The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1909-05-16

scholar. thinker and deconteuse.
As She gives me her hand IN greeting,
I say:
This the spot of all others where
l shout lore to read Longfellow, Tom
Moore and Byron-par ticularlY the CONVEX
satlons between Lady Blessington and
Lord Byron. 1t is ideal, Miss Duffee."
To which she makes reply: II love
Bryon. You remember Mr.. George Ban
croft, the historian. said that he always
wondered that all the women fell in
love with Byron, but after he met him
he quite understood it, because he fell
In love with him himself"
Byron was the literary matinee idol
of his hour" ] facetiously suggested.
Ladies swooned with ecstacy of his
poems and sent him ringets tied with
blue ribbons in billet doux sealed with
floral notices." at which we laughed
heartily.
Miss Duffee related many charming
stories of Byron, and from subject to
subject we filtered and talked, and each
more interesting than the other it seemed.
OF Bettina's family-and she had known
them albany were the beautiful remin-
iscences she recalled of days gone by
and numberless were the episodes she
recounted of one of Jefferson county's
oldst and most honored scions-the de-
scendants of a noble sre
This may not sound very nice of me,
but women (even literary LADIES' are not
apt to be as broadminded as men; so 1t
was delightful to find a grand dame
in these days of crinoline and swoons, of
studied manners and unrealities, au
fat with human nature. and so tolerant
with its frailities, so broad in culture
and so deep in intellect. as is Miss Mary
Gordon Duffee to whom Alabama de-
lights to pay homage.
IT'S growing late" comes the unwel-
a COLI m
glow spreads over the crimson west,
and another day sinks into the unnum-
bered yesterdays.
And so we prepare to deseend-happv.
tired, in sweet communion with natures
handwork-%we wend our way homeward.
When Nero advertised for new luxury
a walk in the woods should have been
suggested.
'Tis one of the secrets for lodging old
age, for nature makes a like impression on
age as on youth. Then it is to be rec
commended to people growing old against
their will Emerson says that>a man
In this predicament. if he stands before
a mirror or among young people, is
made quite too sensible of the fact, but
the woolks awake I'M him the same feel
ing he had when he was a boy, and he
may draw a moral from the fact. that 1t is
the old trees that have all the beauty
and all of the grandeur.
The trees and the flowers and the per-
fume suggests Memberships beautiful
Spring Song" and you feel that you
could sit at the piano for hours, listen
ing to the lights and shadows that fall
in delicate nuances from this tone poem.
With all the warmth that Grieg's
"Springtime' is lacking in and bereft
of the anachronism of an April snow
storm that Ienselt introduces in his
Spring Song" Mendelssohn centuries with
his magic imagination the pieture that Is
afiame In ones mind of the birds and
the butterflies and the zepherlike breezes--
with here and there a saucy dandeion
or an imprudent black-eyed Susan,
Queens Lace. or Wild Aster. running riot
in ones heart and brain. after going "a
Maving" Ger field and heather in the
glorious beauty OF our southland spring.