Opportunity, 56 Lines Written on Hearing a Gentleman remark: “God Bless Dear Woman.” 57 My Lady Fair, 58 To a Firefly, 59 My Old New England Home, 60 A Lover’s Lament, 62 Faces That are Gone, 63 The True Way, 65 Pitcher or Jug, 66 Two Lives, 67 Meditation, 68 Tempus Fugit, 70 Gladness, 71 The Rainbow, 71 MISCELLANEOUS VERSES. The Dawn o’ Spring, 75 Zeeke Bullard’s Farm, 76 Uncle Nick, on Eddication, 80 Uncle Nick, on Gossipers, 82 The Art o’ Knowin’ How, 84 Mother’s Photograph, 86 Fifty Years, 88 A Maiden Wondrous Fair, 89 Wealth and Want, 92 Childhood, 93 The Lassie O’er the Way, 94 INTRODUCTION. Henry Reed Conant was born in Janesville, Wis., on the seventeenth day of February, 1872. When four years of age he removed to Vermont, the native state of his parents Henry Clay and Dora Evaline (Reed) Conant. Henry was educated in the public schools and at the Morrisville “People’s Academy,” Vermont, and in his fifteenth year returned to the west. He inherited from his New England ancestors a deep love of nature, and pronounced religious and moral strength, which tinge the whole body of his rhymes and poems. Like many poets in their juvenile days Mr. Conant’s first lines were simple and artless, and the world of critics can hardly assail him for penning his first rhymes in honor of his “first love,” thus: “Of all the lassies in the land That e’er I chanced to view, Methinks the fairest one I saw Had sparkling eyes of blue.”