Duchess of MARLBOROUGH.
Of such is the Colony of Victoria.
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
"Dear Miss DOLLIE RADFORD," writes the Assistant-Reader, "I trust I am right in the feminine and unconjugal prefix; but, be that as it may, I wish simply to tell you that, at the instigation of a lettered friend, I have spent a few moments very wisely in reading your thin little book of verse, A Light Load. (ELKIN MATHEWS.) I feel now as if I had been gently drifting down a smooth broad river under the moonlight, when all nature is quiet. I don't quite know why I feel like that, but I fancy it must be on account of some serene and peaceful quality in your poems. Here, then, there are sixty-four little pages of restfulness for those whose minds are troubled. You don't plunge into the deep of metaphysics and churn it into a foam, but you perch on your little bough and pipe sweetly of gorse and heather and wide meadows and brightly-flashing insects; you sing softly as when, in your own words—
"—gently this evening the ripples break
On the pebbles beneath the trees,
With a music as low as the full leaves make,
When they stir in some soft sea-breeze."