You must not think"-- and she turned back to tell me this--"that because my father said little he and I are not deeply grateful for the kindness Mr.
Halifax showed us last night." "It was a pleasure to John--it always is--to do a kind office for any one." "I well believe that, Mr.Fletcher." And she left me.
When John came home I informed him of what had passed.

He listened, though he made no comment whatever.

But all the evening he sat turning over Miss March's books, and reading either aloud or to himself fragments out of one--which I had expected he would have scouted, inasmuch as it was modern not classical poetry: in fact, a collection of Lyrical Ballads, brought out that year by a young man named Mr.
William Wordsworth, and some anonymous friend, conjointly.

I had opened it, and found therein great nonsense; but John had better luck--he hit upon a short poem called "Love," by the Anonymous Friend, which he read, and I listened to, almost as if it had been Shakspeare.

It was about a girl named Genevieve--a little simple story--everybody knows it now; but it was like a strange, low, mystic music, luring the very heart out of one's bosom, to us young visionaries then.
I wonder if Miss March knew the harm she did, and the mischief that has been done among young people in all ages (since Caxton's days), by the lending books, especially books of poetry.
The next day John was in a curious mood.