"You are like the northern tribes of the Arabs, in that what you love you love wholly and without ceasing. This poem has been more roundly abused than any other of my much-castigated troop. You help me to think that they are not born offenders, antipathetic to the human mind. Americans who first gave me a reputation for the writing of novels will perhaps ultimately take part in the admission that I can write verse. They may thus carry a reluctant consent in England, when I no longer send out my rhyming note for revision. I have been taught, at least, to set no store upon English opinion in such matters. I would thank you, but gratitude is out of place. There is a feeling hard to verbalize." _Mrs. Moulton to Lloyd Mifflin_ "It is five days since I received your 'Slopes of Helicon,' enriched by your kind inscription. I have been too ill to write; but I will no longer postpone the pleasure of telling you how delighted I am to have your charming book. I have already read enough to know that the book will be an abiding pleasure. You are as delightful a lyrist as you are a sonneteer, and I could not give you higher praise. Both the sonnets and lyrics in this volume charm me." "... This morning, looking over a shelf of books that have accumulated during my absence,--as books are never forwarded to me,--I find your 'Fields of Dawn,' and also 'Lyrics,' by J.H. Mifflin, for both of which I want to thank you at once. I have a real pleasure to look forward to, for I love your sonnets. Am I right in supposing 'J.H.M.' to be your father, and that you are a poet by inheritance?..." "I am sending a hurried note to tell you how entirely I agree with you about the demand for 'cheerful poetry.'" "It is worth writing a book to have written the line, "Made eminent by death, in that noble poem, 'Peace to the Brave.' The poem entitled 'Herbert Spencer' makes me wonder whether you feel that assurance of the future which he certainly did not feel...." _Lloyd Mifflin to Mrs. Moulton_ "... It is very uplifting, as you say in New England, to have such a genuine letter as yours. You read a book as I do, through at once. No one has said that my mind inclines to visions like Blake's, but I see visions. I used to sit and hold the pen and feel it hovering about, becoming nearer and nearer, till suddenly it came, the complete sonnet. I merely recorded it then. This was always wonderful to me. Where do they come from? Not death itself, to say nothing of our earth, can keep a born poet from writing. I can write a better poem about sunset by not seeing it...." _James Whitcomb Riley to Mrs. Moulton_ "... Very slightly changing R.L.S.'s line,