The Portland daily press., 1881-06-11
To rhyme with far
A kind star did not tarry;
The metre. too, was regular
As sehOOlbOv'S dot and carry


This discovery is very delightful one to the
girl or boy who has admired afar off such poet
ry as caught the young ear or appealed to the
tender new fancy. Now, able to write a poem
for ones self-what height of fame seems i'm
possible to the ready tripping feet that feel as
if they were suddenly fledged with wings?
Delightful and dangerous moment! Now if
the judicious father and wisely tender mother
can SO far harden their hearts as to take scant
notice of the little verses, and especially dis
courage any lines that seem precocious or
made up of sentiments partly taken from IA
vorlte authors, and partly due to q growing
fancy for words as such-the child will at
least have been kept from being writer of
poor verses and if she never writes any poetry
at all-it is no great loss. If the poetic talent
really exists, it will appear in due time, all
the sounder and sweeter for its patient ripening.
Kindly neglect is a good thing for an ambi-
tious young fancy; and the unwise parent who
when his mammoth squash takes the prize at
the county fair, or upon the occasion of find
ing the earliest violet, requests his little
daughter to make some of her pretty verses up
on the happy EVENTS insomuch lessenening
that childs chances of becoming practical
and useful woman, weakening her actual
sonse of literature, and adding to the plethora
which threaten the wastebaskets of our coun-
try. Such mistaken kindness makes the child
self-conscious and conceited, confuses and hur-
ries into false development the mind that
ought to drink unconscious draughts of beauty
through eye and ear long before trying to give
e.
eralities are suggested by Miss Elaine Good
ale's writings. Her talent appears real
though misdirected at present. She writes
lines that she is not old enough to havo writ
ten, and so are artificial ard unpleasant.
Where her work is descriptive and concerns
itself with actual things that she can see and
hear, it is graceful, sufficiently imaginative,
and very creditable for so young an authoress.
Here and there passage seems fairly touched
with genius But when Miss Goodale under
takes to depict in impassioned verse the subtle
and intense emotions of bereaved cow, it
emphasizes the amusing incapaeity and inap-
propriateness of her more ambitious attempts
At times this desire to express complicated
and highly wrought feeling, alien to the ma
ture or experience of a young person, is ex-
ceedingly disag-eeable, and gives the reader a
sense of pity that the dainty, sunny talent of a
young girl should be strained up to cold and
unnatural expression of what she imagines to
be the experience of life. All we, in our
youngest years. have borrowed our fathers
hat to warm our tiny little wit, or tied on our
mothers apron for stately court train-but
none but our happily-conceited selves consid-
cred US grown persons at that time.
The History of Mountain. By Elis6e Re-
clus. Translated from the French by Bertha
Ness and John Lille. New York: Harpers;
Portland: Loring, Short & Harmony This
exquisitely imagined history of mountain has
all the charm of the fiction with which French
writer's are able to sdorn science and render
it companionable. 1t describes not only the
grand and romantic landscape, but the ancient
influences, the gradual assembling of rock
with rock, drift of land, deposit of fossils, ac-
ton of ice and water. To this NJ. Reclus adds
poetic records of feudal days; and stories of
the time when the dethroned deities of the
classic myths sought shelter in the darkness of
mountain caves and hollows of haunted hills;
and allied themselves-these gods who gave
both evil and good at their pleasure in tho
days of their lordship-allied themselves Who'll
ly with the wicked powers and served Satan
with all the embittered remnant of their olden
strength. To this strange blending of the
brilliant myths Of Greece, that seem flooded
with southern sunlight, and the mysterious
darkness of Gothic legends, shapes strange as
shadows that the moon makes, we owe such
powerful and poetic legends as Tannhauser
and the Ring given to Venus. Everywhere
the world over, mountains have been regarded
with veneration and crowned with legends;
and NJ Reelus recognizes alike the imagined
and the actual aspects of the mountain. To
scientist his work offers an added pleasure of
imagination to the general reader information
delightfully."- afforded.