sence of poetry, which this book contains. I know of no other instance
in which such really beautiful poetry has been written by a child; but,
confronted with so unwonted a state of things, two questions obtrude
themselves: how far has the condition of childhood been impaired by, not
only the possession, but the expression, of the gift of writing; how far
has the condition of authorship (at least in its more mature state still
to come) been hampered by this early leap into the light?

The first question concerns the little girl and can best be answered
by herself some twenty years hence; the second concerns the world, and
again the answer must wait. We can, however, do something--we can see
what she is and what she has done. And if the one is interesting to the
psychologist, the other is no less important to the poet.

Hilda Conkling is the younger daughter of Mrs. Grace Hazard Conkling,
Assistant Professor of English at Smith College, Northampton,
Massachusetts. At the time of writing, Hilda has just passed her ninth
birthday. Her sister, Elsa, is two years her senior. The children and
their mother live all the year round in Northampton, and glimpses of the
woods and hills surrounding the little town crop up again and again
in these poems. This is Emily Dickinson's country, and there is a
reminiscent sameness in the fauna and flora of her poems in these.

The two little girls go to a school a few blocks from where they live.
In the afternoons, they take long walks with their mother, or play in
the garden while she writes. On rainy days, there are books and Mrs.
Conkling's piano, which is not just a piano, for Mrs. Conkling is a
musician, and we may imagine that the children hear a special music as
they certainly read a special literature. By "special" I do not mean
a prescribed course (for dietitians of the mind are quite as apt to be
faddists as dietitians of the stomach), but just that sort of reading
which a person who passionately loves books would most want to introduce
her children to. And here I think we have the answer to the why of
Hilda. She and her sister have been their mother's close companions
ever since they were born. They have never known that somewhat equivocal
relationship--a child with its nurse. They have never been for hours at
a time in contact with an elementary intelligence. If Hilda had shown
these poems to even the most sympathetic nurse, what would have been the
result? In the first place,