"
Budge's eyes opened wide; he seemed to devote a moment to profound
thought, and then he exclaimed:--
"Why, I don't see how the hens COULD lay such a big thing--just
put him in your hat till I come down, will you?"
I dropped the turtle in Budge's wheelbarrow, and made a tour of
the flower-borders. The flowers, always full of suggestion to me,
seemed suddenly to have new charms and powers; they actually
impelled me to try to make rhymes,--me, a steady white-goods
salesman! The impulse was too strong to be resisted, though I must
admit that the results were pitifully meager:--
"As radiant as that matchless rose
Which poet-artists fancy;
As fair as whitest lily-blows,
As modest as the pansy;
As pure as dew which hides within
Aurora's sun-kissed chalice;
As tender as the primrose sweet--
All this, and more, is Alice."
In inflicting this fragment upon the reader, I have not the
faintest idea that he can discover any merit in it; I quote it
only that a subsequent experience of mine may be more
intelligible. When I had composed these wretched lines I became
conscious that I had neither pencil nor paper wherewith to
preserve them. Should I lose them--my first self-constructed poem?
Never! This was not the first time in which I had found it
necessary to preserve words by memory alone.
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