That pitcher of mignonette
Is a garden in heaven set,
To the little sick child in the basement—
The pitcher of mignonette
In the tenement's highest casement.
The last poem in the book, called "To Her," was addressed to Miss Alice Learned, whom he married soon after, and to whom, as "A. L. B." all his later books were dedicated. Soon after his marriage he moved to Nutley, New Jersey. Here he was not only the editor and man of letters but the neighbor who could always be called on in time of need, and the citizen who took an active part in the community life, helping to organize the Village Improvement Society, one of the first of its kind.
He followed up his first volume by two short novels, The Midge and The Story of a New York House. Then he undertook the writing of the short story, his first book being Zadoc Pine and other Stories. The title story of this book contains a very humorous and faithful delineation of a New Englander who is transplanted to a New Jersey suburb. Soon after writing this he began to read the short stories of Guy de Maupassant. He admired them so much that he half translated, half adapted a number of them, and published them under the title Made in France. Then he tried writing stories of his own, in the manner of de Maupassant, and produced in Short Sixes a group of stories which are models of concise narrative, crisply told, artistic in form, and often with a touch of surprise at the end. Other volumes of short stories are More Short Sixes, and Love in Old Cloathes. Jersey Street and Jersey Lane was a book which grew out of his Nutley life. He also wrote a play, The Tower of Babel, which was produced by Marie Wainwright in 1883. He died at Nutley, May 11, 1896. He was one of the first American authors to develop the short story as we know it to-day, and few of his successors have surpassed him in the light, sure style and the firmness of construction which are characteristic of his later work.