Or, have I lived at last to find
An Ellen of the heart?

And well my heart responds to-day,
And willingly its chords obey

The Minstrel's loved command,
A Minstrel maid whose infant eyes
Looked on Ohio's woods and skys,
My schoolboy's sunset land.

And must I deem her winning smile
But a mere mockery, to beguile

Some lonely hour of care.
And will this Ellen prove to be
But like her namesake o'er the sea
An Ellen of the air?

Or, shall I take the Morning's wing
Armed with a parson and a ring,

Speed dale and hill along, And at her cottage hearth, at night, Change into flutterings of delight, Or, what's more likely, to affright,

The "Merry Mock Bird's Song?"

Accompanying the verses was a letter in which he thanks her for her "beautiful lines" and begs her to accept a volume of his poems on account "of the beauty of the binding and the width of the margin." Further on he says, "although your letter did not intend to make me a happy man it has made me a very proud one." He concludes as follows, "I am, My dear Miss Campbell, yours very gratefully, or, if you are in earnest, which I very much fear you are not, I am, dearest Ellen, Yours affectionately, Fitz-Greene Halleck." Her answer to this is a letter of considerable length in which she thanks him for the promise of his book, stating "that expectation stands on tiptoe on the misty banks of the blue Ohio awaiting its coming. She assures him that when he is in "Fashion's crowded halls or listening to the voice of deathless fame, she would not claim one thought,

But, when the busy throng is gone, And brightly on the Western sky

The sunset's embers brightly burn, Oh, wilt thou thither turn thy eye And give one kindly thought to her, Whose spirit ever turns to thine, Like India's idol worshipper,

Or Moslem to his prophet's shrine."

The correspondence thus begun continued throughout the year. The gay badinage which marked its beginning was succeeded by earnestness on both sides. As the poet grew more ardent in expressing his admiration and esteem for his fair letter writer, she, though still preserving her incognito and shielded to a certain extent thereby, grew more timid. At one time she tells him that "every step I have taken in your acquaintance has increased my diffidence and timidity. With a careless laugh I flung my first offering on the current of accident little thinking that it would bring me back laughter and tears, joys and sorrows, anxious thoughts and fevered dreams."

As

the year 1841 approached, she tells him that the term of her privilege has about expired and that the correspondence must stop. It appears that Halleck was much alarmed at the chance of losing his fair though unknown writer, for he answers almost immediately, in a communication filled evidently with "profound logic," as she replies, saying, "I certainly did think I had written to Mr. Halleck for the last time, but you know, before I confess it, that I am only too willing to be convinced by your profound 'logic,' that it is not only my 'privilege,' but my duty to continue the correspondence Your witty assumption of your exclusive privilege has relieved my woman's pride from the 'bastile of a word' for whose adamantine walls, I have perhaps, not shown a proper reverence." After the interchange of a few more

letters, the poet announces his intention of starting West and meeting face to face the lady whom, as "Ellen Campbell," he has learned to admire and esteem. Now was Miss Flanner troubled. We may assume that nothing would have caused her more pleasure than to accede to Halleck's wishes, but, she reflected, that even a tacit agreement would put her in the position of wooer, as she had begun the acquaintance by writing first. She waited some time before she answered this letter and then had it mailed in Washington, District of Columbia, where she sent it to a relative under cover. Halleck, of course, sent his reply to the capital city and in time it reached Miss Flanner. But she did not answer it. All efforts the author made by correspondence and otherwise to find her were in vain, and he was forced at last to admit that she must forever remain to him "An Ellen of the mind."

Miss Abbie Flanner was about twenty-six years old at the time of her acquaintance with Mr. Halleck. She is described as being rather above the average female height, had a demure and quiet expression as became a member of the Society of Friends. Her hair was of a golden brown colour and her eyes also brown, though changing at times to grey. They were very expressive and smiled more often than did her lips. Her talents in the epistolary line may be judged by her holding so

long a correspondence with so noted a literary lion as Halleck and his evident desire to continue it. In music, also, Miss Flanner excelled. In fact, she was undoubtedly possessed of those mental and physical gifts which fitted her to grace any position in the land. She had two brothers, both physicians, one of whom perished in the cholera epidemic which visited Pittsburgh, many years ago. Late in life Miss Flanner married a man, her social equal, it is said, but one who failed utterly to appreciate her intellectual gifts. She lived but a year afterward and lies buried, according to her request, on a bold bluff overlooking the Blue Ohio. There is back of the bluff a fine grove of trees in whose branches the birds sing her requiem all the day long.

This manuscript has been in the author's possession for some time. A few years ago he submitted it to a lady who was once a member of the Society of Friends and whose affiliations are all that way. She was a well-known newspaper woman of northeastern Pennsylvania, and her sister, Anne, was at one time the undisputed queen of the American lecture platform. Her only comment was, "How did you come to know about this? Abbie Flanner was my mother's most intimate friend and she visited her at Mount Pleasant a year before marrying my father.

AN ARTIST Who ties himself up to a slogan these days is doing his bit in the Great War. No submarine, no aircraft, can upset an idea once it is safely launched in the popular mind by means of a poster. That is why the governments of all the allied countries have depended greatly upon art for propaganda, calling upon pens, brushes and pencils almost as urgently as they have called upon guns. When the history of the war is told in full, a large chapter will be that which will describe how it has been pictured by artists, not only in books, but on billboards, in streetcars, on the sides of public buildings, even in mural designs over the façades of treasury buildings. This is a war in which the regular commercial advertiser and lithographer can aid governments in exploiting the necessary material things. But it is also a war of Ideas, where things of the spirit have to be kept continually before the people. One must advertise sacrifice as one advertises food products. So, artists have been called in for something broader and more subtle than mere advertising. They must picture the sweeping emotions which have upheld an unbroken line before the onrush of the Hun; they must picture the psychology behind every demand made upon the public.

It was on April 27, 1917, that the artists mobilised, at the request of Mr. George Creel, Chairman of the Committee on Public Information. We are launching, he told them,a nation-wide campaign. The re

motest regions will have to be reached with our appeals to their spirit of supreme sacrifice. There is not an official department in Washington which has not its message to get across to the American people. And as the war is prolonged, this message will take on new aspects, will have to be more insistent, will have to reflect more and more the changing phases of sentiment. It is you artists who must picture all this for the Government.

Brushes, Attention! called Charles Dana Gibson, who became chairman of the Division of Pictorial Publicity, and from that instant the American artists entered the war, quickly grasping the new demands made upon them, and unselfishly giving time and energy to the new problems confronting them. It was no casual art work they had to do. Accustomed, as many of them were, to embodying ideas contained in stories, articles and poems, in illustrations and paintings, they were now called upon to flood the country with posters which, through no other appeal than their own graphic portrayal, would stir a people to action, and put them on the instant into possession of the essential reasons for winning the war. No time would be given for experiments; while every artist would be encouraged, only the expert would execute. Here was an opportunity for discovering whatever art resources the country had. It is not a surprise that the foremost men in the profession should have in

stantly made good. But it is surprising to the officials of the Division of Pictorial Publicity that so many art schools, so many undiscovered artists, have answered the call so strikingly.

In order to meet the instant demand, organisation was an important part of the work. Mr. F. D. Casey, art editor of Collier's Weekly, was made Vice-Chairman and Secretary of the Committee. One might formulate the adage that it takes an art editor to catch an artist, for Mr. Casey knows the qualifications

of nearly every illustrator and painter in the country. There is not a demand made by the Government for posters, that he has not unerringly assigned the work to the men best qualified for the special task. Around a weekly council table, ideas are discussed, media weighed and decided. The American artist has still to urge his imagination as the initial impulse in this service. For the war is three thousand miles away. He can sit at his drawing-board or at his easel with no fear of the seventyfive mile gun reaching him, with no