treated, and had
never ceased to love her. Of course, the two men do not know this. By
the advice of the elder man, the younger one has decided to settle down
and marry his cousin, a charming young girl, who is also brought upon
the scene. The other girl is represented as having married an old
country parson, who sought a wife simply as a helpmeet in his work. By
thus complicating the situations, room has been given for subtle psychic
development. The action is all concentrated into one morning in the
parlor of the old inn, reminding one much of the method of Ibsen in his
plays of grouping his action about a final catastrophe. At the inn one
is introduced first to the two gamblers in talk, the young man having
won his ten thousand pounds from the older man, who had intended to
fleece him. The inn album plays an important part in the action,
innocent as its first appearance upon the scene seems to be. The
description of this and the inn parlor opens the poem.

THE INN ALBUM

I

"That oblong book's the Album; hand it here!
Exactly! page on page of gratitude
For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view!
I praise these poets: they leave margin-space;
Each stanza seems to gather skirts around,
And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine,
Modest and maidlike; lubber prose o'er-sprawls
And straddling stops the path from left to right.
Since I want space to do my cipher-work,
Which poem spares a corner? What comes first?
'_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'
(Open the window, we burn daylight, boy!)
Or see--succincter beauty, brief and bold--
'_If a fellow can dine On rumpsteaks and port wine,
He needs not despair Of dining well here_--'
'_Here!_' I myself could find a better rhyme!
That bard's a Browning; he neglects the form:
But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense!
Still, I prefer this classic. Ay, throw wide!
I'll quench the bits of candle yet unburnt.
A minute's fresh air, then to cipher-work!
Three little columns hold the whole account:
_Ecarte_, after which Blind Hookey, then
Cutting-the-Pack, five hundred pounds the cut.
'Tis easy reckoning: I have lost, I think."

Two personages occupy this room
Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn
Perched on a view-commanding eminence;
--Inn which may be a veritable house
Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste
Till