taught in that bare dining-room beside his gouty footstool. He was a piece of good advice; he was himself the instance that pointed and adorned his various talk. Nor could a young man have found elsewhere a place so set apart from envy, fear, discontent, or any of the passions that debase; a life so honest and composed; a soul like an ancient violin, so subdued to harmony, responding to a touch in music-as in that dining-room, with Mr. Hunter chatting at the eleventh hour, under the shadow of eternity, fearless and gentle.

R. L. Stevenson.

To O. W. Holmes. On his Seventy-Fifth Birthday

DEAR Wendell, why need count the years

Since first your genius made me thrill,

If what moved then to smiles or tears,
Or both contending, move me still?

What has the Calendar to do

With poets? What Time's fruitless tooth
With gay immortals such as you,

Whose years but emphasise your youth?

One air gave both their lease of breath;
The same paths lured our boyish feet;

One earth will hold us safe in death,

With dust of saints and scholars sweet.

Our legends from one source were drawn,

I scarce distinguish yours from mine, And don't we make the Gentiles yawn With "You remembers?" o'er our wine!

If I, with too senescent air,

Invade your elder memory's pale, You snub me with a pitying "Where Were you in the September Gale?"

Both stared entranced at Lafayette,
Saw Jackson dubbed with LL.D.;
What Cambridge saw not strikes us yet
As scarcely worth one's while to see.

Ten years my senior, when my name
In Harvard's entrance-book was writ,
Her halls still echoed with the fame
Of you, her poet and her wit.

'Tis fifty years from then to now: But your Last Leaf renews its green, Though, for the laurels on your brow (So thick they crowd), 'tis hardly seen.

The oriole's fledglings fifty times
Have flown from our familiar elms;

As many poets with their rhymes
Oblivion's darkling dust o'erwhelms.

The birds are hushed, the poets gone
Where no harsh critic's lash can reach,
And still your wingèd brood sing on
To all who love our English speech.

Nay, let the foolish records be

That make believe you're seventy-five : You're the old Wendell still to me,And that's the youngest man alive.

The grey-blue eyes, I see them still,
The gallant front with brown o'erhung,
The shape alert, the wit at will,

The phrase that stuck, but never stung.

You keep your youth as yon Scotch firs, Whose gaunt line my horizon hems, Though twilight all the lowland blurs, Hold sunset in their ruddy stems.

You with the elders? Yes, 'tis true,
But in no sadly literal sense,

With elders and coevals too,

Whose verb admits no preterite tense.

Master alike in speech and song

Of fame's great antiseptic-Style,

You with the classic few belong

Who tempered wisdom with a smile.

Clay

Outlive us all! Who else like you

Could sift the seedcorn from our chaff,
And make us with the pen we knew
Deathless at least in epitaph?

J. R. Lowell.

"WE The heart is clay, and clay the brain,

VE are but clay,” the preacher saith ;

And soon or late there cometh death

To mingle us with earth again."

Well, let the preacher have it so,
And clay we are, and clay shall be ;—

Why iterate?—for this I know,

That clay does very well for me.

When clay has such red mouths to kiss,
Firm hands to grasp, it is enough :

How can I take it aught amiss

We are not made of rarer stuff?

And if one tempt you to believe

His choice would be immortal gold,
Question him, Can you then conceive
A warmer heart than clay can hold?

Or richer joys than clay can feel?
And when perforce he falters nay,

Bid him renounce his wish, and kneel

In thanks for this same kindly clay.

E. V. L.

Edmund Quincy

OLD

LD Friend, farewell! Your kindly door again
I enter, but the master's hand in mine

No more clasps welcome, and the temperate wine,
That cheered our long nights, other lips must stain :
All is unchanged, but I expect in vain

The face alert, the manners free and fine,

The seventy years borne lightly as the pine
Wears its first down of snow in green disdain :
Much did he, and much well; yet most of all
I prized his skill in leisure and the ease
Of a life flowing full without a plan ;
For most are idly busy; him I call

Thrice fortunate who knew himself to please,
Learned in those arts that make a gentleman.

J. R. Lowell.

Inter Sodales

OVE

VER a pipe the Angel of Conversation
Loosens with glee the tassels of his purse,

And, in a fine spiritual exaltation,

Hastens, a rosy spendthrift, to disburse

The coins new minted of imagination.