Of the gems reprinted in THE SCRAP BOOK, our readers have received none
more gladly than Mrs. Susan Marr Spalding’s “Fate,” which appeared in
our first issue. Her name was then given as “Spaulding,” an error which
we take this occasion to correct.
Few who read the poem in the March SCRAP BOOK were aware that Mrs.
Spalding was still living. It is many years since “Fate” first appeared.
The author’s fame, while amply justified by many other poems, has been
permitted to rest upon that single earlier product, and the author
herself has been lost sight of. Since “Fate” appeared, however, she has
written much that is worthy of long remembrance.
Mrs. Spalding has been living with a friend, Mrs. Louise P. Sargent, of
West Medford, Massachusetts, who writes of her, saying: “She is a
helpless invalid, but so sweet and helpful that her influence radiates
through a large circle.” Many friends sent her the March SCRAP BOOK, and
she said:
“I am growing tired of ‘Fate.’ Why don’t they copy some of the sonnets,
which are surely as deserving?”
Mrs. Spalding’s later poems, while perhaps no one of them strikes so
vital a tone as “Fate,” are of high merit. We reprint from “The Wings of
Icarus,” published by Roberts Brothers in 1892, the following fine
sonnet: