Kenyon bought one of these volumes and sent it by a messenger with a
little note to Miss Barrett telling how much he had enjoyed it, and craved
that she would inscribe her name and his on the fly-leaf and return by
bearer. Of course she complied with such a modest request so gracefully
expressed; these things are balm to poets' souls. Next, Mr. Kenyon called
to thank Miss Barrett for the autograph. Soon after, he wrote to inform
her of a startling fact that he had just discovered: they were kinsmen,
cousins or something--a little removed, but cousins still. In a few weeks
they wrote letters back and forth beginning thus: Dear Cousin.

And I am glad of this cousinly arrangement between lonely young people.
They grasp at it; and it gives an excuse for a bit of closer relationship
than could otherwise exist with propriety. Goodness me! is he not my
cousin? Of course he may call as often as he chooses. It is his right.

But let me explain here that at this time Mr. Kenyon was not so very
young--that is, he was not absurdly young: he was fifty. But men who
really love books always have young hearts. Kenyon's father left him a
fortune, no troubles had ever come his way, and his was not the
temperament that searches them out. He dressed young, looked young, acted
young, felt young.

No doubt John Kenyon sincerely admired Elizabeth Barrett, and prized her
work. And while she read his mind a deal more understandingly than he did
her poems, she was grateful for his kindly attention and well-meant
praise. He set about to get her poems into better magazines and to find
better publishers for her work. He was not a gifted poet himself, but to
dance attendance on one afforded a gratification to his artistic impulse.
He could not write sublime verse himself, but he could tell others how. So
Miss Barrett showed her poems to Mr. Kenyon, and Mr. Kenyon advised that