HEN I lay in a cradle and suck'd a coral,

I lov'd romance in my childish way;

And stories, with or without a moral,

Were welcome as ever the flow'rs in

May.

For love of the false I learnt my spelling,

And brav'd the

perils of

While matters of fact

were most repelling,

Romance was plea-

sant as aught

could——[Illustration: 6079]

II.

My reading took me to desert islands,

And buried me deep in Arabian Nights;

Sir Walter led me amongst the Highlands,

On into the thickest of Moslem fights.

I found the elder Dumas delightful—

Before the sun had eclips'd,

And Harrison Ainsworth finely frightful,

And Fenimore Cooper far from—————————

A few years later I took to reading

The morbid stories of Edgar Poe—

Not healthy viands for youthful feeding

(And all my advisers told me so).

But, healthy or not, I enjoy'd them vastly;

My feverish fancy was nightly ———-

Upon horrible crimes and murders ghastly

Which sent me terrified off to—————-

III.

Well: what with perils upon the prairies,

And haunted ruins and ghosts in white,

And wars with giants and gifts from fairies,

At last I came to be craz'd outright.

And many a time, in my nightly slumbers,

Bearing a glove as a lady's———-

I held the lists against countless numbers,

After the style of the darkest———-

I am chang'd at present; the olden fever

Has left my brain in a sounder state;

In common-place I'm a firm believer,

And hunt for figure and fact and date.

I have lost a lot of my old affection,

For books on which I was wont to————

But still I can thrill at the recollection

Of mystery, magic, and martial ————