MPTON

Behold
The Critic, bold and cold,
Who sits in judgment on
The twilight and the dawn
Of literature,
And, eminently sure,
Informs his age
What printed page
Is destined to be great.
His word is Fate,
And what he writes
Is greater far
Than all the books
He writes of are.
His pen
Is dipped in boom
Or doom;
And when
He says one book is rot,
And that another's not,
That ends it. He
Is pure infallibility,
And any book he judges must
Be blessed or cussed
By all mankind,
Except the blind
Who will not see
The master's modest mastery.
His fiat stands
Against the uplifted hands
Of thousands who protest
And buy the books
That they like best;
But what of that?
He knows where he is at,
And they don't. And why
Shouldn't he be high
Above them as the clouds
Are high above the brooks,
For God, He made the Critic,
And man, he makes the books.
See?
Gee whiz,
What a puissant potentate the Critic is.

THE ASSOCIATED WIDOWS

BY KATHARINE M. ROOF

The confirmed bachelor sat apart, fairly submerged by a sea of Sunday
papers; yet a peripheral consciousness of the ladies' presence was
revealed in his embryonic smile.

He folded over a voluminous sheet containing an account of the latest
murder, and glanced at a half-page picture, labeled, "The Scene of the
Crime."

"Was there ever yet a woman that could keep a secret," he demanded,
apparently of the newspaper. "Now, if this poor fellow had only kept his
little plans to himself--but, of course, he had to go and tell some
woman."

"Looks like the man didn't know how to keep his secret that time,"
returned Mrs. Pendleton with a smile calculated to soften harsh
judgments against her sex.

"There are some secrets woman can keep," observed Elsie Howard. Her gaze
happened to rest upon Mrs. Pendleton's golden hair.

"For instance," demanded the confirmed bachelor. (His name was Barlow.)

"Oh--her age for one thing." Elsie withdrew her observant short-sighted
eyes from Mrs. Pendleton's crowning glory, and a smile barely touched
the corners of her expressively inexpressive mouth. Mrs. Pendleton
glanced up, faintly suspicious of that last remark.

Mr. Barlow laughed uproariously. In the two years that he had been a
"guest" in Mrs. Howard's boarding-house he had come to regard Mi