SHE was a Boston maiden, and she’d scarcely passed eighteen,

And as lovely as an houri, but of grave and sober mien,

A sweet encyclopÆdia of every kind of lore,

Though love looked coyly from behind the glasses that she wore.

She sat beside her lover, with her elbow on his knee,

And dreamily she gazed upon the slumbering summer sea,

Until he broke the silence, saying, “Pray, Minerva, dear,

“I know you’re just from Concord, where the lights of wisdom be,

Your head crammed full to bursting with their philosophy,—

Those hairy-headed sages and maids of hosiery blue;

Then solve me the conundrum, love, that I have put to you.”

She smiled a dreamy smile, and said, “The Thingness of the Here

Is that which is not passed and hasn’t yet arrived, my dear.

Indeed,” the maid continued, with a calm, unruffled brow,

“The Thingness of the Here is just the Thingness of the Now.”

A smile illumed the lover’s face; then, without undue haste,

He slid a manly arm around the maiden’s slender waist,

And on her cherry lips impressed a warm and loving kiss,

And said, “Love, this is what I call the Nowness of the This.”