will get a fair likeness of yourself and a partial biographical notice, and have the satisfaction, if not of promoting the welfare of the community, at least that of advancing the financial interests of the benefactor whose enterprise has given you your coveted notoriety.  If a man wants to be famous, he had much better try the advertising doctor than the terrible editor, whose waste-basket is a maw which is as insatiable as the temporary stomach of Jack the Giant-killer.

“You must not talk so,” said Number Five.  “I know you don’t mean any wrong to the true poets, but you might be thought to hold them cheap, whereas you value the gift in others,—­in yourself too, I rather think.  There are a great many women,—­and some men,—­who write in verse from a natural instinct which leads them to that form of expression.  If you could peep into the portfolio of all the cultivated women among your acquaintances, you would be surprised, I believe, to see how many of them trust their thoughts and feelings to verse which they never think of publishing, and much of which never meets any eyes but their own.  Don’t be cruel to the sensitive natures who find a music in the harmonies of rhythm and rhyme which soothes their own souls, if it reaches no farther.”

I was glad that Number Five spoke up as she did.  Her generous instinct came to the rescue of the poor poets just at the right moment.  Not that I meant to deal roughly with them, but the “poets” I have been forced into relation with have impressed me with certain convictions which are not flattering to the fraternity, and if my judgments are not accompanied by my own qualifications, distinctions, and exceptions, they may seem harsh to many readers.

Let me draw a picture which many a young man and woman, and some no longer young, will recognize as the story of their own experiences.

—­He is sitting alone with his own thoughts and memories.  What is that book he is holding?  Something precious, evidently, for it is bound in “tree calf,” and there is gilding enough about it for a birthday present.  The reader seems to be deeply absorbed in its contents, and at times greatly excited by what he reads; for his face is flushed, his eyes glitter, and—­there rolls a large tear down his cheek.  Listen to him; he is reading aloud in impassioned tones: 

   And have I coined my soul in words for naught? 
   And must I, with the dim, forgotten throng
   Of silent ghosts that left no earthly trace
   To show they once had breathed this vital air,
   Die out, of mortal memories?

His voice is choked by his emotion.  “How is it possible,” he says to himself, “that any one can read my ‘Gaspings for Immortality’ without being impressed by their freshness, their passion, their beauty, their originality?” Tears come to his relief freely,—­so freely that he has to push the precious volume out of the range of their blistering shower.  Six years ago “Gaspings