iterary product,
but, looking back upon his venture, I am inclined to think that the
little volume never contained anything more poetically pathetic or
touchingly imaginative than that gentle conception. Equally simple and
trustful was his selection of myself as compiler. It was based somewhat,
I think, upon the fact that 'the artless Helicon' I boasted 'was
Youth,' but I imagine it was chiefly owing to the circumstance that I
had from the outset, with precocious foresight, confided to him my
intention of not putting any of my own verses in the volume. Publishers
are appreciative; and a self-abnegation so sublime, to say nothing of
its security, was not without its effect.

[Illustration: WE SETTLED TO OUR WORK]

[Illustration: A CIRCULATION IT HAD NEVER KNOWN BEFORE]

We settled to our work with fatuous self-complacency, and no suspicion
of the trouble in store for us, or the storm that was to presently
hurtle around our devoted heads. I winnowed the poems, and he exploited
a preliminary announcement to an eager and waiting Press, and we moved
together unwittingly to our doom. I remember to have been early struck
with the quantity of material coming in--evidently the result of some
popular misunderstanding of the announcement. I found myself in daily
and hourly receipt of sere and yellow fragments, originally torn from
some dead and gone newspaper, creased and seamed from long folding in
wallet or pocket-book. Need I say that most of them were of an emotional
or didactic nature; need I add any criticism of these homely souvenirs,
often discoloured by the morning coffee, the evening tobacco, or, Heaven
knows! perhaps blotted by too easy tears! Enough that I knew now what
had become of those original but never re-copied verses which filled the
'Poet's Corner' of every country newspaper on the coast. I knew now the
genesis of every didactic verse that 'coldly furnished forth the
marriage table' in the announcement of weddings in the rural Press. I
knew now who had read--and possibly indited--the dreary _hic jacets_ of
the dead in their mourning columns. I knew now why certain letters of
the alphabet _had_ been more tenderly considered than others, and
affectionately addressed. I knew the meaning of the 'Lines to Her who
can best understand them,' and I knew that they had been understood. The
morning's post buried my table beneath these withered leaves of
posthumous passion. They lay there like the pathetic nosegays of