trip to Niagara," he said to a friend. "Do you think people would read it? I think we like to read about what we have seen, and I can only describe that. I have no inventive genius." This was before the completion of his first story, "A Foregone Conclusion." There is much in Howells's style to lead to the inference that if he had confined himself to historical writing he might have attained more enduring fame. It is not the writer's purpose to criticise the novelist's art. We are content to quote the clever woman who said she hoped Mr. Howells would redeem himself, and, following the example of him who Artemus Ward said "was a good poet, but he didn't know how to spell," write a "Legende of Goode Womeyne" of the nineteenth century.
PROMISE.
I STAND and watch the summer now depart,
And all its sweetness in one late red rose
Is garnered, which I lay upon my heart
And feel the life that in it stirs and glows.
O red, red rose, the summer's last soft breath,
To you what heritage of smiles and tears,
What joy of new possession, and what death
Of hopes, and crushing agony of fears!
Wild woful sobbings in the wild night rain,
And passionate farewells, and mad regret,
While southward-flying birds sing sad refrain,
Or beat tired wings low drooping in the wet.
O rose, I hold you close and whisper low,
If I should lay yon in my love's fair hand,
Oh, tell me, would she bid me stay or go,
Or should I hope or fear at her command?
Or would she greet you with her sweet dark eyes,
And look upon you with a tender smile,
And half caress you with that shy disguise
That holds a subtile meaning all the while?
Fair rose, still on my heart I lay restraint,
But cherish, though I utter yet no words,
That dawn of something in her face, though faint,
Yet sweet with hope, like notes of waking birds.
