Kneads for consuming ages-and the chime Of Fame's old bells, long as they truly ring,

Shall tell of him: he dived for the sublime,

And found it. Thou, who, with the eagle's wing,
Being a goose, would'st fly-dream not of such a thing!

Albert Gorton Greene

Old Grimes

OLD GRIMES is dead; that good old man
We never shall see more:

He used to wear a long, black coat,
All button'd down before.

His heart was open as the day,
His feelings all were true:

His hair was some inclined to gray—
He wore it in a queue.

Whene'er he heard the voice of pain,
His breast with pity burn'd:
The large, round head upon his cane
From ivory was turn'd.

Kind words he ever had for all;
He knew no base design:

His eyes were dark and rather small,
His nose was aquiline.

He lived at peace with all mankind,
In friendship he was true:
His coat had pocket-holes behind,

His pantaloons were blue.

Unharm'd, the sin which earth pollutes

He pass'd securely o'er,

And never wore a pair of boots
For thirty years or more.

But good old Grimes is now at rest,
Nor fears misfortune's frown:
He wore a double-breasted vest-
The stripes ran up and down.

He modest merit sought to find,
And pay it its desert:

He had no malice in his mind,
No ruffles on his shirt.

His neighbors he did not abuse-
Was sociable and gay:

He wore large buckles on his shoes,
And changed them every day.

His knowledge, hid from public gaze, He did not bring to view,

Nor made a noise, town-meeting days,

As many people do.

His worldly goods he never threw

In trust to fortune's chances, But lived (as all his brothers do) In easy circumstances.

Thus undisturb'd by anxious cares,

His peaceful moments ran;

And everybody said he was.

A fine old gentleman.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The British Matron

I HAVE heard a good deal of the tenacity with which English ladies retain their personal beauty to a late period of life; but (not to suggest that an American eye needs use and cultivation before it can quite appreciate the charm of English beauty at any age) it strikes me that an English lady of fifty is apt to become a creature less refined and delicate, so far as her physique goes, than anything that we Western people class under the name of woman. She has an awful ponderosity of frame -not pulpy, like the looser development of our few fat women, but massive, with solid beef and streaky tallow; so that (though struggling manfully against the idea) you inevitably think of her as made up of steaks and sirloins. When she walks her advance is elephantine. When she sits down it is on a great round space of her Maker's footstool, where she looks as if nothing could ever move her. She imposes awe and respect by the muchness of her personality, to such a degree that you probably credit her with far greater moral and intellectual force than she can fairly claim. Her visage is usually grim and stern, seldom positively forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not merely by its breadth and weight of feature, but because it seems to express so much well-defined self-reliance, such acquaintance with the world, its toils, troubles, and dangers, and such sturdy capacity for trampling down a foe. Without anything positively salient, or actively offensive, or, indeed, unjustly formidable to her neighbors, she has the effect of a seventy-four-gun ship in time of peace; for, while

you assure yourself that there is no real danger, you cannot help thinking how tremendous would be her onset if pugnaciously inclined, and how futile the effort to inflict any counterinjury. She certainly looks tenfold-nay, a hundred foldbetter able to take care of herself than our slender-framed and haggard womankind; but I have not found reason to suppose that the English dowager of fifty has actually greater courage, fortitude, and strength of character than our women of similar age, or even a tougher physical endurance than they. Morally, she is strong, I suspect, only in society and in the common routine of social affairs, and would be found powerless and timid in any exceptional strait that might call for energy outside of the conventionalities amid which she has grown up.

You can meet this figure in the street, and live, and even smile at the recollection. But conceive of her in a ballroom, with the bare, brawny arms that she invariably displays there, and all the other corresponding development, such as is beautiful in the maiden blossom, but a spectacle to howl at in such an overblown cabbage-rose as this.

Yet, somewhere in this enormous bulk there must be hidden the modest, slender violet-nature of a girl, whom an alien mass of earthliness has unkindly overgrown; for an English maiden in her teens, though very seldom so pretty as our own damsels, possesses, to say the truth, a certain charm of half-blossom, and delicately folded leaves, and tender womanhood, shielded by maidenly reserves, with which, somehow or other, our American girls often fail to adorn themselves during an appreciable moment. It is a pity that the English violet should grow into such an outrageously developed peony as I have attempted to describe. I wonder whether a middle-aged husband ought to be considered as legally married to all the accretions that have overgrown the slenderness of his bride,