In the New York poetry society meeting appeared no novelty for me. I had been there before, so it seemed. Then, as of old, the meeting-room was more charming, the congregation more elegant, but the same, even to the frisky ones, with an exception in the authors’ literary agent I saw just a few feet from me. Otherwise the same—a prayer-meeting, the great American habit, a community impulse boiled down to four-square-wallsful. As the meeting progressed I knew I had been there before. Absently I looked toward the door for the pretty upward toss of curls again, but I caught myself in time. Notices were read—again I looked toward the door, and stopped. Jokes were made about vers libre; several very interesting recitations were given; restlessly my eyes wandered doorward again. One always forms such bad habits when he is young. Poems now were being read, and criticized. But I had given up: I was looking toward the door and willing to acknowledge it. But she for whom I looked, came not. Then the leader with pleasure read a list of several new members—one of them with the name of a certain rich person, a name I had often seen associated with the millions of commerce but never with the measures of verse. An uncrushed sigh of self-congratulation went up over the room. I took my last look at the stolid door, slid back from the edge of my chair; gave up. I knew She would not come. My heart beat as of old, whimsically and sadly. She would not come. I took my friend of a friend by the hand and sidled out of the room into the night. A few corners away we came upon a news-stand, full of magazines, upon every magazine a cover, upon every cover a girl, one and the same forever and ever. “If She had come, would She have been so grown that She would have looked like them?” I asked. “Who come?” asked my friend of a friend. “The Spirit of Poetry,” says I. “She hadda right, you know.” American modernity, I bless thee through closed teeth—get thee to thy prayer-meetings or some Billy Sunday will Carl Sanburg thee. Silhouettes HARRIET DEAN Barn-Yarding I cannot joyously write little things. Perhaps that is why I write none at all. The little people about me fill me with disgust. They are cocksure bantam hens, loose and fertile, laying egg-thoughts carelessly. The crack of shells is loud, but tiny wet chicks roll out, smaller than the rest. God forbid that I am of the same breed! If I must linger in the barn-yard for a few days, studying the swagger of these hens and silently measuring my own, may I in the end fly away to my mountain-top—alone in the night. Strut, if I must, but quite alone. * * * * *