With many other bits of prophecy and celestial description I was regaled as I completed my toilet, and I hurried out of doors for an opportunity to think without disturbance. Strolling past the henyard I saw a meditative turtle, and picking him up and shouting to my nephews I held the reptile up for their inspection. Their window-blinds flew open, and a unanimous though not exactly harmonious "Oh!" greeted my prize. "Where did you get it, Uncle Harry?" asked Budge. "Down by the hen-coop." Budge's eyes opened wide; he seemed to devote a moment to profound thought, and then he exclaimed:-- "Why, I don't see how the hens COULD lay such a big thing--just put him in your hat till I come down, will you?" I dropped the turtle in Budge's wheelbarrow, and made a tour of the flower-borders. The flowers, always full of suggestion to me, seemed suddenly to have new charms and powers; they actually impelled me to try to make rhymes,--me, a steady white-goods salesman! The impulse was too strong to be resisted, though I must admit that the results were pitifully meager:-- "As radiant as that matchless rose Which poet-artists fancy; As fair as whitest lily-blows, As modest as the pansy; As pure as dew which hides within Aurora's sun-kissed chalice; As tender as the primrose sweet-- All this, and more, is Alice." In inflicting this fragment upon the reader, I have not the faintest idea that he can discover any merit in it; I quote it only that a subsequent experience of mine may be more intelligible. When I had composed these wretched lines I became conscious that I had neither pencil nor paper wherewith to preserve them. Should I lose them--my first self-constructed poem? Never! This was not the first time in which I had found it necessary to preserve words by memory alone. So I repeated my ridiculous lines over and over again, until the eloquent feeling of which they were the graceless expression inspired me to accompany my recital with gestures. Six--eight--ten--a dozen--twenty times I repeated these lines, each time with additional emotion and gestures, when a thin voice, very near me, remarked:-- "Ocken Hawwy, you does djust as if you was swimmin'." Turning, I beheld my nephew Toddie--how long he had been behind me I had no idea. He looked earnestly into my eyes and then remarked:-- "Ocken Hawwy, your faysh is wed, djust like a wosy-posy." "Let's go right in to breakfast, Toddie," said I aloud, as I grumbled to myself about the faculty of observation which Tom's children seemed to have.