The numerous letters of Mrs. Moulton to Mr. Kernahan were intimate and full of details of business in regard to publication, with personal matters relating to friends and the like, but through them all runs a thread of comment on literature and life. "I am simply enchanted with the new book William Morris has printed for Wilfrid Blunt, 'The Love Lyrics and Songs of Proteus.'" "Yes, I did like that one line in Christina Rossetti's poem: "... half carol and half cry; but the rest of it is not good enough for her." "I have had many violets sent me this year, but far the most fragrant were a bunch left for me to-day with a card on which was written: "Since one too strange to risk intrusion Would dare rebuke, nor meet confusion, Yet fain would--failing long to meet you-- With gentle words and memories greet you, Sweet Mistress of the Triolet, Admit, I pray, a violet." "I am reading, or rather rereading Rossetti's sonnet sequence, 'The House of Life.' How unequal are the sonnets,--some of them so beautiful they fairly thrill one's soul with their charm, but others seem whimsical and far fetched. On the other hand, how glorious, how like a full chord of music is, for instance, 'The Heart's Compass,' and the sestet of 'Last Fire,' and that magnificent sonnet, 'The Dark Glass.'" "I had a letter this morning from a far-off stranger who tells me that her heart keeps time to my poems.... I am expecting my beloved Mrs. Spofford to-day.... No sweeter soul than she lives on this earth." "Recently I sent a rhyme called 'A Whisper to the Moon,' to _The Independent_, and in accepting it Bliss Carman writes: 'I like it, and that line "'She is thy kindred, and fickle art thou, is immense. Lines with the lyric quality of that are imperishable. Quite apart from its meaning--its cold meaning--it is poetry. It floods the heart. It carries all before it. There is no stopping it. It is like the opening of the gates of the sea. You often write such lines.' The line does not seem to me at all worth such praise, but all the same the praise pleased me. How lovely it is to have people single out some special phrase to care for!" "Louise Guiney and I are looking over my poems together. Oh, I wish there were more variety in them. They are good (I hope and think) in form, but they are, almost all, the cry of my heart for the love that I long for, or its protest against the death that I fear. Ah, well, I can only be myself." [Illustration: LOUISE CHANDLER MOULTON _Page 227_] In this year appeared Mrs. Moulton's third volume of poems, "At the Wind's Will," the title being taken from Rossetti's "Wood-spurge": I had walked on at the wind's will,-- I sat now, for the wind was still.