Of course I was delighted to bring it to her; when she opened it and took out a yard and a quarter of printed poetry, which she commenced to read, first making me promise, a naughty boy, not to laugh at anything in it.
She read the entire yard and a quarter with heaving bosom and unusually dilated optics; but I cannot inflict upon my readers more than an inch or two.
The theme of the poem was the launching of the first steamboat, and in her eyes it seemed an epic fit for Virgil. The lines were these:
THE HUDSON.
“Oh thou mighty, sweeping, rushing river,
Through thy cloud-reflecting bosom grand,
With unfledged wheels the first steamboat proud-
Ly plows, while on its trembling bulwarks stand
The gay, triumphant and prophetic crowd.”
“Oh, that is perfectly enchanting,” I exclaimed, when she had completed the ninety-third and last verse, feeling assured that, when she thought so highly of the effort herself, no commendation could be fulsome.
“Pardon the abrupt praise, but Mrs. Browning could not have expressed the idea of the untried wheels more strikingly than you did, by the single word ‘unfledged.’”
“You flatter me, indeed, sir,” she said, looking immensely pleased; “but, to be candid with you, I thought myself that the expression was original and effective. Can you imagine how I got such an idea?”
“Not unless the fairies brought it to you,” I said, gallantly.
“I was at Yonkers last summer, while composing this piece, and saw a young duck, with unfledged wings, learning to swim, and immediately I thought of the steamboat. Remarkable coincidence, was it not?”