Page:Essays in idleness.djvu/65

 Rh ," are instinct with poetic life. I can only regret that a picture so faultless in detail as "Shadow March," where we see the crawling darkness peer through the window pane, and hear the beating of the little boy's heart as he creeps fearfully up the stair, should be marred at its close by a single line of false imagery:—

So fine an artist as Mr. Stevenson must know that shadows do not tramp, and that the recurrence of a short, vigorous word which tells so admirably in Scott's "William and Helen," and wherever the effect of sound combined with motion is to be conveyed, is sadly out of place in describing the ghostly things that glide with horrible noiselessness at the feet of the frightened lad. Children, moreover, are keenly alive to the value and the suggestiveness of terms. A little eight-year-old girl of my acquaintance, who was reciting "Lord Ullin's Daughter," stopped short at these lines,—

and called out excitedly, "Don't you hear the