Let them alone and they'll come home,
And bring their tails behind them.

The Poet having now advanced so far in his work as to make a very
respectable collection of poems, and beginning to run short of matter,
casts his eyes around him in search of aid, hoping to find inspiration
in some fortuitous moment from the many little incidents that are always
occurring, and which only observing minds would notice. For the time he
sees nothing that would suggest even to the most sparkling intellect the
shadow of a rhyme, and he begins to be in despair. He walks up and down
his dingy room, thrusts his long fingers amid the raven locks that adorn
his poetical cranium, and gently at first, then furiously, irritates the
cuticle of his imaginative head-piece, hoping thereby to waken up his
ideas and find a foundation upon which to erect another stone in the
edifice of his never-fading glory.

This process does not seem to be as successful as usual: the ideas
refuse to come at his bidding, and he glares around in consternation,
Can it be possible that he has exhausted himself; that his ideas are
entirely run out; that the fountain is dry, and the Muse has ceased to
smile upon him; that he must descend from his high elevation as the poet
of the family, the hope and pride of his friends and the admiration of
himself, and sink to the level of his earthy brothers and become one of
them, no better and no worse? No--perish the thought! never again will
he mingle with those rude and vulgar natures, having no thoughts or
feelings above their creature comforts: content to live like animals,
uninspired by the divine _afflatus_, untouched by the poetic fire. Full
of determined energy never to yield the high position he has acquired,
he rushes forth into the open air and takes his winding way through the
green meadows and leafy wilds. Here, sitting on the stump of an old