literally.  What I mean is, that a man with the gift of musical and impassioned phrase (and love often deeds that to a young person for a while), who “wreaks” it, to borrow Byron’s word, on conversation as the natural outlet of his sensibilities and spiritual activities, is likely to talk better than the poet, who plays on the instrument of verse.  A great pianist or violinist is rarely a great singer.  To write a poem is to expend the vital force which would have made one brilliant for an hour or two, and to expend it on an instrument with more pipes, reeds, keys, stops, and pedals than the Great Organ that shakes New England every time it is played in full blast.

Do you mean that it is hard work to write a poem?—­said the old Master.—–­I had an idea that a poem wrote itself, as it were, very often; that it came by influx, without voluntary effort; indeed, you have spoken of it as an inspiration rather than a result of volition.

—­Did you ever see a great ballet-dancer?—­I asked him.

—­I have seen Taglioni,—­he answered.—–­She used to take her steps rather prettily.  I have seen the woman that danced the capstone on to Bunker Hill Monument, as Orpheus moved the rocks by music, the Elssler woman,—­Fanny Elssler.  She would dance you a rigadoon or cut a pigeon’s wing for you very respectably.

(Confound this old college book-worm,——­he has seen everything!)

Well, did these two ladies dance as if it was hard work to them?

—­Why no, I should say they danced as if they liked it and couldn’t help dancing; they looked as if they felt so “corky” it was hard to keep them down.

—­And yet they had been through such work to get their limbs strong and flexible and obedient, that a cart-horse lives an easy life compared to theirs while they were in training.

—­The Master cut in just here—­I had sprung the trap of a reminiscence.

—­When I was a boy,—­he said,—­some of the mothers in our small town, who meant that their children should know what was what as well as other people’s children, laid their heads together and got a dancing-master to come out from the city and give instruction at a few dollars a quarter to the young folks of condition in the village.  Some of their husbands were ministers and some were deacons, but the mothers knew what they were about, and they did n’t see any reason why ministers’ and deacons’ wives’ children shouldn’t have as easy manners as the sons and daughters of Belial.  So, as I tell you, they got a dancing-master to come out to our place,—­a man of good repute, a most respectable man,—­madam (to the Landlady), you must remember the worthy old citizen, in his advanced age, going about the streets, a most gentlemanly bundle of infirmities,—­only he always cocked his hat a little too much on one side, as they do here and there along the Connecticut River, and sometimes on our city sidewalks, when they’ve got a new beaver; they got him, I say, to give us