an thinketh so is she. The thought of a lifetime on the banks of the
Susquehanna with a woman who was simply pink and good, and who was never
roused into animation even by his wildest poetic bursts, took all ambition
out of him.

Funds were low and the emigration scheme was temporarily pigeonholed.
After a short time Coleridge declared his mind was getting mildewed and
packed off to London for mental oxygen and a little visit, leaving his
wife in Southey's charge.

He was gone two years.

Lovell soon followed suit, and Southey had three sisters in his household,
all with babies.

In the meantime we find Southey installed at "Greta," just outside of the
interesting town of Keswick, where the water comes down at Lodore. Southey
was a general: he knew that knowledge consists in having a clerk who can
find the thing. He laid out research work and literary schemes enough for
several lifetimes, and the three sisters were hard at it. It was a little
community of their own--all working for Southey, and glad of it.
Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy lived at Grasmere, thirteen miles away,
and they used to visit back and forth. When you go to Keswick you should
tramp that thirteen miles--the man who hasn't tramped from Keswick to
Grasmere has dropped something out of his life. In merry jest, tipped with
acid, some one called them "The Lake Poets," as if there were poets and
lake poets. And Lamb was spoken of as "a Lake Poet by grace." Literary
London grinned, as we do when some one speaks of the Sweet Singer of
Michigan or the Chicago Muse. But the term of contempt stuck and, like the
words Methodist, Quaker and Philistine, soon ceased to be a term of
reproach and became something of which to be proud.

There is a lead-pencil factory at Keswick, established in the year
Eighteen Hundred. Pencils are made there today exactly as they were made
then, and when you see the factory you are willing to believe it. All
visitors at Keswick go to the pencil-factory and buy pencils, such as
Southey used, and get their names stamped on each pencil while they wait,
without extra charge. On the wall is a silhouette picture of Southey,
showing a needlessly large nose, and the gentlemanly old proprietor will
tell you that Dorothy Wordsworth made the picture; and then he will show
you a letter written by Charles Lamb, framed under glass, wherein C.L.
says all pencils are fairish good, but no pencils are so good as Keswick
pencils.

For a whil