and they are written in a flourished, old-fashioned hand. These and every other line her father dreamed there in his chair Letitia treasures in a yellow scrap-book made of an odd volume of Rhode Island statutes for 18—. There, one by one, as he wrote them, or cut them with trembling fingers from the fresh, ink-scented Gazette—"Gems," scroll and all, and with date attached—she set them neatly in with home-made paste, pressing flat each precious flower of his muse with her loving fingers.
Editor Butters used to tell me of the soft-eyed girl, "with virtue in her modest glance," slipping suddenly into his print-shop, preferably after dusk had fallen, and of the well-known envelope rising from some sacred folds, he never quite knew where, to be laid tremblingly upon his desk.
"Something from father, sir."
It was a faint voice, often a little husky, and then a smile, a bow, and she had fled.
Editor Nathaniel Butters had a weakness of the heart for all tender things—a weakness "under oath," however, as he once replied when I charged him with it, and as I knew, for I myself heard him one summer afternoon, as he sat, shirt-sleeved and pipe in mouth, perched on a stool, and setting type hard by a window where I stood beneath fishing with a dogwood wand.
"The-oc-ri-tus! Humpf! Now, who in thunder cares a tinker's damn for Theocritus, in Grassy Ford? Some old Greek god, I suppose, who died and went to the devil; and here's a parson—a Christian parson who ought to know better—writing an ode to him, for Hank Myers to read, and Jim Gowdy, and Old Man Flynn. And I don't get a cent for it, not a blank cent, Sam—well, he doesn't either, for that matter—but it's all tommy-rot, and here I've got to sweat, putting in capitals where they don't belong and hopping down to the darned old dictionary every five minutes to see if he's right—Sam [turning to his printer] there's some folks think it's just heaven to be a country editor, but I'll be—"
He was a rough, white-bearded, little, round, fat man, who showed me type-lice, I remember (the first and only time I ever saw the vermin), and roared when I wiped my eyes, though I've forgiven him. He was good to Letitia in an hour of need.
Dr. Primrose, it seems, had written his masterpiece, a solemn, Dr. Johnsonian thing which he named "Jerusalem," and reaching, so old man Butters told me once, chuckling, "from Friday evening to Saturday night." The muse had granted him a longer candle than it was her wont to lend, and Letitia trembled for that sacred fire.
"Print it, child? Of course he'll print it. It's the finest thing I ever did!"
"True, father, but its length—"