uch the infant
prodigy as a clear proof that the child mind, before the precious spark is
destroyed, possesses both vision and the ability to express it in natural
and beautiful rhythm. Grace Hazard Conkling, herself a poet, is Hilda's
mother. They live at Northampton, Massachusetts, in the academic
atmosphere of Smith College where those who know the little girl say that
she enjoys sliding down a cellar stairway quite as much as she does
talking of elves and gnomes. She was born in New York State, so that she
is distinctly of the East. The rhythms which she uses to express her ideas
are the result both of her own moods, which are often crystal-clear in
their delicate imagery, and of the fact that from time to time, when she
was first able to listen, her mother read aloud to her. In fact, her first
poems were made before she, herself, could write them down. The
speculation as to what she will do when she grows to womanhood is a common
one. Is it important? A childhood filled with beauty is something to have
achieved."

Bend low, blue sky,
Touch my forehead;
You look cool ... bend down ...

Flow about me in your blueness and coolness,
Be thistledown, be flowers,
Be all the songs I have not yet sung.

Laugh at me, sky!
Put a cap of cloud on my head ...
Blow it off with your blue winds;
Give me a feeling of your laughter
Beyond cloud and wind!
I need to have you laugh at me
As though you liked me a little.

This has been, as I meant it to be, a wholly serious chapter; but at the
end I find I cannot stop without speaking of Keith Preston. No one who
reads the Chicago Daily News fails to know Keith Preston's delightful
humour and "needle-tipped satire." And his book, _Splinters_, contains all
sorts of good things of which I can give you, alas, only some inadequate
(because solitary) sample. Yet, anyway, here is his "Ode to Common
Sense":

Spirit or demon, Common Sense!
Seen seldom by us mortals dense,
Come, sprite, inform, inhabit me
And teach me art and poetry.

Teach me to chuckle, sly as you,
At gods that now I truckle to,
To doubt the New Republic's bent,
And jeer each bookish Supplement.

Now, like a thief, you come and flit,
You call so seldom, Mother Wit!
Remember? Once when you stood by
I found a Dreiser novel dry.

One day when I was reading hard--
What? Amy Lowell, godlike bard!
You peeped and then at what you saw
Gave one Gargantuan gu