The Days of a Man 1895 



While round about thee, long as death shall be, 

 Thou hear'st strange voices, ghastly shriek and twinge, 

 The grisly horror of a rusty hinge?" 



and At Mazatlan also I wrote a poem 1 to my little 

 science daughter Barbara, which I called a study in heredity. 

 For in it I sought to trace the origin of the black 

 eyes she had inherited from her mother and grand- 

 father Knight, but which, I felt sure, must have 

 descended from a racial source outside of or back 

 of my wife's New England ancestry. I therefore 

 imagined that some forgotten rover from San 

 Sebastian in Spain had joined his blood to that of 

 the Puritan folk. As a matter of fact I later learned 

 that the black eyes and olive skin went back through 

 the Knight-Worden line to a Huguenot maid and 

 her father, who fled from France to England to 

 escape religious persecution. 



To BARBARA 



Little lady, cease your play 

 For a moment, if you may; 

 Come to me, and tell me true 

 Whence those black eyes came to you. 



Father's eyes are granite gray, 

 And your mother's, Barbara, 

 Black as the obsidian stone, 

 With a luster all their own. 

 How should one so small as you 

 Learn to choose between the two? 



If through father's eyes you look, 

 Nature seems an open book 

 All her secrets written clear 

 On her pages round you, dear. 



1 Published in The Popular Science Monthly for August, 1895. 



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