“Confound Rodman Drake!” I muttered to myself, for I had not read his poem, having scarcely touched anything save my text-books since I had been at Chapel Hill. Fortunately, I remembered a lecture of our Professor of Rhetoric, on American poetry, in which he had quoted from the poem in question; I therefore replied, pausing as if to consider:
“Really, Miss Finnock, the whole poem is so full of vivid descriptions and striking thoughts that it is hard to make a selection; but I think perhaps the finest passage is that which describes the firefly steed flinging a glittering spark behind.”
“Ah, yes,” she replied, “I remember that. But I think the tiniest, sweetest idea is, ‘their wee faces giggling above the brine.’” To express the tinyness of an idea, she squinted her eyes painfully, and squeezed her forefingers and thumb together, as if she were holding a flea.
“To tell the truth, Miss Finnock,” I said, hoping to take her out of her depth and thereby change the subject, “I greatly prefer the old classic writers, or even the earlier English poets, to the maudlin sentimentalists of the present day.”
“Oh, you prefer the classics, do you?” she exclaimed, brightening her dim looking eyes, “then I am glad we are congenial. Homer is too nervous in his style, but Pindar is so sweet; and Sappho—do you know I am named for her?—isn’t her poetry rapturous? and dear Horace, how pointed and terse he is. Do you know I have studied harder than anything his Art of Poetry, for I sometimes try to write verses myself. Did you ever write poetry? It is really difficult. And you say, too, you like the old English poets? How glad I am! I have a copy of Chaucer in my trunk, and we can read over some of his Canterbury Tales together. Then there’s Spencer; isn’t his Fairy Queen perfectly charming? And Sydney’s Arcadia, do you like that? Sometimes, when I am sad and gloomy, I even like to read the melancholy musings of poor John Ford. You’ve read Ford, have you not? and Marlowe?”
Great Heaven! thought I; take her out of her depth indeed! I have only taken her into it. My only hope to change the subject, and prevent an exposure of my ignorance, is to speak of her own verses, as I know she will not quit that theme as long as I appear interested. I said, therefore, as soon as she ceased speaking,
“You say that you write verses, Miss Finnock? I am sure they are lovely; and I would esteem it a very high honor and privilege to be permitted to read your composition.”
“Oh, I could not think of it,” she said, with an attempt at a blush; “besides, my portfolio is in my trunk, and therefore inaccessible.”
I protested my readiness to go below and have her trunk opened, that I might satisfy my desire to read her beautiful thoughts, and I insisted so earnestly that she would give me her keys and permit me to search, that she said, while she thanked me for my obliging spirit, she would not trouble me any farther than to get her reticule from Mrs. Marshman, for, if she was not mistaken, she had in that some verses on the Hudson that she had composed the summer before.