poke of it as the
"platform"--puerilely intimating that they were out lecturing when it
happened.

It is Mrs. Eddy over again. As regards her minor half, she is as
commonplace as the rest of us. Vain of trivial things all the first half
of her life, and still vain of them at seventy and recording them with
naive satisfaction--even rescuing some early rhymes of hers of the sort
that we all scribble in the innocent days of our youth--rescuing them
and printing them without pity or apology, just as the weakest and
commonest of us do in our gray age. More--she still frankly admires
them; and in her introduction of them profanely confers upon them the
holy name of "poetry." Sample:

"And laud the land whose talents rock
The cradle of her power,
And wreaths are twined round Plymouth Rock
From erudition's bower."

"Minerva's silver sandals still
Are loosed and not effete."

You note it is not a shade above the thing which all human beings churn
out in their youth.

You would not think that in a little wee primer--for that is what the
Autobiography is--a person with a tumultuous career of seventy years
behind her could find room for two or three pages of padding of this
kind, but such is the case. She evidently puts narrative together with
difficulty and is not at home in it, and is glad to have something
ready-made to fill in with. Another sample:

"Here fame-honored Hickory rears his bold form,
And bears a brave breast to the lightning and storm,
While Palm, Bay, and Laurel in classical glee,
Chase Tulip, Magnolia, and fragrant Fringe-tree."

Vivid? You can fairly see those trees galloping around. That she
could still treasure up, and print, and manifestly admire those Poems,
indicates that the most daring and masculine and masterful woman that
has appeared in the earth in centuries has the same soft, girly-girly
places in her that the rest of us have.

When it comes to selecting her ancestors she is still human, natural,
vain, commonplace--as commonplace as I am myself when I am sorting
ancestors for my autobiography. She combs out some creditable Scots, and
labels them and sets them aside for use, not overlooking the one to whom
Sir William Wallace gave "a heavy sword encased in a brass scabbard,"
and naively explaining which Sir William Wallace it was, lest we get
the wrong one by the hassock; this is the one "from whose patriotism
and bravery comes that heart-