their wild Utopian dreaming, and impracticable scheming
For a sinful world's redeeming, common sense flies out the door,
And the long-drawn dissertations come to--words and nothing more;
Only words, and nothing more.

* * * * *

Mary Clemmer Hudson has spoken of Phoebe Cary as "the wittiest woman
in America." But she truly adds:

"A flash of wit, like a flash of lightning, can only be remembered, it
cannot be reproduced. Its very marvel lies in its spontaneity and
evanescence; its power is in being struck from the present. Divorced
from that, the keenest representation of it seems cold and dead. We read
over the few remaining sentences which attempt to embody the repartees
and _bon mots_ of the most famous wits of society, such as Beau Nash,
Beau Brummel, Madame du Deffand, and Lady Mary Montagu; we wonder at the
poverty of these memorials of their fame. Thus it must be with Phoebe
Cary. Her most brilliant sallies were perfectly unpremeditated, and by
herself never repeated or remembered. When she was in her best moods
they came like flashes of heat lightning, like a rush of meteors, so
suddenly and constantly you were dazzled while you were delighted, and
afterward found it difficult to single out any distinct flash or
separate meteor from the multitude.... This most wonderful of her gifts
can only be represented by a few stray sentences gleaned here and there
from the faithful memories of loving friends....

"One tells how, at a little party, where fun rose to a great height, one
quiet person was suddenly attacked by a gay lady with the question: 'Why
don't you laugh? You sit there just like a post!'

"'There! she called you a post; why don't you rail at her?' was Phoebe's
quick exclamation.

"Mr. Barnum mentioned to her that the skeleton man and the fat woman
then on exhibition in his 'greatest show on earth' were married.

"'I suppose they loved through thick and thin,' was her comment.

"'On one occasion, when Phoebe was at the Museum looking about at the
curiosities,' says Mr. Barnum, 'I preceded her and had passed down a
couple of steps. She, intently watching a big anaconda in a case at the
top of the stairs, walked off, not noticing them, and fell. I was just
in time to catch her in my arms and save her from a good bruising'.

"'I am more lucky than that first woman was who fell through the
influence of the serpent,' said Phoebe, as she recovere