w-mown hay. The house is fit for a poet; roomy,
cheerful, and filled with flowers. One end of the large, double
parlors seemed a bank of azalias and honeysuckles, while great bunches
of yellow primrose and blue forget-me-not were on the tables and in
the bay-windows.

But most interesting of all was the poet herself, in middle life, with
fine, womanly face, friendly manner, and cultivated mind. For an hour
we talked of many things in both countries. Miss Ingelow showed great
familiarity with American literature and with our national questions.

While everything about her indicated deep love for poetry, and a keen
sense of the beautiful, her conversation, fluent and admirable,
showed her to be eminently practical and sensible, without a touch of
sentimentality. Her first work in life seems to be the making of her
two brothers happy in the home. She usually spends her forenoons
in writing. She does her literary work thoroughly, keeping her
productions a long time before they are put into print. As she is
never in robust health, she gives little time to society, and passes
her winters in the South of France or Italy. A letter dated Feb. 25,
from the Alps Maritime, at Cannes, says, "This lovely spot is full of
flowers, birds, and butterflies." Who that recalls her _Songs on
the Voices of Birds_, the blackbird, and the nightingale, will not
appreciate her happiness with such surroundings?

With great fondness for, and pride in, her own country, she has the
most kindly feelings toward America and her people. She says in the
preface of her novel, _Fated to be Free_, concerning this work and
_Off the Skelligs_, "I am told that they are peculiar; and I feel that
they must be so, for most stories of human life are, or at least aim
at being, works of art--selections of interesting portions of life,
and fitting incidents put together and presented as a picture is; and
I have not aimed at producing a work of art at all, but a piece of
nature." And then she goes on to explain her position to "her American
friends," for, she says, "I am sure you more than deserve of me some
efforts to please you. I seldom have an opportunity of saying how
truly I think so."

Jean Ingelow's life has been a quiet but busy and earnest one. She was
born in the quaint old city of Boston, England, in 1830. Her father
was a well-to-do banker; her mother a cultivated woman of Scotch
descent, from Aberdeenshire. Jean grew to womanhood in the midst of
elev