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Nathalia’s day is today. All of Time that is past, from the birth of those odd old folk, the troglodytes, about which she has ruminated so pleasantly, up to and through the final scene of the latest Broadway moving picture is, to her, a harvested crop—important in its way but no longer interesting. And as for tomorrow and the next year, they will have their turn presently. It is today....

This extract from Nathalia’s as yet unarticulated philosophy is offered by way of information for those who are instinctively inclined to be harsh, on general principles, with a talent that springs, a little too boldly perhaps, ahead of its years.

Nathalia had been writing her verse for several months before Mr. and Mrs. Crane came across it, writing it without fuss or excitement and storing it in a small and private album, content apparently with the reward of whatever pleasure the rereading of it gave her. If she had, even secretly, any concern with such a vanity as applause, she certainly did not betray it. And when shortly before Christmas of 1922, the little girl mailed some of her poems to a Brooklyn newspaper and received immediate acknowledgment from the editor, her parents were as much astonished as, later on, was the editor of a newspaper when, after having accepted a number of poems signed Nathalia Crane, the author herself walked into the office and proved to be a mite of a human being.

I was one of the file of reporters that trailed into Nathalia’s home the morning after her first publication, bent less on nourishing and encouraging a young artist than on getting a human-interest story. It was a file that eventually included generous, vociferous, and indiscriminate eulogists, a file that threatened to demoralize or spoil whatever young talents Nathalia had.

Those kind-hearted newspaper folks showered her with a shocking amount of almost unqualified praise, some of it accurately placed but most of it merely blank fire. This would have been very bad for her but for one thing—Nathalia never read any of it.

And so, unaffected, she maintained the same tenor of her young days, playing with her dolls when she pleased and retiring to her boudoir to make rhythms when she pleased. She has always written, and still does write, only when the fancy prompts her.

What Nathalia has written is the kind of thing that she can write, whatever its merits or demerits. She has measured it against no other verse, youthful or adult. The inspiration for most of it comes from books she has read, which are mainly romantic in character. As for the rest, it happens that she is an extraordinarily articulate little girl, and if in some cases the conceits and fancies which she crystallizes are no rarer than those that, in all probability, throng the mysterious mind of every imaginative child, the explanation is simply that she is able to utter and clarify them, and these other children are, for the most part, normally unable to do that. That also they have, in Nathalia’s case, taken the form of mature work, as evidenced, in one way, by the fact that editors published her contributions for several months before learning that she was so much below the accepted age for serious consideration, is, I believe, another mark of her high singularity.

Others, unfortunately, will be less easily satisfied. A cynicism concerning the future careers of precocious children is one of the rigid fundamentals of nearly every mind. It has, no doubt, a valid basis. But, for that reason, Nathalia’s future, probably very dark in popular prospect, threatens to shade her present. That is why I offered at the outset, as a point of information, the comment on Nathalia’s general attitude toward life. Nathalia, I am sure, sees no reason why anybody else should read these poems with an eye any further ahead in time than this afternoon’s sunset. She is content to leave the verdict, so far as posterity is concerned, to her own grandchildren.

Nunnally Johnson

Brooklyn, N. Y., May, 1924.