expectations people had entertained from the first, if you would believe
them.

Robert Treat Paine having disappeared from the stage, there was nobody
left but Lucius Manlius Sargent and John Pierpont for celebrations and
sudden emergencies. But Sargent never tried the heroic, and was
generally satisfied with imitations of Walter Scott, and others, who
were given to oddities and quaintness. For example, "I thought," says
he, in the longest poem he ever wrote, which appeared in quarto,--

"I thought, than as a feather fair
More light is filmy gossamer,
So woman's heart is lighter far
Than lightest breath of summer air,
Which is so light it scarce can bear
The filmiest thread of gossamer," etc., etc., etc.

While Mr. Pierpont flung himself abroad--like Handel, over the great
organ-keys at Haarlem--as if he never knew before what legs and arms
were good for, after the following fashion:--

"The misty hall of Odin
With mirth and music swells,
Rings with the harps and songs of bards,
And echoes to their shells.

"See how amid the cloud-wrapped ghosts
Great Peter's awful form
Seems to smile,
As the while,