It is very troublesome for the youngest child

To get the big words out properly.

A Little Girl

The little girl interrupts and says the grace quickly.

The white-haired lady of whom the little girl is afraid Is angry.

The little girl breaks away and runs

To the room of the bed with the high curtains.

She rushes in

The room is empty.

She comes back to the table,

But she does not dare to ask the question.

She remembers the great red building

Wtih the great doorway.

XI

The little girl is trying to read a fairy story.

There is nobody in the garden,

There is nobody in the house but the white-haired lady.

Someone comes to tell her her father is there.

She does not want to see him

She is afraid.

XII

The front door is open;

There is rain, and leaves are whirling about.

A carriage with two horses,

And a coachman high up, holding a long whip,
Stands waiting in front of the door.

The little girl is holding on to the banisters.
They take away her hands from the banisters
And lead her to the carriage in front of the door.
Someone gets in behind her,

The carriage door is shut,

The little girl draws herself to the far corner;
They drive away.

The little girl looks back out of the window.

XIII

The little girl is in a strange house,
Where there are young men called uncles
Who talk to her and laugh.

A large lady sits by the table and knits and smiles.
In her basket are different colored balls of wool-
Pretty colors, but not enough to make a pattern.
There is a curly soft little black dog

That hides under the table.

The uncles pull him out

And he tries to hold to the carpet with his claws.
The little girl laughs-

But at the sound she turns away

And goes up to her room and shuts the door.
Pretty soon the large lady comes to her

And takes her on her lap and rocks and sings.

Mary Aldis

IN

EDITORIAL COMMENT

DOWN EAST

ORE than three years ago, when POETRY was in its first volume, I went to New York to look over that part of the field, incidentally attending the third-or possibly it was the fourth-annual banquet of the Poetry Society of America, which had been founded in 1910. Last month I took another survey, including Boston as well, and it may be in order to record a few casual and desultory impressions of change and contrast.

In January, 1913, the art was still in the old era, and one saw few signs of a change of attitude among the constituted authorities. The voices most conspicuous today had not then been heard, except, in some instances, in POETRYsuch voices as Masters, Frost, Lindsay, Sandburg, Tagore, Rupert Brooke, and the whole group of Imagists. Four numbers of POETRY had appeared, and one of The Poetry Journal, but the older magazines were still using verse as an end-of-the-page decoration, and the public was serenely indifferent.

Now all is changed. It is as though some magician had waved his wand-presto, the beggar is robed in scarlet. Indeed, the present danger may be that poetry is becoming the fashion-a real danger, because the poets need an audience, not fitful and superficial, but loyal and sincere. When six hundred persons willingly pay five good dollars apiece to

feast in honor of Mr. Masefield, and hear him and certain American confrères exchange farewells, the public would seem to be awakening to some kind of an interest in the art. And other evidences are plentiful. A'well known poet tells this story:

The other day I went into Brentano's-for the first time in years, as it happened, to get somebody's poems. Now Brentano's used to keep its modern poetry on a little table away back in a dark corner under the stair, so to that modest corner I went. But when I reached it, I found no poetry, only shop-worn boys' books. "How is this?" I said to the clerk, "have you given up poetry altogether?" The man turned on me a withering glance-"Poetry," he said, pointing majestically, "is up in front."

And up in front I found it, in high piles on the foremost table; and moreover crowds of people, three or four deep, were reaching over each other to buy it.

And here is the testimony of a Chicago lover of the art:

Not more than five or six years ago I saw, in Putnam's big New York shop, a loaded table with a placard marked, "Modern Poetry-Ten Cents a Volume." "And we can't sell it at that price!" said the clerk.

Today I find a tableful of modern verse placed among the best sellers at McClurg's, and when I express satisfaction the man replies, "Yes, that's what Miss Monroe's magazine has done!"

In order not to claim everything, this leads me to that other evidence of the renaissance-its magazines. Is it possible that only three and a half brief years ago we were alone in the field? Now a new organ of the art strikes its chord every few months, and the air is a-quiver with projects still untuned. We have not only Others, the high-pitched instrument of the young intransigeants, but Contemporary Verse, of Philadelphia, which speaks with a Quaker accent for youth's conservatism, since youth is by no means always a

Down East

radical. And now Mr. Braithwaite, over in Boston, is going to offer us next month The Poetry Review of America-no less-bringing to the service of this new sheet, of a format "as large as the New Republic," his love of the art and prolonged study of its manifestations in America. And there are whispers of still newer schemes in the New York air.

As for the poets, they seem as numerous as sparrows through the cool spring sunshine, and almost as quarrelsome. This is not to deride but to declare! I have always admired the vigor and enthusiasm with which battles of the intellect are fought in Paris-their schools and groups, their cliques and labels, their solemn assumptions and fine distinctions— all the absurd machinery through which alone, after all, a great metropolis can stage her play and put her artists before their world. Well, here in our newer world we are beginning to learn the lesson. Perhaps the French cubist painters, who are now so numerous in New York, have brought with them a spark from the Parisian altar-flame; at any rate, our poets have caught fire, and an editor who would not be scorched by leaping flames must walk warily between the various groups with banners.

At a party given by the editor of Others these fires burned low, and this editor was able to attach faces and voices to long familiar names—like William Carlos Williams, Alfred Kreymborg, Skipwith Cannèll, Horace Holley, Cloyd Head-without once being called down for an old fogey astray in a youthful world. The freshest topic was Zoë Akins' play, The Magical City, which was new at the