If fame belonged to me, I could not escape her; if she did not, the longest day would pass me on the chase, and the approbation of my dog would forsake me then. My barefoot rank is better. You think my gait “spasmodic.” I am in danger, sir. You think me “uncontrolled.” I have no tribunal. Would you have time to be the “friend” you should think I need? I have a little shape: it would not crowd your desk, nor make much racket as the mouse that dens your galleries. If I might bring you what I do—not so frequent to trouble you—and ask you if I told it clear, ’twould be control to me. The sailor cannot see the North, but knows the needle can. The “hand you stretch me in the dark” I put mine in, and turn away. I have no Saxon now:— As if I asked a common alms, And in my wandering hand A stranger pressed a kingdom, And I, bewildered, stand; As if I asked the Orient Had it for me a morn, And it should lift its purple dikes And shatter me with dawn! But, will you be my preceptor, Mr. Higginson? With this came the poem since published in one of her volumes and entitled “Renunciation”; and also that beginning “Of all the sounds dispatched abroad,” thus fixing approximately the date of those two. I must soon have written to ask her for her picture, that I might form some impression of my enigmatical correspondent. To this came the following reply, in July, 1862:— Could you believe me without? I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the wren; and my hair is bold like the chestnut bur; and my eyes, like the sherry in the glass, that the guest leaves. Would this do just as well? It often alarms father. He says death might occur and he has moulds of all the rest, but has no mould of me; but I noticed the quick wore off those things, in a few days, and forestall the dishonor. You will think no caprice of me. You said “Dark.” I know the butterfly, and the lizard, and the orchis. Are not those _your_ countrymen? I am happy to be your scholar, and will deserve the kindness I cannot repay. If you truly consent, I recite now. Will you tell me my fault, frankly as to yourself, for I had rather wince than die. Men do not call the surgeon to commend the bone, but to set it, sir, and fracture within is more critical. And for this, preceptor, I shall bring you obedience, the blossom from my garden, and every gratitude I know. Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that. My business is circumference. An ignorance, not of customs, but if caught with the dawn, or the sunset see me, myself the only kangaroo among the beauty, sir, if you please, it afflicts me, and I thought that instruction would take it away.