Sylvia has now passed from Scott to Moore; and several times lately she has made herself heard in the garden with recitations to the fat boy on the subject of Peris weeping before the gates of Paradise, or warbling elegies under the green sea in regard to Araby's daughter. There is a real aptness in the latter reference; for this boy's true place in nature is the deep seas of the polar regions, where animals are coated with thick tissues of blubber. If Sylvia ever harpoons him, as she seems seriously bent on doing, she will have to drive her weapon in deep. Yesterday she sprang across to me with her hair flying and an open letter in her hand. "Oh, read it!" she cried, her face kindling with glory. It turned out to be a letter from the great Mr. Prentice, of the Louisville _Journal_ accepting a poem she had lately sent him, and assigning her a fixed place among his vast and twinkling galaxy of Kentucky poetesses. The title of the poem was, "My Lover Kneels to None but God." "I infer from this," I said, gravely, "that your lover is a Kentuckian." "He is," cried Sylvia. "Oh, his peerless, haughty pride!" "Well, I congratulate you, Sylvia," I continued, mildly, "upon having such an editor and such a lover; but I really think that your lover ought to kneel a little to Mr. Prentice on this one occasion." "Never!" cried Sylvia. "I would spurn him as chaff!" "Some day when you meet Mr. Prentice, Sylvia," I continued, further, "you will want to be very nice to him, and you might give him something new to parse." Sylvia studied me dubiously; the subject is not one that reassures her. "Because the other day I heard a very great friend of Mr. Prentice's say of him that when he was fifteen he could parse every sentence in Virgil and Homer. And if he could do that then, think what he must he able to do now, and what a pleasure it must afford him!" I would not imbitter Sylvia's joy by intimating that perhaps Mr. Prentice's studious regard for much of the poetry that he published was based upon the fact that he could not parse it. There has been the most terrible trouble with the raccoon.