er? Ah! why should we
not "tell truth and shame the devil"--doesn't she bring us to the
babies and the family doctor?

But it is not as a writer of prose that Mrs. Blake has secured a niche
in our gallery of literary portraits. Indeed, without knowing it, we
have already introduced her poetry to our readers: for we are pleased to
find in her volume of collected poems an anonymous piece which we had
gathered as one of our "Flowers for a Child's Grave," from a number of
_The Boston Pilot_ as far back as 1870. We should reprint page 171 of
this volume if it were not already found in our eighth volume (1880) at
page 608. The division of Mrs. Blake's poems to which it belongs
contains, we think, her best work. Her muse never sings more sweetly
than in giving expression to the joy and grief of a mother's heart. The
verses just referred to were the utterances of maternal grief: a
mother's joy breaks out into these pleasant and musical stanzas:--

My little man is merry and wise,
Gay as a cricket and blithe as a bird;
Often he laughs and seldom he cries,
Chatters and coos at my lightest word:
Peeping and creeping and opening the door,
Clattering, pattering over the floor,
In and out, round about, fast as he can,--
So goes the daytime with my little man.

My little man is brimful of fun,
Always in mischief and sometimes in grief;
Thimble and scissors he hides one by one,
Till nothing is left but to catch the thief;
Sunny hair, golden fair over his brow--
Eyes so deep, lost in sleep, look at him now;
Baby feet, dimpled sweet, tired as they ran,
So goes the night-time with my little man.

My little man, with cherry-ripe face,
Pouting red lips and dimpled chin,
Fashioned in babyhood's exquisite grace,
Beauty without and beauty within,--
Full of light, golden bright, life as it seems,
Not a tear, not a fear, known in thy dreams;
Kisses and blisses now make up its span,
Could it be always so, my little man?

My little man the years fly away,
Chances and changes may come to us all,--
I'll look for the babe at my side some day,
And find him above me, six feet tall;
Flowing beard hiding the dimples I love,
Grizzled locks shading the clear brow above,
Youth's promise ripened on Nature's broad plan,
And nothing more left me of my little man