TO EDWIN BOOTH. MY DEAR BOOTH: In offering these verses to you, I beg you to treat them (as you have many a time advised a certain lord chamberlain to treat the players) not according to their desert. “Use them after your own honor and dignity; the less they deserve, the more merit is in […]

Pillared arch and sculptured towerOf Ilium have had their hour;The dust of many a king is blownOn the winds from zone to zone;Many a warrior sleeps unknown.Time and Death hold each in thrall,Yet is Love the lord of all;Still does Helen’s beauty stirBecause a poet sang of her!

The folk who lived in Shakespeare’s dayAnd saw that gentle figure passBy London Bridge, his frequent way–They little knew what man he was. The pointed beard, the courteous mien,The equal port to high and low,All this they saw or might have seen–But not the light behind the brow! The doublet’s modest gray or brown,The slender […]

I OF course that was not his name. Even in the State of Maine, where it is still a custom to maim a child for life by christening him Arioch or Shadrach or Ephraim, nobody would dream of calling a boy “Quite So.” It was merely a nickname which we gave him in camp; it […]

I Dr. Dillon to Edward Delaney, Esq. , at The Pines, near Rye, N. H. August 8, 1872. My Dear Sir—I am happy to assure you that your anxiety is without reason. Flemming will be confined to the sofa for three or four weeks, and will have to be careful at first how he uses […]