Page:Letters of Life.djvu/154

142 Yet my effusions, of whatever nature they were, I strove to keep in uninvaded secresy. Unsuggested by others, and unambitious of praise, they "hid themselves, like the son of Jesse," among the stuff. Even from my darling mother I concealed them, though in all things else every possession and sympathy were a common stock. Especially in my attempts at poetry was I mysterious and sensitive. It came to me in the beginning, I knew not how. Waking from downy sleep I sometimes received a few lines, and thanked with strange rapture their ethereal giver. Thus I learned to personify the Muse, ere I had read of Urania, and to hold her gifts sacred. Afterwards, when I linked rhymes mechanically, or as an exercise of skill, though they had naught to do with her who at the first "visited me nightly," I regarded them with a shrinking delicacy, and desired no human being to know of their existence. Perhaps the sentiment was morbid, and never perfectly understood by myself. Still, with some modifications, it has ever adhered to me. Though in later years literary effort has become a trade or traffic, a transmutation into gold which the utilitarian prizes, yet contracts with publishers are repugnant to my tastes; and apart from the necessity of circumstances, I am never in the habit of conversing about what I may have been enabled to write, even with the most intimate friend, unless they introduce or press the subject.

Our simple mode of life which I have so hastily