aloud; but when the reading was ended, he said they were far "too
fragmentary to satisfy him," and quietly folded them up and carried
them away again.

This feeling of unreadiness to print sprang as much from the wonderful
modesty as from the sincerity of his character. He wrote shortly after
to his publisher:--

"I have the more delight in your marked overestimate of my poem that I
have been vexed with a belief that what skill I had in whistling was
nearly or quite gone, and that I might henceforth content myself with
guttural consonants or dissonants, and not attempt warbling. On the
strength of your note, I am working away at my last pages of rhyme.
But this has been and is a week of company. Yet I shall do the best I
can with the quarters of hours."

Again, with his mind upon the "May-day" poem, he wrote:--

"I have long seen with some terror the necessity closing round me, in
spite of all my resistance, that shall hold me from home. It now seems
fixed to the 20th or 21st March. I had only consented to 1st March.
But in the negotiations of my agent it would still turn out that the
primary engagements made a year ago, and to which the others were only
appendages--the primaries, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Pittsburgh--must
needs thrust themselves into March, and without remedy. But I cannot
allow the 'May-day' to come till I come. There were a few
indispensable corrections made and sent to the printer, which he
reserved to be corrected on the plates, but of which no revise was
ever sent to me; and as good publish no book as leave these
_errata_ unexpunged. Then there is one quatrain, to which his