“Do you fellows know Henley?” asked Halliday, with apparent irrelevance.

“I know him as a critic,” said McLean.

“I know him as a name,” echoed the worldly Davis, “but—­”

“I mean his poems,” resumed Halliday, “he is the most virile of the present-day poets.  Kipling is virile, but he gives you the man in hot blood with the brute in him to the fore; but the strong masculinity of Henley is essentially intellectual.  It is the mind that is conquering always.”

“Well, now that you have settled the relative place in English letters of Kipling and Henley, might I be allowed humbly to ask what in the name of all that is good has that to do with the question before the house?”

“I don’t know your man’s poetry,” said McLean, “but I do believe that I can see what you are driving at.”

“Wonderful perspicacity, oh, youth!”

“If Webb will agree not to run, I’ll spring on you the poem that seems to me to strike the keynote of the matter in hand.”

“Oh, well, curiosity will keep me.  I want to get your position, and I want to see McLean annihilated.”

In a low, even tone, but without attempt at dramatic effect, Halliday began to recite: 

    “Out of the night that covers me,
        Black as the pit from pole to pole,
    I thank whatever gods there be
        For my unconquerable soul!

    “In the fell clutch of circumstance,
        I have not winced nor cried aloud. 
    Under the bludgeonings of chance,
        My head is bloody, but unbowed.

    “Beyond this place of wrath and tears
        Looms but the horror of the shade,
    And yet the menace of the years
        Finds, and shall find me unafraid.

    “It matters not how strait the gate,
        How charged with punishments the scroll,
    I am the master of my fate,
        I am the captain of my soul.”

“That’s it,” exclaimed McLean, leaping to his feet, “that’s what I mean.  That’s the sort of a stand for a man to take.”

Davis rose and knocked the ashes from his pipe against the window-sill.  “Well, for two poetry-spouting, poetry-consuming, sentimental idiots, commend me to you fellows.  Master of my fate, captain of my soul, be dashed!  Old Jujube, with his bone-pointed hunting spear, began determining a couple of hundred years ago what I should be in this year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and ninety-four.  J. Webb Davis, senior, added another brick to this structure, when he was picking cotton on his master’s plantation forty years ago.”

“And now,” said Halliday, also rising, “don’t you think it fair that you should start out with the idea of adding a few bricks of your own, and all of a better make than those of your remote ancestor, Jujube, or that nearer one, your father?”

“Spoken like a man,” said McLean.

“Oh, you two are so hopelessly young,” laughed Davis.