within the Mermaid's haunt I lay,
And twice I crossed the unpermitted stream,
And touched on Orpheus' lyre as in a dream,
Sighs of a Saint, and laughter of a Fay!

ON BOOKS ABOUT RED MEN

_To Richard Wilby, Esq., Eton College, Windsor_.

My Dear Dick,--It is very good of you, among your severe studies at Eton,
to write to your Uncle. I am extremely pleased to hear that your
football is appreciated in the highest circles, and shall be happy to
have as good an account of your skill in making Latin verses.

I am glad you like "She," Mr. Rider Haggard's book which I sent you. It
is "something like," as you say, and I quite agree with you, both in
being in love with the heroine, and in thinking that she preaches rather
too much. But, then, as she was over two thousand years old, and had
lived for most of that time among cannibals, who did not understand her,
one may excuse her for "jawing," as you say, a good deal, when she met
white men. You want to know if "She" is a true story. Of course it is!

But you have read "She," and you have read all Cooper's, and Marryat's,
and Mr. Stevenson's books, and "Tom Sawyer," and "Huckleberry Finn,"
several times. So have I, and am quite ready to begin again. But, to my
mind, books about "Red Indians" have always seemed much the most
interesting. At your age, I remember, I bought a tomahawk, and, as we
had also lots of spears and boomerangs from Australia, the poultry used
to have rather a rough time of it.

I never could do very much with a boomerang; but I could throw a spear to
a hair's breadth, as many a chicken had occasion to discover. When you
go home for Christmas I hope you will remember that all this was very
wrong, and that you will consider we are civilized people, not Mohicans,
nor Pawnees. I also made a stone pipe, like Hiawatha's, but I never
could drill a hole in the stem, so it did not "draw" like a civilized
pipe.

By way of an awful warning to you on this score, and also, as you say you
want a _true_ book about Red Indians, let me recommend to you the best
book about them _I_ ever came across. It is called "A Narrative of the
Captivity and Adventures of John Tanner, during Thirty Years' Residence
among the Indians," and it was published at New York by Messrs. Carvill,
in 1830.

If I were an American publisher, instead of a British author (how I wish
I was!) I'd publish "John Tanner" again, or perhaps cut a good deal out,
and ma