“And if he can’t he isn’t worth the saving,” interjected Bart.

“Exactly; and if he could, that through its medium he might be brought back to a healthy frame of mind, or a healthy walk of mind.  There, Mr. Ridgeley, I have got out with that, though rather limpingly, after all.”

“And a forcible case you have made.  Here is a man crazy about Nature; you propose as a cure for that, to make him mad about a woman.  And what next?”

“Well, love is human—­or inhuman,” said Miss Giddings; “if the former, marriage is the specific; if the latter, his lady-love might get lost in a wood, you know.”

“Yes, I see.  Poor Sartliff had better remain where he is, winking and blinking for the lights of Nature,” said Bart.

“I remember,” interposed Ida, “that he and your brother, among the matters they used to discuss, disagreed in their estimate of authors.  Sartliff could never endure N.P.  Willis, for instance.”

“A sign,” said Miss Giddings, “that he was sane then, at least.  Willis, in Europe, is called the poet’s lap-dog, with his ringlets and Lady Blessingtons.”

“I believe he had the pluck to meet Captain Marryatt,” said Bart.

“Was that particularly creditable?” asked Miss Giddings.

“Well, poets’ lap-dogs don’t fight duels, much; and Miss Giddings, do you think a lap-dog could have written this?” And taking up a volume of Willis, he turned from them and read “Hagar.”  As he read, he seemed possessed with the power and pathos of the piece, and his deep voice trembled under its burthen.  At the end, he laid the book down, and walked to a window while his emotion subsided.  His voice always had a strange power of exciting him.  After a moment’s silence, Miss Giddings said, with feeling: 

“I never knew before that there was half that force and strength in Willis.  As you render it, it is almost sublime.  Will you read another?”

Taking up the book, he read “Jepthah’s Daughter:”  reading it with less feeling, perhaps, but in a better manner.

“I give it up,” said Miss Giddings, “though I am not certain whether it is not in you, rather than in Willis, after all.”

“Six or seven years ago, when my brother Henry came home and gathered us up, and rekindled the home fires on the old hearth,” said Bart, “he commenced taking the New York Mirror, just established by George P. Morris, assisted by Fay and Willis.  Fay, you know, has recently published his novel, ‘Norman Leslie,’ the second volume of which flats out so awfully.  At that time these younger men were in Europe; and we took wonderfully to them, and particularly to Willis’s ’First Impressions,’ and ‘Pencillings by the Way.’  To me they were authentic, and opened the inside of English literary society and life, and I came to like him.  The language has a wonderful flexile power and grace in his hands; and I think he has real poetry in his veins, much more than John Neal, or Dr. Drake, though certainly less than Bryant.  Yet there is a kind of puppyism about the man that will probably prevent his ever achieving the highest place in our literature.”