he leaned her head against the window-casing and
reviewed what she had read.

After all, there was nothing to help her very much. She knew scarcely
anything about the affairs of the day. Miss Eliza had never allowed her
to touch the only newspaper that came to the Farm, not considering her
old enough. She had not the vaguest idea what the "polite arts" were,
and as to the books she had read, she was very uncertain whether they
might be called "current novels."

She picked up her book to read further and discovered that....

"Poetry may often be introduced with charm and effect. A few lines
of verse, judiciously interspersed with the conversation; pearls
of the thought of our great masters of the world of rhyme falling
from the ruby lips of the young and fair daughters of Eve, have
often caused a masculine heart to beat faster and to be thrown
around the lovely borrower of words an atmosphere of gentle and
refined erudition that nothing else could so well impart."

Arethusa brightened up. Here, she felt more at home.

She could certainly learn Poetry! In fact, she had no need to learn it,
for she already knew quite a lot. She had read _The Family Poetry
Book_ through from cover to cover, a hundred times at least. It
contained a great deal of Scott and Burns, and many long-delightful
ballads such as "Lord Ullin's Daughter," and "The Cruel Sister," as
well as Irish melodies that charmed with their plaintive atmosphere.
England, however, had not been neglected, for the work of the Lake
Poets held a prominent place, and there was much of Tennyson, his "May
Queen" cycle, and "Sir Galahad." "The Prisoner of Chillon" was
Arethusa's favorite of Byron's representation; she knew it from end to
end. And she knew all of those specifically named off by heart, for the
swinging lines of a ballad form were Arethusa's idea of what real
poetry should be. But the compilers of the big brown book, which was
sacred to the marble-topped center table in the parlor at the Farm, had
not stayed entirely on the other side of the ocean; and so Arethusa
could recite many of the verses of our own sweetest singers of that
day; as well as many that were scattered throughout the book that were
signed "Anonymous"; and many that had been written by dead and gone men
and women whose very existence would have been forgotten by a fickle
world, had not _The Family Poetry Book_ preserved an imperishable
record of their achieveme