Page:The Single Hound; poems of a lifetime.djvu/20

 xiv of her saying to a prim old Chief Justice of the Supremest sort, when the plum pudding on fire was offered—"Oh Sir, may one eat of hell fire with impunity, here?"

Physically timid at the least approach to a crisis in the day's event, her mind dared earth and heaven. That apocrypha and apocalypse met in her, explains her tendency so often mistaken for blasphemy by the superficial analyst.

The advance and retreat of her thought, her transition from arch to demure, from elfin to angelic, from soaring to drowning, her inescapable sense of tragedy, her inimitable perception of comedy, her breathless reverence and unabashed invasion upon the intimate affairs of Deity and hearsay of the Bible, made her a comrade to mettle inspiration and dazzle rivalry. Unlike the dullard, brilliancy was no effort for her. She revelled in the wings of her mind,—I had almost said the fins too,—so universal was her identification with every form of fife and element of being. She usually liked men better than women because they were more stimulating. I can see her yet,