said of the old ballad of Chevy Chase, stir the heart like a trumpet. It might more truly be said that, with its blare of sound and pomp of imagery, it stirs the bearer like a full brass band. Probably not even Coleman realized how many generations of schoolboys would declaim: When freedom from her mountain height, Unfurled her standard to the air, She tore the azure robe of night, And set the stars of glory there! The success of the “Salmagundi Papers” did not compare in immediacy or extent with that of the Croaker poems. Copies of the _Evening Post_, which now had 2,000 subscribers, passed from hand to hand. In homes, bookstores, coffee-houses, taverns, and on the street corners every one, as Halleck wrote his sister on April 1, was soon discussing the skits. “We have had the pleasure of seeing and of hearing ourselves praised, puffed, eulogized, execrated, and threatened as much as any writers since the days of Junius,” he informed her. “The whole town has talked of nothing else for three weeks past, and every newspaper has done us the honor to mention us in some way, either of praise or censure, but all united in owning our talents and genius.” The two young men, unused to seeing themselves in print, were tremendously elated. Once upon receiving a proof of some stanzas from the _Evening Post_, Drake laid his cheek down upon the lines and, with beaming eyes, exclaimed to his fellow-poet: “O, Halleck, isn’t this happiness!” Most of the Croaker series, which was virtually concluded in June, though two poems now generally bracketed with them appeared in 1821, were too much the product of joint labor to be assigned to one writer or the other; the theme suggested itself, and both would elaborate it. The newspapers received dozens of replies or imitations, Coleman once showing Halleck a sheaf of fifteen that had come in during a single morning. In spite of their local subjects, many of the poems were reprinted all over the North, and as far south as Washington. Woodworth, who himself wrote not a little on New York affairs, successfully begged a contribution from Halleck for his magazine. It may be mentioned that Coleman took some liberties with the series. To one he prefixed a humorous letter, in another he inserted a couplet, and in a third he altered the overworked name Chloe to Julia.