What do I think is the true sunshine that opens the poet's corolla?-- I don't like to say. They spoil a good many, I am afraid; or at least they shine on a good many that never come to anything. Who are _they_?--said the schoolmistress. Women. Their love first inspires the poet, and their praise is his best reward. The schoolmistress reddened a little, but looked pleased.--Did I really think so?--I do think so; I never feel safe until I have pleased them; I don't think they are the first to see one's defects, but they are the first to catch the color and fragrance of a true poem. Fit the same intellect to a man and it is a bow-string,--to a woman and it is a harp-string. She is vibratile and resonant all over, so she stirs with slighter musical tremblings of the air about her.-- Ah, me!--said my friend, the Poet, to me, the other day,--what color would it not have given to my thoughts, and what thrice-washed whiteness to my words, had I been fed on women's praises! I should have grown like Marvell's fawn,-- "Lilies without; roses within!" But then,--he added,--we all think, _if_ so and so, we should have been this or that, as you were saying, the other day, in those rhymes of yours. ----I don't think there are many poets in the sense of creators; but of those sensitive natures which reflect themselves naturally in soft and melodious words, pleading for sympathy with their joys and sorrows, every literature is full. Nature carves with her own hands the brain which holds the creative imagination, but she casts the over-sensitive creatures in scores from the same mould. There are two kinds of poets, just as there are two kinds of blondes. [Movement of curiosity among our ladies at table.--Please to tell us about those blondes, said the schoolmistress.] Why, there are blondes who are such simply by deficiency of coloring matter,-- _negative_ or _washed_ blondes, arrested by Nature on the way to become albinesses. There are others that are shot through with golden light, with tawny or fulvous tinges in various degree,-- _positive_ or _stained_ blondes, dipped in yellow sunbeams, and as unlike in their mode of being to the others as an orange is unlike a snowball. The albino-style carries with it a wide pupil and a sensitive retina. The other, or the leonine blonde, has an opaline fire in her clear eye, which the brunette can hardly match with her quick, glittering glances.