We were sitting together in a very quiet way over our teacups.  The young Doctor, who was in the best of spirits, had been laughing and chatting with the two Annexes.  The Tutor, who always sits next to Number Five of late, had been conversing with her in rather low tones.  The rest of us had been soberly sipping our tea, and when the Doctor and the Annexes stopped talking there was one of those dead silences which are sometimes so hard to break in upon, and so awkward while they last.  All at once Number Seven exploded in a loud laugh, which startled everybody at the table.

What is it that sets you laughing so? said I.

“I was thinking,” Number Seven replied, “of what you said the other day of poetry being only the ashes of emotion.  I believe that some people are disposed to dispute the proposition.  I have been putting your doctrine to the test.  In doing it I made some rhymes,—­the first and only ones I ever made.  I will suppose a case of very exciting emotion, and see whether it would probably take the form of poetry or prose.  You are suddenly informed that your house is on fire, and have to scramble out of it, without stopping to tie your neck-cloth neatly or to put a flower in your buttonhole.  Do you think a poet turning out in his night-dress, and looking on while the flames were swallowing his home and all its contents, would express himself in this style?

          “My house is on fire! 
          Bring me my lyre! 
   Like the flames that rise heavenward my song shall aspire!

“He would n’t do any such thing, and you know he wouldn’t.  He would yell Fire!  Fire! with all his might.  Not much rhyming for him just yet!  Wait until the fire is put out, and he has had time to look at the charred timbers and the ashes of his home, and in the course of a week he may possibly spin a few rhymes about it.  Or suppose he was making an offer of his hand and heart, do you think he would declaim a versified proposal to his Amanda, or perhaps write an impromptu on the back of his hat while he knelt before her?

       “My beloved, to you
        I will always be true. 
   Oh, pray make me happy, my love, do! do! do!

“What would Amanda think of a suitor who courted her with a rhyming dictionary in his pocket to help him make love?”

You are right, said I,—­there’s nothing in the world like rhymes to cool off a man’s passion.  You look at a blacksmith working on a bit of iron or steel.  Bright enough it looked while it was on the hearth, in the midst of the sea-coal, the great bellows blowing away, and the rod or the horse-shoe as red or as white as the burning coals.  How it fizzes as it goes into the trough of water, and how suddenly all the glow is gone!  It looks black and cold enough now.  Just so with your passionate incandescence.  It is all well while it burns and scintillates in your emotional centres, without articulate and connected expression; but the minute you plunge