An American girl in London . ever heard of it before. Lifes a jest, and all things show it;1 thought so once, and now I know it, has no significance at all read in an American school-book twothousand miles, and a hundred and fifty years from the writer of it, compared with the grimshock it gives you when yousee it actually cut deep in thestone, to be a memorial alwaysof a dead man somewhere notfar away. That you should haveheard of Nicholas Rowe, saidMiss Corke, is altogether toomuch to expect. Dear me !it would be considerably easierto improve your mind if it hadever been tried before. Buthe
An American girl in London . ever heard of it before. Lifes a jest, and all things show it;1 thought so once, and now I know it, has no significance at all read in an American school-book twothousand miles, and a hundred and fifty years from the writer of it, compared with the grimshock it gives you when yousee it actually cut deep in thestone, to be a memorial alwaysof a dead man somewhere notfar away. That you should haveheard of Nicholas Rowe, saidMiss Corke, is altogether toomuch to expect. Dear me !it would be considerably easierto improve your mind if it hadever been tried before. Buthe was poet-laureate for Georgethe First—you understand theterm ? I think so, I said. Theycontract to supply the RoyalFamily with poetry, by theyear, at a salary. We havenothing of the kind in see our Presidents differ so. They might not all likepoetry. And in that case it would be wasted, for there isnt amagazine in the country that would take it second-hand. Besides having no poets who could do it properly, poor. 1 lifes a jest, and all things SHOW IT ;I THOUGHT SO ONCE, AND NOW IKNOW IT AN AMERICAN GIRL IN LONDON 157 tilings ! said Miss Corke—to which I acceded without difficulty. Well, Mr. Rowe was a poet-laureate, though that has nothing whatever to do with it. But he had a great friend in Mr. Pope —Pope, you know hirn—by reputation—and when he and his daughter died, Mr. Pope and Mrs. Rowe felt so bad about it that he wrote those mournful lines, and she had em put up. Now listen !— To those so mourned in death, so lovd in li^e,The childless parent and the widowed wife— meaning the same lady; it was only a neat way they had ofdoubling up a sentiment in those days !— With tears inscribes this monumenta1 stone,That holds their ashes and experts her own I and everybody, including Mr. Pope, thought it perfectly sweetat the time. Then what does this degenerate widow do, aftergiving Mr. Pope every reason to believe that she would fulfilhis poetry ? She ma
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