What do _you_ think of these verses, my friends? Is that piece an impromptu? said my landlady's daughter. (Aet. 19+. Tender-eyed blonde. Long ringlets. Cameo pin. Gold pencil-case on a chain. Locket. Bracelet. Album. Autograph book. Accordeon. Reads Byron, Tupper, and Sylvanus Cobb, junior, while her mother makes the puddings. Says, "Yes?" when you tell her anything.)--_Oui et non, ma petite_,--Yes and no, my child. Five of the seven verses were written off-hand; the other two took a week,--that is, were hanging round the desk in a ragged, forlorn, unrhymed condition as long as that. All poets will tell you just such stories. _C'est le DERNIER pas qui coute_. Don't you know how hard it is for some people to get out of a room after their visit is really over? They want to be off, and you want to have them off, but they don't know how to manage it. One would think they had been built in your parlour or study, and were waiting to be launched. I have contrived a sort of ceremonial inclined plane for such visitors, which being lubricated with certain smooth phrases, I back them down, metaphorically speaking, stern-foremost, into their "native element," the great ocean of out-doors. Well, now, there are poems as hard to get rid of as these rural visitors. They come in glibly, use up all the serviceable rhymes, _day_, _ray_, _beauty_, _duty_, _skies_, _eyes_, _other_, _brother_, _mountain_, _fountain_, and the like; and so they go on until you think it is time for the wind-up, and the wind-up won't come on any terms. So they lie about until you get sick of the sight of them, and end by thrusting some cold scrap of a final couplet upon them, and turning them out of doors. I suspect a good many "impromptus" could tell just such a story as the above.--Here turning to our landlady, I used an illustration which pleased the company much at the time, and has since been highly commended. "Madam," I said, "you can pour three gills and three quarters of honey from that pint jug, if it is full, in less than one minute; but, Madam, you could not empty that last quarter of a gill, though you were turned into a marble Hebe, and held the vessel upside down for a thousand years." One gets tired to death of the old, old rhymes, such as you see in that copy of verses,--which I don't mean to abuse, or to praise either. I always feel as if I were a cobbler, putting new top-leathers to an old pair of boot-soles and bodies, when I am fitting sentiments to these venerable jingles. * * * * youth * * * * morning * * * * truth * * * * warning Nine tenths of the "Juvenile Poems" written spring out of the above musical and suggestive coincidences. "Yes?" said our landlady's daughter. I did not address the following remark to her, and I trust, from her limited range of reading, she will never see it; I said it softly to my next neighbour.