapsey had no more time for the
miniature microscopic equations, the little thing seen large, the
large thing seen vividly. She might have spent more hours with them
and less with her so persistent guest, this second self at her side;
ironic presence, when she most would have strode with the brighter
companion, her first and natural choice. Her contribution is
conspicuous among us for its balance and its intellectualism tempered
with fine emotions. She had so much to settle for herself, so much
bargaining for the little escapes in which to register herself
consistently, so much of consultation for her body's sake, that her
mind flew the dark spaces about her bed with consistent feverishness.

Reckoning is not the genius of life. It is the painful, residual
element of reflection. One must give, one must pay. It is not
inspiring to beg for breath, yet this has come to many a fine artist,
many a fine soul whose genius was far more of the ability for living,
with so little of the ability for dying. You cannot think along with
clarity, with the doom of dark recognition nudging your shoulder every
instant. There must be somehow apertures of peace for production.
Adelaide Crapsey's chief visitant was doom. She saw the days
vanishing, and the inevitable years lengthening over her. No wonder
she could write brevities, she whose existence was brevity itself. The
very flicker of the lamp was among the last events. What, then, was
the fluttering of the moth but a monstrous intimation. If her work was
chilled with severity, it was because she herself was covered with the
cool branches of decision. Nature was cold with her, hence there is
the ring of ice in these little pieces of hers. They are veiled with
the grey of many a sunless morning.

"These be
Three silent things;
The falling snow,--the hour
Before the dawn,--the mouth of one
Just dead."

Here you have the intensity once more of Adelaide Crapsey. It haunts
you like the something on the dark stairway as you pass, just as when,
on the roadway in the dead of night, the twig grazing one's c