the days long and dull
without my friend.

I assented with thanks; and shortly afterwards she brought me an armful
of literature--enough to have caused any young damsel to have been
dubbed a "blue," in those matter-of-fact days.

"I have no time to study much myself," said she, in answer to my
questions; "but I like those who do. Now, good evening, for I must
run. You and your friend can have any books of ours. You must not
think"--and she turned back to tell me this--"that because my father
said little he and I are not deeply grateful for the kindness Mr.
Halifax showed us last night."

"It was a pleasure to John--it always is--to do a kind office for any
one."

"I well believe that, Mr. Fletcher." And she left me.

When John came home I informed him of what had passed. He listened,
though he made no comment whatever. But all the evening he sat turning
over Miss March's books, and reading either aloud or to himself
fragments out of one--which I had expected he would have scouted,
inasmuch as it was modern not classical poetry: in fact, a collection
of Lyrical Ballads, brought out that year by a young man named Mr.
William Wordsworth, and some anonymous friend, conjointly. I had opened
it, and found therein great nonsense; but John had better luck--he hit
upon a short poem called "Love," by the Anonymous Friend, which he
read, and I listened to, almost as if it had been Shakspeare. It was
about a girl named Genevieve--a little simple story--everybody knows it
now; but it was like a strange, low, mystic music, luring the very
heart out of one's bosom, to us young visionaries then.

I wonder if Miss March knew the harm she did, and the mischief that has
been done among young people in all ages (since Caxton's days), by the
lending books, especially books of poetry.

The next day John was in a curious mood. Dreamy, lazy, mild; he sat
poring in-doors, instead of roaming abroad--in truth, was a changed
lad. I told him so, and laid it all to the blame of the Anonymous
Friend: who held him in such fascinated thrall that he only looked up
once all the morning,--which was when Mr. and Miss March went by. In
the afternoon he submitted, lamb-like, to be led down to the
beech-wood--that the wonderful talking stream might hold forth to him
as it did to me. But it could not--ah, no! it could not. Our lives,
though so close, were yet as distinct as the musical living water and
the motionless grey rock beside which