"As soon as the steamboat had cleared the city, I took out my pocket-book and pencil, and prepared for the onset. I now regarded the ever-beautiful scenery of the magnificent Hudson with a new interest. I thought the Palisades would do something for me; but my imagination remained as sterile and as impenetrable as their eternal rocks. The broad expanse of the Tappan Sea lay like a resplendent mirror around me, but it reflected no image that I could transfer to my tablets. We came into the Highlands, but the old Dundeberg rumbled nothing in my fancy's ears, Anthony's Nose looked coldly down upon me, and the Sugar Loaf suggested no idea of sweetness. We proceeded along, but Buttermilk Falls reminded me not of the fountain of Helicon, and Bull Hill and Breakneck Hill seemed too rugged ever to be smoothed into verse. "That afternoon I went up to Fort Putnam, for the hundred and twentieth time in my life. I walked round the dismantled ramparts; I looked into their damp and gloomy cells. I thought (as is the duty of every one that visits these martial ruins) on the 'pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war.' But they inspired nothing that I could turn to account in my lady's album; nothing that could serve to introduce the compliment always expected in the last stanza. And, in truth, this compliment was the chief stumbling-block after all. 'But for these vile compliments, I might myself have been an album-poet.'" "Is it then so difficult to compliment a lady?" inquired Orinda. "Not in plain prose," replied Sunderland, "and when the lady is a little _à l'imbecile_, nothing in the world is more easy. But even in prose, to compliment a sensible woman as she deserves, and without danger of offending her modesty, requires both tact and talent." "Which I suppose is the reason," said Orinda, "that sensible women obtain so few compliments from your sex, and fools so many." "True," replied Sunderland. "But such compliments as we wish to offer to elegant and intellectual females, are as orient pearls compared to French beads." Orinda cast down her beautiful eyes under the expressive glance of her admirer. She felt that she was now receiving a pearl. "But to proceed," continued Sunderland. "I came down from the fort no better poet than I went up, and I had recourse again to the solitude of my own room. Grown desperate, and determined to get the album off my mind and have it over, an idea struck me which I almost blush to mention. Promise not to look at me, and I will amaze you with my candour." Orinda pretended to hold her fan before her eyes.