e.

_Aurora_ for April is a delightful individual leaflet by Mrs. Ida C.
Haughton, exclusively devoted to poetical matters. The first poem,
"Aurora," is truly exquisite as a verbal picture of the summer dawn,
though rather rough-hewn metrically. Most open to criticism of all the
features of this piece, is the dissimilarity of the separate stanzas. In
a stanzaic poem the method of rhyming should be identical in every
stanza, yet Mrs. Haughton has here wavered between couplets and
alternate rhymes. In the opening stanza we behold first a quatrain, then
a quadruple rhyme. In the second we find couplets only. In the third a
quatrain is followed by an arrangement in which two rhyming lines
enclose a couplet, while in the final stanza the couplet again reigns
supreme. The metre also lacks uniformity, veering from iambic to
anapaestic form. These defects are, of course, merely technical, not
affecting the beautiful thought and imagery of the poem; yet the
sentiment would seem even more pleasing were it adorned with the garb of
metrical regularity. "On the Banks of Old Wegee" is a sentimental poem
of considerable merit, which suffers, however, from the same faults that
affect "Aurora." Most of these defects might have been obviated when the
stanzas were composed, by a careful counting of syllables in each line
and a constant consultation of some one, definite plan of rhyming. We
must here remark an error made in the typewritten copy of the original
manuscript, and reproduced in the finished magazine, for which, of
course, neither the poetical art of the author nor the technique of the
printer is to blame. In the second stanza, lines 6 and 7 were originally
written:

"How oft I've essayed to be
A fisherman bold, but my luck never told."

"Anent the Writing of Poetry" is a short prose essay, in which many
valuable truths are enunciated. Mrs. Haughton has evidently taken up the
poetic art with due seriousness, and considering the marked talent shown
in the first issue of her paper, we may justly expect to behold a
wonderfully rapid development in the near future.

_The Badger_ for June fulfills the promise of January, and shows us that
the present year has given the United a new and serious periodical of
satisfying quality. In the "Introductory," Mr. George Schilling
discusses in lively fashion the latest topics of the day, thereby
atoning for our own tedious "Finale." "Ready Made," by Samuel J.
Schilling, is a though