“Most remarkable, the most remarkable hand I have ever seen in anyone so young. My dear, you must write, or paint, or sing, or do something with that hand.” Up to that moment I had certainly never thought of doing anything but lessons or enjoying myself. He took out his pocket-book and made some notes, then he insisted upon the others looking at what he called “the character, originality, and talent” depicted in my hand. He was so long about it that I grew tired, and at last exclaimed: “I shall charge you if you lecture them about me any more.” “And I’ll pay,” he said; “I’ll send you a Breitmann Ballad all to yourself.” And he did. Naturally proud of being so honored in verse, its heroine was nevertheless shy, and never, never showed her poetic trophy for fear of being thought conceited. [Illustration: HANS BREITMANN’S BALLAD TO THE AUTHOR WHEN] [Illustration: A GIRL—SET TO MUSIC BY ADOLPH MANN] Years afterwards—in 1908—Mrs. E. K. Pennell wrote the _Life_ of her uncle, Charles Godfrey Leland, and there, to my surprise, reproduced my hidden ballad, a copy of which she had found amongst the writer’s papers. Sydney Low, in his critique of the book in the _Standard_, said this poem “was one of the best Leland ever wrote.” Leland intended it to be his last Breitmann Ballad, but I believe he wrote another later. I dink de sonn’ hafe perisht in all dis winter rain, I never dink der Breitmann vould efer sing again; De sonne vant no candle nor any Erdenlicht, Vot _you_ vant mit a poem? bist selber ganz Gedicht. For like a Paar of Ballads are de augen in your head, (I petter call dem bullets vot shoot de Herzen dead). And ash like a ripplin’ rifer efery poem ought to pe, So all your form is flowin’ in perfect harmony. I hear de epigramme in your sehr piquant replies, I hear de sonnets soundin’ ven your accents fall and rise, And if I look upon you, vote’er I feel or see, De voice and form and motion is all one melody. Du bist die Ideale of efery mortal ding, Ven poets reach de perfect—dey need no longer sing Das Beste sei das Letzte—de last is pest indeed! Brich Herz und Laut! zusammen—dies ist mein letztes Lied! Leland was an enormous man, with a long, shaggy beard. He came from Pennsylvania, where he was born in 1824, but lived the greater part of his life on this side of the water. He was full of good stories: knew Oliver Wendell Holmes, Talleyrand, J. R. Lowell, Emerson, and others of that ilk. Our sympathy lay, however, in his love of the gipsies (about whom he wrote so much that to his friends he was known as “The Rye”), also in his affection for and knowledge of Germany, so that when I came back from that country a first-class chatterbox in the Teuton tongue, and ready to shake school-days from my feet, he wrote me that I “looked like a gipsy and talked German like a _backfish_.”