"'Her cheeks are like yon crimson gem, The pride of all the flow'ry scene, Just opening on its thorny stem. * * * * * "'Aye, and then-- "'Her lips are like yon cherries ripe, That sunny walls from Boreas screen-- They tempt the taste and charm the sight; An' she has twa sparkling roguish een.'" * * * * * At this point I awoke, sat up in bed and reached out for the suspended electric button, which I pushed for two long rings and a short one, my private signal. I was thirsty for grape-juice. Hygeia seldom traveled beyond range of my bell. As soon as she heard it, she stopped reading and asked to be excused for a few minutes, until she could attend to my wants. It was now my eighth week at the hospital, and it found me with little to do. I pined silently. The nurse flitting in and out cheered and then distracted me; she was too busy elsewhere most of the time to suit me. I dared not think too much of my troubles, for I found it discouraging and weakening. The letters from Obreeon furnished the material I needed to sustain a happy train of thought. Sitting up in bed with this precious poetic patchwork piled over my lap, I had many a good sneeze. I am sure I got some of my money back by reading them over and over again, with the memory of the original spirit in which they were slapped together. For a time the happy days of the fifth flat came back to me, and I smiled and chuckled over the wildest specimens in suppressed glee. Robert Burns, of Scotland, and I were responsible for many of these lone lover's laments. I must say that Burns held up his end fairly well, because I knew just where to place his underpinning to make it support my magnificent prose. The Byron and Shakespeare-built letters were also good. Scott rumbled a little too hard; his stride was too firm to answer the purpose, except for short fillers now and then. All the big licks were put in with Byron and Burns, and Morris occasionally as a substitute. Those fellows warmed up to the subject in a way that pleased me; they took right hold of a girl with as little timidity as a dancing professor and poured their song into her inclining ear, happy in the understanding that they were delivering the goods she wanted. Early in the business I had come to the conclusion that it was useless to fool with the cold-blooded wooers if results were wanted. Shakespeare, of course, was a leader, but his best stuff was getting to be so common in the language I found it impossible to quote him and maintain an air of dignified originality, so as to make it appear that the gems fell naturally by suggestion from Jim's well-stocked poem reservoir. If the maiden should get the idea that the prose was written around the poetry the scenic effect would be destroyed. The great thing was to make a hit by getting the sincerity in the prose boiled down so thick that the