ction--they were full of the sentiment of his day. He was much
influenced by Mathew Arnold and his school. My brother's are much more
lyrical.

[Illustration: ST. PATRICK'S HALL.]

"It is a curious thing," continued Mrs. Henniker, "that one or two of my
father's poems, which were thought least of at the time, have really
become the most popular and the best known. There is a story concerning
one of them which he often used to tell. He was visiting some friends
here in Ireland, and the beat of the horses' feet upon the road as he
drove to the house seemed to hammer out in his head certain rhythmical
ideas which quickly formed themselves into rhyme. As soon as he got to
the house he went to his room and wrote the words straight out. It was
the well-known song beginning--

"'I wandered by the brookside,'

And having the refrain--

"'But the beating of my own heart
Was all the sound I heard.'

"When he came down to dinner he showed these verses to his friends. They
all declared that they were unworthy of him, and advised him to throw
them into the fire. However, he did not take their advice; the moment
they were published, they caught the ear of the public, they were set to
music, and they were to be heard wherever one went. Indeed, a friend of
his who was sailing down a river in the Southern States of North
America, about a year afterwards, heard the slaves, as they hoed in the
plantations, keeping time by singing a parody of the lines which had by
then become universally familiar. And one day, in later years, my father
was walking in London with a friend; they were passing the end of a
street when they heard a man singing--he stopped and listened, and then
rushed after the man. He came back a few moments afterwards, bearing a
roughly printed paper in his hands."

[Illustration: RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES, FIRST LORD HOUGHTON.]

"'I knew it was my song that he was singing,' he said, and he was
perfectly right. He was much delighted.

"'It's a curious fact,' observed the Lord Lieutenant to me, 'and one
which Wemyss Reid specially notes in his biography, that my father
produced the greater part of his poetry between 1830 and 1840, just when
he was going most into Society.'"

"And you've gone in a good deal for writing verses yourself, following
in your father's footsteps, have you not, Mrs. Henniker?" said I. "Oh,"
she replied, "I began writing verses very early in my life, and the most
amusing part of it i