A few passages will serve to show how well Hilda knows how to use her eyes: "The water came in with a wavy look Like a spider's web." A bluebird has a back "like a feathered sky." Apostrophizing a snow-capped mountain she writes: "You shine like a lily But with a different whiteness." She asks a humming-bird: "Why do you stand on the air And no sun shining?" She hears a chickadee: "Far off I hear him talking The way smooth bright pebbles Drop into water." Now let us follow her a step farther, to where the imagination takes a firmer hold: "The world turns softly Not to spill its lakes and rivers. The water is held in its arms And the sky is held in the water." School lessons, and a reflection in a pond--that is the stuff of which all poetry is made. It is the fusion which shows the quality of the poet. Turn to the text and read "Geography." Really, this is an extraordinary child! It is pleasant to watch her with the artist's eagerness intrigued by the sounds of words, for instance: "--silvery lonesome lapping of the long wave." Again, enchanted by a little bell of rhyme, we have this amusing catalogue: "John-flowers, Mary-flowers, Polly-flowers Cauli-flowers." That is the conscious Hilda, the gay little girl, but it shows a quick ear nevertheless. We can almost hear the giggle with which that "Cauliflowers" came out. Usually rhyme does not appear to be a matter of moment to her. Some poets think in rhyme, some do not; Hilda evidently belongs to the second category. "Treasure," and "The Apple-Jelly-Fish-Tree," and "Short Story" are the only poems in the book which seem to follow a clearly rhymed pattern. If any misguided schoolmistress had ever suggested that a poem should have rhyme and metre, this book would never have been "told." In "Moon Doves," however, there is a distinctly metrical effect without rhyme. But the great majority of the poems are built upon cadence, and the subtlety of this little girl's cadences are a delight to those who can hear them. Doubtless her musical inheritance has all to do with this, for in poem after poem the instinct for rhythm is unerring. So constantly is this the case, that it is scarcely necessary to point out particular examples. I may, however, name, as two of her best for other qualities as well, "Gift," and "Poems." The latter contains two of her quick strokes of observation and comparison: the morning "like the inside of a snow-apple," and she herself curled "cushion-shaped" in the window-seat. Dear me! How simple these poems seem when you read them done. But try to write something new about a dandelion. Try it; and then read the poem of that name here. It is charming; how did she think of it? How indeed!