“I reckon you’re right, Melindy,” said her brother Ichabod. “Why don’t you have your perductions, as you call ’em, mailed in Boston or New York? You could send ’em to somebody there.”
“Thank you, I wouldn’t stoop to the subterfuge,” said Melinda, reciting melodramatically:
“Breathes there a girl with soul so dead,
Who never to herself hath said,
Wisconsin is my native State?”
“Good!” said her brother. “When did you make up them verses?”
“They are not mine,” confessed Melinda. “They are by Byron.”
“Are they, now? He was a smart feller, wasn’t he?”
“He was an inspired poet, Ichabod; but you wouldn’t understand him. He soars into the realms of the evanescent.”
“Does he? Then I guess I couldn’t. I ain’t much on soarin’.”