In the country, then, it is well enough occasionally to dress by
candle-light and assist at the ceremony of dawn; it is well if for no
other purpose than to disarm the intolerance of the professional early
riser who, were he in a state of perfect health, would not be the
wandering victim of insomnia, and boast of it. There are few small
things more exasperating than this early bird with the worm of his
conceit in his bill.




UN POETE MANQUE

IN the first volume of Miss Dickinson's poetical melange is a little
poem which needs only a slight revision of the initial stanza to
entitle it to rank with some of the swallow-flights in Heine's lyrical
intermezzo. I have tentatively tucked a rhyme into that opening stanza:

I taste a liquor never brewed
In vats upon the Rhine;
No tankard ever held a draught
Of alcohol like mine.

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee