"I thought you liked poetry, Molly!"

"So I do when you read it, or talk about it. It seems as if you made
your way of it grow my way of it. I hear the poetry and feel your
feeling of it. But when I try to read it myself, then I don't care for
it. Sometimes I turn it into prose, and then I get a hold of it."

"That is about the best and hardest test you could put it to, Molly! But
perhaps you have been trying to like what ought not, because it does not
deserve to be liked. There is much in the shape of poetry that set in
gold and diamonds would be worth nothing."

"I think the difficulty is in myself. Sometimes I am in the fit mood,
and other times not. A single line will now and then set something
churning, churning in me, so that I can not understand myself. It will
make me think of music, and sunrise, and the wind, and the song of the
lark, and all lovely things. But sometimes prose will serve me the same.
And the next minute, perhaps, either of them will be boring me more than
I can bear! I know it is my own fault, but--"

"Stop there, Molly! It may sometimes be your own fault, but certainly
not always! You are fastidious, little one; and in exquisite things how
can one be too fastidious! When Walter is gone, suppose we read a little
more poetry together?"

Richard Colman had made some money in one of the good farming times, but
of late had not been increasing his store. But he was a man too
genuinely practical to set his mind upon making money.

There are parents who, notwithstanding they have found possession