surprise party, and bring in all sorts of
beautiful thoughts, and I write and write, and the verses run measuring
themselves out like"--

"Ribbins,--any narrer blue ribbins, Mr. Hopkins? Five eighths of a yard,
if you please, Mr. Hopkins. How's your folks?" Then, in a lower tone,
"Those last verses of yours in the Bannernoracle were sweet pooty."

Gifted Hopkins meted out the five eighths of blue ribbon by the aid of
certain brass nails on the counter. He gave good measure, not prodigal,
for he was loyal to his employer, but putting a very moderate strain
on the ribbon, and letting the thumb-nail slide with a contempt of
infinitesimals which betokened a large soul in its genial mood.

The young lady departed, after casting upon him one of those bewitching
glances which the young poet--let us rather say the poet, without making
odious distinctions--is in the confirmed habit of receiving from dear
woman.

Mr. Gifted Hopkins resumed: "I do not know where this talent, as my
friends call it, of mine, comes from. My father used to carry a chain
for a surveyor sometimes, and there is a ten-foot pole in the house he
used to measure land with. I don't see why that should make me a poet.
My mother was always fond of Dr. Watts's hymns; but so are other young
men's mothers, and yet they don't show poetical genius. But wherever I
got it, it comes as easy to me to write in verse as to write in prose,
almost. Don't you ever feel a longing to send your thoughts forth in
verse, Cyprian?"

"I wish I had a greater facility of expression very often," Cyprian
answered; "but when I have my best thoughts I do not find that I have
words that seem fitting to clothe them. I have imagined a great many
poems, Gifted, but I never wrote a rhyming verse, or verse of any kind.
Did you ever hear Olive play 'Songs without Words'? If you have ever
heard her, you will know what I mean by unrhymed and unversed poetry."

"I am sure I don't know what you mean, Cyprian, by poetry without rhyme
or verse, any more than I should if you talked about pictures that were
painted on nothing, or statues that were made out of nothing. How can
you tell that anything is poetry, I should like to know, if there is
neither a regular line with just so many syllables, nor a rhyme? Of
course you can't. I never have any thoughts too beautiful to put in
verse: nothing can be too beautiful for it."

Cyprian left the conversation at this point. It was getting more
suggest