Robinson, and I think perhaps she can never be a poet,
though she's a splendid writer. Last year when she was twelve she wrote
a birthday poem to herself, and she made 'natal' rhyme with 'Milton,'
which, of course, it wouldn't. I remember every verse ended:--

'This is my day so natal
And I will follow Milton.'

Another one of hers was written just because she couldn't help it she
said. This was it:--

'Let me to the hills away,
Give me pen and paper;
I'll write until the earth will sway
The story of my Maker.'"

The minister could scarcely refrain from smiling, but he controlled
himself that he might lose none of Rebecca's quaint observations. When
she was perfectly at ease, unwatched and uncriticised, she was a
marvelous companion.

"The name of the poem is going to be 'My Star,'" she continued, "and
Mrs. Baxter gave me all the ideas, but somehow there's a kind of
magicness when they get into poetry, don't you think so?" (Rebecca
always talked to grown people as if she were their age, or, a more
subtle and truer distinction, as if they were hers.)

"It has often been so remarked, in different words," agreed the
minister.

"Mrs. Baxter said that each star was a state, and if each state did its
best we should have a splendid country. Then once she said that we
ought to be glad the war is over and the States are all at peace
together; and I thought Columbia must be glad, too, for Miss Dearborn
says she's the mother of all the States. So I'm going to have it end
like this: I did n't write it, I just sewed it while I was working on
my star:--

"For it's your star, my star, all the stars together,
That make our country's flag so proud
To float in the bright fall weather.
Northern stars, Southern stars, stars of the East and West,
Side by side they lie at peace
On the dear flag's mother-breast."

"'Oh! many are the poets that are sown by Nature,'" thought the
minister, quoting Wordsworth to himself. "And I wonder what becomes of
them! That's a pretty idea, little Rebecca, and I don't know whether
you or my wife ought to have the more praise. What made you think of
the stars lying on the flag's 'mother-breast'? Were did you get that
word?"

"Why" (and the young poet looked rather puzzled), "that's the way it
is; the flag is the whole country--the mother--and the stars are the
states. The stars had to lie somewhere: 'lap' nor 'arms' wouldn't sound
well with 'West,' so, of course, I sa