“Molasses,” said a bareheaded girl of ten who entered at that moment, bearing in her hand a cracked pitcher, “ma wants three gills of molasses.”

Gifted Hopkins dropped his subject and took up a tin measure.  He served the little maid with a benignity quite charming to witness, made an entry on a slate of .08, and resumed the conversation.

“Yes, I am sure of it, Cyprian.  The very last piece I wrote was copied in two papers.  It was ‘Contemplations in Autumn,’ and—­don’t think I am too vain—­one young lady has told me that it reminded her of Pollok.  You never wrote in verse, did you, Cyprian?”

“I never wrote at all, Gifted, except school and college exercises, and a letter now and then.  Do you find it an easy and pleasant exercise to make rhymes?”

Pleasant!  Poetry is to me a delight and a passion.  I never know what I am going to write when I sit down.  And presently the rhymes begin pounding in my brain,—­it seems as if there were a hundred couples of them, paired like so many dancers,—­and then these rhymes seem to take possession of me, like a surprise party, and bring in all sorts of beautiful thoughts, and I write and write, and the verses run measuring themselves out like”—­

“Ribbins,—­any narrer blue ribbins, Mr. Hopkins?  Five eighths of a yard, if you please, Mr. Hopkins.  How’s your folks?” Then, in a lower tone, “Those last verses of yours in the Bannernoracle were sweet pooty.”

Gifted Hopkins meted out the five eighths of blue ribbon by the aid of certain brass nails on the counter.  He gave good measure, not prodigal, for he was loyal to his employer, but putting a very moderate strain on the ribbon, and letting the thumb-nail slide with a contempt of infinitesimals which betokened a large soul in its genial mood.

The young lady departed, after casting upon him one of those bewitching glances which the young poet—­let us rather say the poet, without making odious distinctions—­is in the confirmed habit of receiving from dear woman.

Mr. Gifted Hopkins resumed:  “I do not know where this talent, as my friends call it, of mine, comes from.  My father used to carry a chain for a surveyor sometimes, and there is a ten-foot pole in the house he used to measure land with.  I don’t see why that should make me a poet.  My mother was always fond of Dr. Watts’s hymns; but so are other young men’s mothers, and yet they don’t show poetical genius.  But wherever I got it, it comes as easy to me to write in verse as to write in prose, almost.  Don’t you ever feel a longing to send your thoughts forth in verse, Cyprian?”

“I wish I had a greater facility of expression very often,” Cyprian answered; “but when I have my best thoughts I do not find that I have words that seem fitting to clothe them.  I have imagined a great many poems, Gifted, but I never wrote a rhyming verse, or verse of any kind.  Did you ever hear Olive play ‘Songs without Words’?  If you have ever heard her, you will know what I mean by unrhymed and unversed poetry.”