ture of consequent applications were alike remarkable. Churches requested hymns, to be sung at consecrations, ordinations, and installations; charitable societies, for anniversaries; academies and schools, for exhibitions. Odes were desired for the festivities of New Year and the Fourth of July, for silver and golden weddings, for the voyager wherewith to express his leave-taking, and the lover to propitiate his mistress. Epistles from strangers often solicited elegies and epitaphs; and though the voice of bereavement was to me a sacred thing, yet I felt the inefficacy of balm thus offered to a heart that bled. Sometimes I consoled myself that the multitude of these solicitations bespoke an increasing taste for poetry among the people. But to gratify all was an impossibility. They would not only have covered the surface of one life, but of as many as ancient fable attributed to the feline race. I undertook at one time to keep a statement of the solicitations that showered upon me. A good-sized manuscript book was thus soon filled. It was commenced during what dear Mrs. Hemans used to call the "album persecution." It was then the fashion for school-girls, other youthful personages, and indeed people of every age, to possess themselves of a neatly-bound blank book, which was sent indiscriminately to any one whom they chose, with the request, or exaction, of a page or more in their own handwriting.
Of those who were so unfortunate as to be known
