paraphrase Emily
Dickinson:

Night after night his purple traffic
Strews the landing with opal bales;
Merchantmen poise upon horizons,
Dip, and vanish with fairy sails.

Another pleasing fact is that while he was a medical student Keats
lived in Bird-in-Hand Court, Cheapside--best known nowadays as the
home of Simpson's, that magnificent chophouse. Who else, in modern
times, came so close to holding unruffled in his hand the shy wild
bird of Poetry?

[Illustration]

A CITY NOTE-BOOK

Well, now let us see in what respect we are richer to-day than we
were yesterday.

Coming down Fifth Avenue on top of a bus, we saw a man absorbed in a
book. Ha, we thought, here is our chance to see how bus reading
compares to subway reading! After some manoeuvering, we managed to
get the seat behind the victim. The volume was "Every Man a King,"
by Orison Swett Marden, and the uncrowned monarch reading it was
busy with the thirteenth chapter, to wit: "Thoughts Radiate as
Influence." We did a little radiating of our own, and it seemed to
reach him, for presently he grew uneasy, put the volume carefully
away in a brief-case, and (as far as we could see) struck out toward
his kingdom, which apparently lay on the north shore of Forty-second
Street.

We felt then that we would recuperate by glancing at a little
literature. So we made our way toward the newly enlarged shrine of
James F. Drake on Fortieth Street. Here we encountered our friends
the two Messrs. Drake, junior, and complimented them on their thews
and sinews, these two gentlemen having recently, unaided, succeeded
in moving a half-ton safe, filled with the treasures of Elizabethan
literature, into the new sanctum. Here, where formerly sped the
nimble fingers of M. Tappe's young ladies, busy with the compilation
of engaging bonnets for the fair, now stand upon wine-dark shelves
the rich gold and amber of fine bindings. We were moved by this
sight. We said in our heart, we will erect a small madrigal upon
this theme, entitled: "Song Upon Certain Songbirds of the
Elizabethan Age Now Garnishing the Chamber Erstwhile Bright With the
Stuffed Plumage of the Milliner." To the Messrs. Drake we mentioned
the interesting letter of Mr. J. Acton Lomax in yesterday's
_Tribune_, which called attention to the fact that the poem at the
end of "Through the Looking Glass" is an acrostic giving the name of
the original Alice--viz.