l--than some of the criticisms of them--if literature at
all."

"Have I touched a broken, perhaps often mended, place in your armor?"
laughed the god.

"Well," I admitted, crustily, "I have read criticisms of English--no
matter whose--the English of which was eminently criticisable. Here is
one. The gentleman makes no distinction in the uses of 'which' and
'that,' and he has not a 'who' in his vocabulary."

"I have my eye on it," laughed the image, "and I admit that a few
whiches and whos for thats, and--even--er--pardon!--a few of your
dashes, would make its teaching more grateful."

"God," adjured I, happily, "thank you! Now do please stop and think! No
speech, no thought, goes on without dashes. When we write the speech
which flows mellifluous, we do violence to nature. And in all art the
tendency is toward nature."

"Recently," began the deity, in that high tone which always meant
checkmate to me, "I have seen the statue of an alleged athlete, in which
his bunions were reproduced!"

"I saw it, too," I laughed. Indeed, the god and I had stared at it
together.

"Well," the effigy went on, "that was certainly nature!"

"There is a golden mean," I re-quoted. "An artistic attitude toward all
manifestations of art. If one has this one will appreciate--er--whether
to reproduce the bunions. They may, of course, be picturesque bunions.
Why, god, if one should reproduce human speech, as it is spoken, there
would be a dash after every third word! Mine are quite within bounds."

"It would look queer," said the god, "and you would be called eccentric
instead of original. Please don't do it! In fact stop it! Placate both
your readers and your critics."

"Oh, as to that," said I, airily, "the labor would all be lost. Anything
which is unusual to the superficial experience of the average person is
glibly dubbed eccentric. You know how it is. A reader likes to find the
dear old situations in advance of him so that he knows what he is
approaching. There is the same fear of the terra incognita in literature
that there is in nature. A book or a play which is too novel a tax upon
the faculties of a client is not to his liking."

"Who, pray, do you write books for?" asked the effigy, with the
suspicion of a yawn.

"The people who read them," said I, cockily.

"Do They include the critics?"

"Oh, no," said I, hastily.

"Aren't they 'people who read them'?"

"Why, they are critics," cried I. "How can they?"

"That is