"WHEN WE WERE VERY YOUNG"

The young lady of thirteen who raised Brooklyn from the realm of antiquated humor to the Utopia of poesy now has a rival. Another young lady of thirteen, this time from Lynn has proclaimed her muse. Singing not of tenements and traffic but of field mice and clocks of loons, the shoe city Sappho strikes a pastoral note truly becoming in one of her age. One stanza from her "Autumn" shows how nature has fired her girlish genius. "Flocks of loons and coots and mallows Flying southward by the score;

You can count them by the millions

And behind them countless more."

The public adores freaks; it always will. And certain doting mothers will allow precocious performances of their offspring to beguile them into dragging the offspring before the journalistic spotlight. So, occasionally, some child will, through environment or training or whatnot, concoct verses to delight the critics. But critics are often guileless, often glad to enjoy novelty. The maternal conscience should keep more awake. For, after all, few poets of eleven can at thirty survive the reading of their earliest verse. If they can they are not poets.