ook the
different letters from Chicago, San Francisco, Denver, Cincinnati, New
Orleans, Cleveland, Buffalo, Boston, Philadelphia, and up-town and
down-town in New York, giving the best-selling books of the month in all
those places, and compiled an eclectic list from them, which she gave to
her bookseller with orders to get them as nearly of the same sizes and
colors as possible. He followed her instructions with a great deal of
taste and allowed her twenty-five per cent. off, which she applied
toward a wedding-present she would have to give shortly. In this way she
was able to provide her grandfather for the new year with reading that
everybody was talking about, and that brought him up to date with a
round turn.

XXIV

SOME MOMENTS WITH THE MUSE

Among the many letters which the Easy Chair has received after its
conference on the state of poetry, one of most decided note was from a
writer confessing herself of the contrary-minded. "I love some children,
but not childhood in general merely because it is childhood. So I love
some poems rather than poetry in general just because it is poetry.... I
object to the tinkle. I object to the poetic license which performs a
Germanic divorce between subject and verb, so that instead of a complete
thought which can be mastered before another is set before the brain,
there is a twist in the grammatical sequence that requires a conscious
effort of will to keep the original thread. The world is too busy to do
this; reading must be a relaxation, not a study.... When poetry conforms
in its mental tone to the spirit of the times; when it reflects the life
and more or less the common thought of the day, then more of the common
people will read it."

There were other things in this letter which seemed to us of so much
importance that we submitted it as a whole to a Woman's Club of our
acquaintance. The nine ladies composing the club were not all literary,
but they were all of aesthetic pursuits, and together they brought a good
deal of culture to bear on the main points of the letter. They were not
quite of one mind, but they were so far agreed that what they had to say
might be fairly regarded as a consensus of opinion. We will not attempt
to report their remarks at any length--they ran to all lengths--but in
offering a resume of what they variously said to a sole effect, we will
do what we can to further the cause they joined in defending.

The Muses--for we will no longer