"The Lady that's been so long with me is going to a house of her own," said the Landlady, "one she has bought back again, for it used to belong to her folks. It's a beautiful house, and the sun shines in at the front windows all day long. She's going to be wealthy again, but it doesn't make any difference in her ways. I've had boarders complain when I was doing as well as I knowed how for them, but I never heerd a word from her that wasn't as pleasant as if she'd been talking to the Governor's lady." The strange little man, denominated "Scarabee," who had grown to look so much like the beetles he studied; the "Member of the House" with his Down East phrases; the little "Scheherazade" who furnishes a new story each week for the newspapers;--the good looking, rosy-cheeked salesman "of very polite manners, only a little more brisk than the approved style of carriage permits, as one in the habit of springing with a certain alacrity at the call of a customer;" the good old Master of Arts who makes so many sage remarks;--the young Astronomer with his heart confessions in the _Wind-clouds and Star-drifts_--all these are new acquaintances whom we are loth to part with, when the Landlady announces her intention of giving up the famous boarding-house, and the Poet drops the curtain. Would that the Old Master could yet be induced to give to the public those "notes and reflections and new suggestions" of his marvellous "interleaved volume!" CHAPTER XII. FAVORITES OF SONG. When we come to consider Doctor Holmes on the poet side of his many-sided nature, his own words at the famous Breakfast-Table are vividly brought to mind: "The works of other men live, but their personality dies out of their labors; the poet, who reproduces himself in his creation, as no other artist does or can, goes down to posterity with all his personality blended with whatever is imperishable in his song.... A single lyric is enough, if one can only find in his soul and finish in his intellect one of those jewels fit to sparkle on the stretched forefinger of all time." In the poems of Doctor Holmes we are quite sure there are many just such lyrics that the world will not willingly let die. _The Last Leaf, The Voiceless, The Chambered Nautilus, The Two Armies, The Old Man's Dream, Under the Violets, Dorothy Q._--but where shall we stop in the long enumeration of popular favorites like these? Oliver Wendell Holmes touches the heart as well as the intellect, and that aside from his power as a humorist, is one great secret of his success. Listen, for instance, to this exquisite bit: Yes, dear departed, cherished days Could Memory's hand restore Your Morning light, your evening rays From Time's gray urn once more,-- Then might this restless heart be still, This straining eye might close, And Hope her fainting pinions fold, While the fair phantoms rose.