chanced to speak The words "leg" or "liver" before you, I think Your gray ashes, even, would deepen to pink Should your ghost happen into a clinic or college Where your granddaughters congregate seeking for knowledge. Forced to listen to what they are eager to hear, No doubt you would fancy the world out of gear, And deem modesty dead, with last century belles. 

 Honored ghosts, you, would err! for true modesty dwells In the same breast with knowledge, and takes no offense. Truth never harmed anything yet but pretense. 

 There are fashions in modesty; what in your time Had been deemed little less than an absolute crime In matters of dress, or behavior, to-day Is the custom. And however daring you may Deem our manners and modes, yet, were facts fully known, Our morals compare very well with your own. 

 The women composing the class at Bellevue Were young—under thirty; some pleasing to view, Some plain. Roman features prevailed, with brown hair, But one was so feminine, soft eyed and fair That she seemed out of place in a clinic, as though A rose in a vegetable garden should grow. While her face was intelligent, none would avow That cold intellect dwelt on that fair oval brow, Or looked out of the depths of those golden gray eyes, The color of smoke against clear, sunny skies. 'Twas a warm woman face, made for fireside nooks, Not a face to be bent over medical books. There was nothing aggressive in features or form; She was meant for still harbors, and not for the storm And the strife of rude waters. The swell of her breast Suggested love's sweet downy cushion of rest For the cheeks of fair children. Her plump little hands, Seemed fashioned for sewing small gussets and bands And fussing with laces and ribbons, instead Of cutting cold flesh and dissecting the dead. And yet, as a student she ranked with the first. But conscience, in labor once chosen, not thirst For such knowledge, had spurred her to action. This day She seemed inattentive, her air was distrait, As if thought had slipped free of the bridle and rein And galloped away over memory's plain. 

 It was true; it was strange, too, but there in the class, While the learned man was talking, her mind seemed to pass Out, away from the clinic, away from the town, To a New England midsummer garden close down By the salt water's edge; and she felt the wind blowing Among her loose locks as she leaned o'er her sewing, While the voice of a man stirred her heart into song. She was called from her dream by the clang of the gong Which foretells an arrival at Bellevue. The class Was dismissed for the day. In the 

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