of the Garden," they will not wonder that her mother kissed her, and bade her never resist a similar impulse.
When in her "happy moments," as she termed them, the impulse to write was irresistible; she always wrote rapidly, and sometimes expressed a wish that she had two pairs of hands, to record as fast as she composed. She wrote her short pieces standing, often three or four in a day, in the midst of the family, blind and deaf to all around her, wrapt in her own visions. She herself describes these visitations of her Muse, in an address to her, beginning—
I drop each earthly care;
I feel as wafted from the world
To Fancy's realms of air."
When composing her long and complicated poems, like "Amir Khan," she required entire seclusion; if her pieces were seen in the process of production, the spell was dissolved; she could not finish them, and they were cast aside as rubbish. When writing a poem of considerable length, she retired to her own apartment, closed the blinds, and in warm weather placed her Æolian harp in the window. Her mother has described her on one of these occasions, when an artist would have painted her as a young genius communing with her Muse. We quote her mother's graphic description: "I entered the room; she was sitting with scarcely light enough to discern the characters she wastracing; her harp was in the window, touched by a breeze just sufficient to rouse the spirit of harmony;
