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Rh Unfortunately all of one kind, though. They had been brought home from some publisher And taken thus into the family. Boys and bad hunters had known what to do With stone and lead to unprotected glass: Shatter it inward on the unswept floors. How had the tender verse escaped their outrage? By being invisible for what it was, Or else by some remoteness that defied them To find out what to do to hurt a poem. Yet oh! the tempting flatness of a book, To send it sailing out the attic window Till it caught the wind, and, opening out its covers, Tried to improve on sailing like a tile By flying like a bird (silent in flight, But all the burden of its body song), Only to tumble like a stricken bird, And lie in stones and bushes unretrieved. Books were not thrown irreverently about. They simply lay where some one now and then, Having tried one, had dropped it at his feet I And left it lying where it fell rejected. Here were all those the poetess's life Had been too short to sell or give away.

"Take one," Old Davis bade me graciously.

"Why not take two or three? "

Good-looking books like that." He picked one fresh In virgin wrapper from deep in the box, And stroked it with a horny-handed kindness.