to receive his plain and forcible arguments. But
someone remarked that his speaking lacked dignity and weight; so he
loaded himself with the works of Edmund Burke; and now he discusses the
smallest subject with a ponderosity suited to the largest. The charm of
Alfred Tennyson Starling's early lyrics was unmistakable. But in an
evil day a newspaper announced that his poetry smelled of the lamp and
was deficient in virility. Alfred took it painfully to heart, and fell
into a violent state of Whitmania. Have you seen his patient imitations
of the long-lined, tumultuous one?

After all, the surest way to be artificial is to try to be natural
according to some other man's recipe.

One reason why the wild children of nature attract our eyes, and give
us an inward, subtle satisfaction in watching them, is because they
seem so confident that their own way of doing things is, for them at
least, the best way. They let themselves go, on the air, in the water,
over the hills, among the trees, and do not ask for admiration or
correction from people who are differently built. The sea-gulls flying
over a busy port of commerce, or floating at ease on the discoloured,
choppy, churned-up waves of some great river,

"Bordered by cities, and hoarse
With a thousand cries,"

are unconscious symbols of nature's self-reliance and content with her
ancient methods. Not a whit have they changed their manner of flight,
their comfortable, rocking-chair seat upon the water, their creaking,
eager voice of hunger and excitement, since the days when the port was
a haven of solitude, and the river was crossed only by the red man's
canoe passing from forest to forest. They are untroubled by the
fluctuations of trade, the calms and tempests which afflict the stock
market, the hot waves and cold waves of politics. They do not fash
themselves about the fashions--except, perhaps, that silly and
barbarous one of adorning the headgear of women with the remains of
dead gulls. They do not ask whether life is worth living, but launch
themselves boldly upon the supposition that it is, and seem to find it
interesting, various, and highly enjoyable, even among wharves,
steamboats, and factory chimneys.

My first acquaintance with these untamed visitors of the metropolis was

"When that I was a littel tine boy,"

and lived on the Heights of Brooklyn. A nurse, whose hateful official
relation was mitigated by many amiable personal qualities--she was