4 3 2 1 14 13 ---------------------------------- | O O O O O O | | | 5 | O Breakfast-Table O |12 | | | O O O O O O | ---------------------------------- 6 7 8 9 10 11
1. The Poet.
2. The Master Of Arts.
3. The Young Girl (Scheherezade).
4. The Lady.
5. The Landlady.
6. Dr. B. Franklin.
7. That Boy.
8. The Astronomer.
9. The Member of the Haouse.
10. The Register of Deeds.
11. The Salesman.
12. The Capitalist.
13. The Man of Letters(?).
14. The Scarabee.
Our young Scheherezade varies her prose stories now and then, as I told you, with compositions in verse, one or two of which she has let me look over. Here is one of them, which she allowed me to copy. It is from a story of hers, “The Sun-Worshipper’s Daughter,” which you may find in the periodical before mentioned, to which she is a contributor, if your can lay your hand upon a file of it. I think our Scheherezade has never had a lover in human shape, or she would not play so lightly with the firebrands of the great passion.
Fantasia.
Kiss mine eyelids, beauteous
Morn,
Blushing into life new-born!
Lend me violets for
my hair,
And thy russet robe
to wear,
And thy ring of rosiest
hue
Set in drops of diamond
dew!
Kiss my cheek, thou
noontide ray,
From my Love so far
away!
Let thy splendor streaming
down
Turn its pallid lilies
brown,
Till its darkening shades
reveal
Where his passion pressed
its seal!
Kiss my lips, thou Lord
of light,
Kiss my lips a soft
good night!
Westward sinks thy golden
car;
Leave me but the evening
star,
And my solace that shall
be,
Borrowing all its light
from thee!
III
The old Master was talking about a concert he had been to hear.—I don’t like your chopped music anyway. That woman—she had more sense in her little finger than forty medical societies—Florence Nightingale—says that the music you pour out is good for sick folks, and the music you pound out isn’t. Not that exactly, but something like it. I have been to hear some music-pounding. It was a young woman, with as many white muslin flounces round her as the planet Saturn has rings, that did it. She—gave the music-stool a twirl or two and fluffed down on to it like a whirl of soap-suds in a hand-basin. Then she pushed up her cuffs as if she was going to fight for the champion’s belt. Then she worked her wrists and her hands, to limber ’em, I suppose, and spread out her fingers till they looked as though they would pretty much cover the key-board, from the growling end to