Just to hear the lovely woman, looking more divine than human,
Talk with such discrimination of Ingersoll and Cook,
With such a childish, sweet smile, quoting Huxley, Mill, and Carlyle—
It was quite a revelation—it was better than a book.
Chemistry and mathematics, agriculture and chromatics,
Music, painting, sculpture—she knew all the tricks of speech;
Bas-relief and chiaroscuro, and at last the Indian Bureau—
She discussed it quite serenely, as she trifled with a peach.
I have seen some dreadful creatures, with vinegary features,
With their fearful store of learning set me sadly in eclipse;
But I'm ready quite to swear if I have ever heard the Tariff
Or the Eastern Question settled by such a pair of lips.
Never saw I a dainty maiden so remarkably o'erladen
From lip to tip of finger with the love of books and men;
Quite in confidence I say it, and I trust you'll not betray it,
But I pray to gracious heaven that I never may again.
—Chicago Tribune.
THE BALLAD OF CASSANDRA BROWN.
BY HELEN GRAY CONE.
Though I met her in the summer, when one's heart lies 'round at ease,
As it were in tennis costume, and a man's not hard to please;
Yet I think at any season to have met her was to love,
While her tones, unspoiled, unstudied, had the softness of the dove.
At request she read us poems, in a nook among the pines,
And her artless voice lent music to the least melodious lines;
Though she lowered her shadowing lashes, in an earnest reader's wise,
Yet we caught blue gracious glimpses of the heavens that were her eyes.
As in Paradise I listened. Ah, I did not understand
That a little cloud, no larger than the average human hand,
Might, as stated oft in fiction, spread into a sable pall,
When she said that she should study elocution in the fall.