Johnson as well as to the
prisoners.
It is a strange fallacy that a poet may not read his own verses well.
Who besides the writer should comprehend every shade of meaning which
made the cloud or sunshine of his poem? Mrs. Thaxter certainly read
her own verse with a fullness of suggestion which no other reader
could have given it; and her voice was sufficient, too, although not
loud or striking, to fill and satisfy the ear of the listener. But at
the risk of repetition we recall that it was her own generous,
beautiful nature, unlike that of any other, which made her reading
helpful to all who heard her. She speaks somewhere of the birds on her
island as "so tame, knowing how well they are beloved, that they
gather on the window-sills, twittering and fluttering gay and
graceful, turning their heads this way and that, eying you askance
without a trace of fear." And so it was with the human beings who came
to know her. They were attracted, they came near, they flew under her
protection, and were not disappointed of their rest.
Four years before Mrs. Thaxter left this world, when she was still
only fifty-five years old, she was stricken with a shaft of death. Her
overworked body was prostrated in sudden agony, and she, well, young,
vigorous beyond the ordinary lot of mortals, found herself weak and
unable to rise. "I do so hate figuring as an interesting invalid," she
wrote. "Perhaps I have been doing too much, getting settled.
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