newspaper editors, had got hold of it, no one can say in what form it might first have reached the reader's ear.
No! if there be an apology due, it is to thee only, lady reader; but as this is the first occasion when we were ever tête-a-tête with one so beautiful, without sooner manifesting our appreciation of such good fortune, so, when we promise that it is the last when the presence of thy charms shall be for a moment forgotten, we hope to be forgiven. To thee, fair and gentle one, shall we delight here often to address ourselves. For thee shall the realms of taste and invention be ransacked, and many a gem of mind be garnered here. For thee shall wit and whim and fancy revel, and austere learning move in lively measure; proud science throw her pompous robes aside, and sober truth herself be gaily dressed in fiction. And may each impression ever made upon the leaves of thy life's volume, spring from hearts as warm for thy welfare, be traced by hands as true in thy service, as those that will toil for thy entertainment in the pages of The Knickerbacker.
SONG.
[BY KENNETH QUIVORLEY.]
And curl that beautiful lip,
Which I never can gaze on without the guilt
Of burning its dew to sip;
I know that my heart is reflected in thine,
And like flowers which over a brook incline,
They toward each other dip.
Mid the careless, proud, and gay,
I will steal like a thief in thy heart at night,
And pilfer its thoughts away;
I will come in thy dreams at the midnight hour,
And thy soul in secret shall own the power
It dares to mock by day.
