James Lane Allen

“ Kentucky poetesses. The title of the poem was, "My Lover Kneels to
None but God."
"I infer from this," I said, gravely, "that your lover is a Kentuckian."
"He is," cried Sylvia. "Oh, his peerless, haughty pride!"
"Well, I congratulate you, Sylvia," I continued, mildly, "upon having
such an editor and such a lover; but I really think that your lover
ought to kneel a little to Mr. Prentice on this one occasion."
"Never!" cried Sylvia. "I would spurn him as chaff!" ”

“ Thus in my little corner of the world we have all been at the same
business of love, and I wonder whether the corner be not the world
itself: Mrs. Cobb and the general, Georgiana and I the sewing-girl and
the carpenter ”

“ But this Georgiana has been doing—long without my knowing it. I have
become less a woodsman, more a civilian. Unless she relents, it may
end in my ceasing to be a lover of birds, and running for the
Legislature. ”

“ Advancing along the roof, he mounted the chimney. Glancing down this,
he perhaps reached the conclusion that it was more like nature and a
hollow tree than anything that civilization had yet been able to
produce, and he proceeded to descend to the ground again by so dark and
friendly a passage. His progress was stopped by a bundle of straw at
the bottom, which he quickly tore away, and having emerged from a grove
of asparagus in the fireplace, he found himself not on the earth, but
in Mrs. Walters's bedroom. ”

“ It has fallen awkwardly for me that this enforced transformation in my
tastes and habits should coincide with the season of my love-making;
and it is well that Georgiana does not demand in me the capering or
strutting manners of those young men of my day who likewise are
exerting themselves to marry. I am more like a badger than like one of
them ”

“ Georgiana does not play upon the pianoforte; or, as Mrs. Walters would
declare, she does not perform upon the instrument. Sylvia does; she
performs, she executes. There are times when she will execute a piece
called "The Last Hope" until the neighbors are filled with despair and
ready to stretch their heads on the block to any more merciful
executioner. ”

“ Georgiana with having given her a black eye—a most unspeakable phrase,
surely picked up in the school-room. As a return for the black eye,
Sylvia said that she had composed a poem to herself, a copy of which
she enclosed.
I quote Sylvia's commemorative verses upon her wrongs and her
banishment. They show features of metrical excess, and can scarcely
claim to reflect the polish of her calmer art; but they are of value to
me as proving that whatever the rebuke Georgiana may have given, it had
rebounded from that elastic spirit.
LINES TO MYSELF
Oh! ”

“ There were times when their
breakfast would be late—for the sake of letting his chicken be broiled
in slow perfection or his rolls or waffles come to a faultless brown;
and I, being at work near the garden fence, would hear him tramping up
and down the walk on the other side and swearing at a family that had
such irregular meals. The camel, a lean beast, requires an
extraordinary supply of food, which it proceeds to store away in its
hump as nourishment to be drawn upon while it is crossing the desert.
There may be no long campaigning before the general ”