I take pleasure in travelling--flying
through space,--

"Crashing on the railroads,
Skimming on the seas,
Bounding on the mountain-tops,
Battling with the breeze.
Roaming through the forest,
Scampering on the plain,
Never stopping, always going,
Round and round again."

"How very beautiful,--so poetical!" said Bella.

"So suggestively peaceful," murmured Nicholas.

"Your own composition?" asked my mother.

"A mere _morceau_," replied my friend, modestly, "tossed off to fill up
a gap in the _Evergreen_."

"You should write poetry," said I.

"Think so? Well, I've had some notion at times, of trying my hand at an
ode, or an epic, but, man, I find too many difficulties in the way. As
to `feet,' now, I can't manage feet in poetry. If it were inches or
yards, one might get along, but feet are neither one thing nor another.
Then, rhyme bothers me. I've often to run over every letter in the
alphabet to get hold of a rhyme--click, thick, pick, rick, chick,
brick--that sort of thing, you know. Sentiment, too, is very
troublesome. Either I put too much or too little sentiment into my
verses; sometimes they are all sentiment together; not unfrequently they
have none at all; or the sentiment is false, which spoils them, you
know. Yes, much though I should like to be a poet, I must content
myself with prose. Just fancy, now, my attempting a poem on Cyprus!
What rhymes with Cyprus? Fyprus, gyprus, highprus, kyprus, lyprus,
tryprus, and so on to the end. It's all the same; nothing will do. No
doubt Hook would have managed it; Theodore could do anything in that
way, but _I_ can't."

"Most unfortunate! But for these difficulties you might have been a
second Milton. You leave your wife behind, I suppose," said Bella,
completing her sketch and shutting the book.

"What!" exclaimed my volatile friend, becoming suddenly grave, "leave
Blue-eyes behind me! leave the mitigator of my woes, the doubler of my
joys, the light of my life behind me! No, Mrs Naranovitsch, Blue-eyes
is necessary to my existence; she inspires my pen and corrects my
spelling; she lifts my soul, when required, above the petty cares of
life, and enables me to take flights of genius, which, without her, were
impossible, and you know that flights of genius are required,
occasionally, of the correspondent of a weekly--at least of an Irish
weekly. Yes, Blue-eyes goes with me. We shall levant together."

"Are bad puns allowed in