“I can realize your feelings,” replied Fred, “for I, too, have loved to listen on this spot to the many voices of nature. How often have I sat beneath these trees to watch the daylight fade from the hills, and the twilight throw its shadows over the landscape, seeming to descend lower and lower till they rested on the bosom of the river, and I could see nothing but the white foam gleaming through the dark, where it falls over the rocks away yonder. Then the low, thrilling, whispering of the wind among the pines, and the melancholy scream of the night-hawk—I declare they have made me quite poetical, as you see,” he added, smiling, and slightly embarrassed at having been thus betrayed out of his usual composure, which embarrassment was not at all relieved by meeting Hattie’s large dark eyes fixed on him with an expression of wonder and gratification. Perhaps it was this _mauvais honte_—perhaps it was the argumentative spirit which had occasioned us to give him in the family the soubriquet of “the opposing member”—that gave so singular a turn to this sentimental conversation, when at this moment, in turning over the leaves of her book, Fred found a slip of paper covered with verses of Harriet’s composition. “So you write poetry, too!” said he, looking up at her with a smile. “Oh, give it to me—I wouldn’t have you read it for the world,” exclaimed she, springing forward with such evident distress that he reluctantly relinquished the manuscript. “You needn’t be afraid of his criticism, for he writes poetry sometimes,” said I. “_Do_ you?” said Hattie, incredulously. “Certainly,” answered my brother; “everybody does now-a-days. In the class from which I graduated at college, there were forty-five, of which forty wrote poetry.” “Wrote _verses_, you mean,” said Hattie, demurringly. “There is very little difference. The Horatian maxim, ‘_Poeta nascitur non fit_,’ which has so long been thought to countenance a distinction, simply means that men and women who write poetry, like other men and women, are ‘born.’” “I suppose, then,” replied Hattie, humoring the idea, “that the doctrine that poets were obliged to gallop up the sides of a steep mountain in Greece, on a vicious nondescript called Pegasus, is to be considered wholly metaphorical.” “Just so,” said Fred. “Pegasus is now a mere omnibus horse, and timid people need no longer be afraid of entering the coach lest they should get a kick from the rampant animal, or be thrown into the depths of Helicon.” “The doctrine of inspiration is also exploded,” said I, laughing. “Burns used to compose some of his nice little sonnets while engaged in the groveling occupation of ploughing, and if any thing more elaborate than usual was wanting, he took a glass of Scotch whisky.”