EDITH MATILDA THOMAS (1854

The leader of the feminine poets of the later period unquestionably is Edith M. Thomas, boru at Chatham, Ohio, and educated in the Normal Institute of that state. Her earliest work began to appear in the early eighties, and encouraged by Helen Hunt Jackson, who was the first to discover her powers, she issued her first volume, A New Year's Masque and Other Poems, in 1885. Since then twelve other volumes of her poems have appeared, the latest, The Flower from the Ashes, in 1915. Her home since 1888 has been New York. Stedman gave her high praise: Her place is secure among the truest living poets of our English tongue.' In style her work is classical Greek often in its restraint and its chaste finish remote and timeless, and yet in spirit and message it is always truly American.

HENRY CUYLER BUNNER (1855-1896)

No other writer of the period was more versatile or more facile with his pen than H. C. Bunner. Opinions may differ as to whether he did his best work in prose or in poetry. In either case he chose most difficult literary forms.- the short story of the later French type and the dainty art forms of vers de societe. By profession he was an editor, editor of Puck from its establishment when he was twenty-two until his death at forty-one. He poured into its columns an enormous and surprising tide.— short stories, editorials, paragraphs. humor of every variety, poems, parodies, everything the comic paper knows. This was his day's work literature, however, was something different. The material for his books, like Airs from Arcady or Short Sixes, he wrought with fastidious care. His final output was small, but like the work of Aldrich, it is exquisitely done. His lyrics.- many of them in difficult French verse forms are perfect in their finished art, yet seemingly they are spontaneous outbursts. He was our chief maker of vers de société, our laureate of the trivial. Within that limited domain he has had no American rival. The lyric Written on Valentine's Day' and the short story Father Anastatius' are here published for the first time.

OLD FRENCH METRICAL FORMS

[Within the last few months, the efforts of Messrs. Austin Dobson, Edmund Gosse, Robert Bridges, and others, to revive certain old metrical forms have excited considerable interest. These dainty refinements of versification date back to the times of the Trouvères and Troubadors. The Provençal and kindred tongues being rich in strong accents, their prosody is in perfect accordance with the Anglo-Saxon system of rhythm, and Mr. Dobson, in his latest volume, has proved that these meters may be used in English with exquisite effect.

word or phrase (four syllables) repeated at the end of the second and third stanzas, forms the unrimed refrain. Apropos of refrains in general, it must be noted that a 5 slight shade of difference, in sentiment or verbal meaning, should be introduced at each repetition. In the Ballade, Rondel, and Triolet slight variations in the phraseology are permissible. The Rondel has fourteen eight10 syllable lines, on two rimes. The refrain is the two lines beginning the first quartrain, repeated at the end of the second, and again to close the final stanza of six lines. The Rondel here given is written on the plan of a 15 re-arrangement introduced by Mr. Austin Dobson. The Triolet is a condensed Rondel. It has eight lines and two rimes and begins and ends with a two-line refrain, the first line being, moreover, repeated to form the

A PITCHER OF MIGNONETTE

The following essays in the Chant Royal, Rondeau, Rondel, and Triolet forms may need a word of explanation. The Chant Royal has been called the 'final tour de force' of poetic composition. It was reserved 20 fourth.] for the celebration of divine mysteries, or for the exploits of some heroic race.' It is composed of five stanzas of eleven lines, all using the same set of five rimes, in the same order, and each ending with the re- 25 frain or burden. To this is added an Envoy of five or six lines (half the length of a stanza), ending also with the refrain, and beginning with an address to some dignitary or dignitaries, as 'Prince' or Barons.' The 30 Rondeau consists of thirteen iambic lines of eight or ten syllables. It has but two rimes, and is divided into three stanzas, of five. three, and five lines respectively. The initial

[Triolet]

A pitcher of mignonette,

In a tenement's highest casement:
Queer sort of flower-pot-yet
That pitcher of mignonette

Is a garden of heaven set,

To the little sick child in the basement The pitcher of mignonette,

In the tenement's highest casement.

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FATHER ANASTATIUS

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your mind and distract your attention. You let me tell you a little story.' And this is the story that he told me to divert my mind, and distract my attention:

Even journalists have vacations, and my vacation last summer took me to the Rangeley Lakes, in Maine. I went there after trout. I got there after trout about two days, they told me, after the last big catch of the season. I did not catch much at Rangeley indeed, so little that I was almost childishly pleased to a convent in the place, the convent of the when I caught the train coming back.

But I heard a story while I was there which I think you would not like to hear, and I am going to tell it to you. The

In 1862, he said, I was settled in a small village in New Jersey. It was a sort of suburb of a larger town, also, I regret to say, in New Jersey. There was

Sacred Cross. I was visiting physician there, though I am not a Catholic. In the middle of the winter I think it was in December - there was an epidemic of

circumstances under which I heard it im- 15 diphtheria in the poor quarter of the

pressed it strongly upon my memory. The Rangeley Lakes are the reservoirs that supply the motive power to the mills on several of the principal rivers of Maine. They are owned by a company, and they are frequented by fishermen. The company dams the lakes, and the fishermen condemn the company.

One day while I was up there, my guide left me alone in the boat, near the shore 25 of the lake. No, not the shore. There is no shore. The lakes, as I have said, are dammed and the water has risen among the roots of the trees that encircle them, so that you see nothing before you but 30 the trunks of the flooded trees, standing up like spiles, with a mysterious darkness behind them. He went off to gather moss, that guide did, in which to pack the fish I didn't catch, and he left me alone, 35 to the most awful loneliness I have ever known. Away off, somewhere, the water bobbled and burbled over some shallow place-away off, somewhere else, the bull-frogs thousands, millions of bull- 40 frogs croaked and croaked. There was the great blue sky above me, and around me the great circle of the hills, looking one just like the other. I sat there in that boat until I got nearly crazy.

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I thought I had been out there ten years it was just half an hour-when a man happened along in another boat. I hailed him. I got him to draw up alongside of me; and he staid with me until go the guide came back. He was a gloomy, saturnine man, whom I had seen around the fishing-grounds, and who was known as the Doctor. He told me that he was really a doctor.

'I understand how vou feel,' he said. 'I used to feel so myself when I first came up here. You want something to divert

town. The sisters threw open the large hospital attached to the convent, and took in all the indigent sick. For several weeks my duties kept me at the convent night and day. Thus I saw a great deal of Father Anastatius, the senior priest resident in the convent. I was interested in Father Anastatius from the first moment that I set eyes upon him. Perhaps it would be better to say that I was fascinated by the man.

He was about forty years old, though he looked fifty at least. He was over six feet in height, and his frame was simply gigantic. In spite of his gray hair and his bloodless, dark face, he was the handsomest man I ever saw. His eyes alone would have made him handsome great, dark, deep-sunken eyes, that fairly blazed and burned when he preached in his rapt, wild, ecstatic way, telling of the glories of the Church, of the demands she made upon her servants, of the promises she gave them. But even if his eager eyes had not possessed that terrible beauty, he would have been a wonderful man to look at. Worn with vigils and fasting until the wasted flesh had shrunk almost to the bone, his face had yet a sensuous, passionate strength. I knew when first I looked at him why he had made himself a priest. He would have been a devil, else. I knew also, before long, that he was killing himself, slowly but surely, with loss of sleep and lack of food.

I remonstrated with Father Anastatius. I had desired to speak to him on this subject; but, frankly, I had not dared, until Sister Agatha, the gentlest, sweetest and 55 youngest of all the sisters a little dovelike creature with soft gray eyes - came to me and pleaded with me, almost tearfully, to entreat the good father to take