over the Hudson, with a beautiful view of the river and the
shipping--a favorite spot where an old friend of the family,
Washington Irving, used to sit and write. Hoboken was
still country. Mr. Duer drove his daughters, taking the ferry
owned by his neighbors, the Stevens, to New York for shopping
and to parties. Mrs. Duer read aloud to her daughters every
afternoon for an hour while they sewed or painted.

On one of these afternoons Alice composed the following
elegant quatrain:

For I loved Sir Harry Oaklands,
He had dark brown curling hair.
In the summer he was sunburned
But in winter he was fair.

Sir Harry was a friend of Frank Fairleigh in the charming Vic-
torian novel of that name.

She was never to write of children except as one whose own
childhood had been happy.

Casting the body's vest aside
My soul into the boughs does glide
There, like a bird, it sits and sings,
Then whets and combs its silver wings.

As a child Alice had a great capacity for keeping her own
counsel--a sure sign of an inner imaginative life at work.

At times it was difficult to get in touch with her as she was
temporarily engaged in enacting the part of one of her numer-
ous heroines. Iseult and Gulnare were among her favorites.
Describing something she had done as a child, she wrote in
her first novel, The Modern Obstacle:

"When on a chilly autumn afternoon, the gardener picked
her out of the fountain, no one had suspected that she had
deliberately climbed in, in order the better to enact Undine.
She would have undergone all things rather than mention
these visionary companions of her waking hours."

To one of her sisters who recognized the incident she con-
fessed that when she was fished out of the fountain her only

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