upassant to American subjects; they
display that wonderful facility in reproducing the flavor of another's
style which is exhibited in Bunner's verse in a still more eminent
degree. His prose style never attained the perfection of literary
finish, but it is easy and direct, free from sentimentality and
rhetoric; in the simplicity of his conceptions and the delicacy of his
treatment lies its chief charm.

Bunner's verse, on the other hand, shows a complete mastery of form. He
was a close student of Horace; he tried successfully the most exacting
of exotic verse-forms, and enjoyed the distinction of having written the
only English example of the difficult Chant-Royal. Graceful _vers de
societe_ and bits of witty epigram flowed from him without effort. But
it was not to this often dangerous facility that Bunner owed his poetic
fame. His tenderness, his quick sympathy with nature, his insight into
the human heart, above all, the love and longing that filled his soul,
have infused into his perfected rhythms the spirit of universal
brotherhood that underlies all genuine poetry. His 'Airs from Arcady'
(1884) achieved a success unusual for a volume of poems; and the love
lyrics and patriotic songs of his later volume, 'Rowen,' maintain the
high level of the earlier book. The great mass of his poems is still
buried in the back numbers of the magazines, from which the best are to
be rescued in a new volume. If his place is not among the greatest of
our time, he has produced a sufficient body of fine verse to rescue his
name from oblivion and render his memory dear to all who value the
legacy of a sincere and genuine poet. He died on May 11th, 1896, at the
age of forty-one.

TRIOLET

A pitcher of mignonette,
In a tenement's highest casement:
Queer sort of flower-pot--yet
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.

Copyrighted by Charles Scribner's Sons.

THE LOVE-LETTERS OF SMITH

From 'Short Sixes'

When the little seamstress had climbed to her room in the story over the
top story of the great brick tenement house in which she lived, she was
quite tired out. If you do not understand what a story over a top story
is, you must remember that there are no limits to human greed, and
hardly any to the height of tenement houses. When the man who owned