Fate dropt our Margaret Within the bitter sea, A pearl in golden splendor set For spirit majesty. It was in connection with a meeting of the Woman's Club that a guest invited from New York wrote for a journal of that city an account of the gathering in which is this description: "There too was Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, looking for all the world like one of her own stories, tender and yet strong, the child-like curving of the mouth and chin in such contrast with the tender, almost sad eyes and well-developed brow covered with its masses of waving light hair." Bret Harte, then in the height of his fame, wrote to Mrs. Moulton in regard to her _Tribune_ letters, and told her that "it is woman's privilege to assert her capacity as a critic without sacrificing her charm as a woman." Many of her criticisms were richly worth preservation, did space allow. Of Walt Whitman she said: "With his theories I do not always agree; they seem to me fitter for a larger, more sincere, less complex time than ours; but there is no sham and no affectation, either in the man or in his verse. I could not tell how strong was the impression of sincerity and large-heartedness which he made on me." A new volume of poems by Lowell appeared, and in her comment she wrote: "Wordsworth was notably great in only a few poems, and Coleridge, and Keats, and Shelley come under the same limitations. Mr. Lowell is thus not alone in being at times forsaken by his good genius.... If he does not furnish us with a great amount of poetry of the highest order, it is the simple truth to say that in his best he has no rival, excepting Emerson, among American poets. When he is inspired, the key to nature and to man is in his hand, and he becomes the interpreter of both, commanding the secrets of one as truly as he interprets the interior life of the other." All this newspaper work did not interfere with the steady production of work less ephemeral. Poems and stories succeeded one another in almost unbroken succession. The fecundity of Mrs. Moulton's mind was by no means the least surprising of the good gifts with which nature had endowed her. In all the leading American magazines her name held a place recognized and familiar. What was apparently her first contribution to the _Atlantic Monthly_, a poem called "May-Flowers," caught the popular fancy and became a general favorite. The exquisite closing stanza was especially praised by those whose approbation was best worth winning: Tinted by mystical moonlight, Freshened by frosty dew, Till the fair, transparent blossoms To their pure perfection grew. Longfellow commended her perfection of form and the lyric spontaneity of her verse and Whittier urged her to collect and publish her poems in a volume.