Hermia Suydam by Gertrude Atherton — Read

Hermia's imagination in its turn demanded a safety-valve; she found it necessary, occasionally, to put her dreams into substance and sequence. In other words she wrote. Not prose. She had neither the patience nor the desire. Nor did she write poetry. She believed that no woman, save perhaps time-enveloped Sappho, ever did, and she had no idea of adding her pseudonym to the list of failures. When her brain became overcharged, she dashed off verses, wildly romantic, and with a pen heated white. There was a wail and an hysterical passion in what she wrote that took the hearts of a large class of readers by storm, and her verses found prompt acceptance by the daily and weekly papers. She had as yet aspired to nothing higher. She was distinctly aware that her versification was crude and her methods faulty. To get her verses into the magazines they must be fairly correct and almost proper, and both attainments demanded an amount of labor distasteful to her impatient nature.

Of late, scarcely a week had passed without the appearance of several metrical contributions over the signature "Quirus; " and the wail and the passion were growing more piercing and tumultuous. The readers were moved, interested, or amused, according to their respective natures.