One of the doctor's friends, whom he usually addressed by the familiar title of Jingleum, but whose real name was Jackson, or Johnson, or some such unhappy dissyllable, was the poet of the village, and a bard of renown for at least ten miles round. Him the painter won by praising his verses, and what was still more captivating, by singing them, and what was yet more enslaving, by requesting permission to cull all the stanzas of a _cantabile_ nature from the long blue-covered log-books, in which Mr. Jingleum had carefully recorded his labours. Seeing what a congenial soul he had found in the painter, Jingleum freely supplied his wants, and wrote divers madrigals at his suggestion, with which Herman charmed the ears of Miss Loring. The poet soon became his intense admirer and perpetual visiter; they grew fast friends, and soon came to regard each other, the one as the divinest poet, the other as the most finished singer, under the moon. It would have been an interesting sight, could one have invaded the sanctity of the painter's apartment, on such occasions, to see them together, industriously fixing a tune to each affecting ditty,--a labour that was sometimes none of the lightest; and sometimes, when the genius of the bard, as it often did, chose to disdain the base bonds of metre and rhythm, and none of the thousand melodies in their service could be forced or wheedled into nuptials with his independent verse, they were fain to betake themselves to their own resources, and finish the business with such a _quodlibet_ as they could manufacture between them. It was a divine enjoyment to the poet, when they had at last succeeded with any refractory song, to hear his lines breathed out from the mellow lips of his friend; for then his poetry seemed as celestial as his pleasure. His bliss, however, was not complete, until he lighted by accident, one day, in the village, upon a battered guitar,--an instrument of such venerable antiquity, that there was not a soul therein who was able to pronounce for what unheard-of purpose such an extraordinary engine had been framed, until Herman Hunter, swearing it could discourse most eloquent music, and was _not_ a banjo, managed, by dint of much exertion, to fit it up with fiddle-strings and the savings of some demolished harpsichord, and set its dumb tongues twangling: it was not until he heard his rhymes trolled forth to the clatter of this romantic instrument, that the joy of the poet mounted to the heaven of ecstasy. He would sit distilling with delight, while the lips of his friend warbled over the seraphic lines, and while his fingers hopped over the amaranthine strings; and then, sometimes, with a sudden feeling of inspiration, he would snatch the lyre, as he poetically called it, into his own hands, doubtless expecting an overflow of ineffable harmony from the mere fulness of his spirit, until warned by the dreadful dissonance of his