the word-jingling to Mother Goose and her followers.

"'Show me your verses,' says Horace. Very good it was in him, and mighty
encouraging the first counsel he gives! 'Keep your poem to yourself for
some eight or ten years; you will have time to look it over, to correct
it and make it fit to present to the public.'

"'Much obliged for your advice,' says the poor poet, thirsting for a
draught of fame, and offered a handful of dust. And off he hurries to
the printer, to be sure that his poem comes out in the next number of the
magazine he writes for."

"Is not poetry the natural language of lovers?"

It was the Tutor who asked this question, and I thought he looked in the
direction of Number Five, as if she might answer his question. But Number
Five stirred her tea devotedly; there was a lump of sugar, I suppose,
that acted like a piece of marble. So there was a silence while the lump
was slowly dissolving, and it was anybody's chance who saw fit to take up
the conversation.

The voice that broke the silence was not the sweet, winsome one we were
listening for, but it instantly arrested the attention of the company.
It was the grave, manly voice of one used to speaking, and accustomed to
be listened to with deference. This was the first time that the company
as a whole had heard it, for the speaker was the new-comer who has been
repeatedly alluded to,--the one of whom I spoke as "the Counsellor."

"I think I can tell you something about that," said the Counsellor. "I
suppose you will wonder how a man of my profession can know or interest