lisden._

SIR:--I warn you that I will not accept any more copies of your books.
I do not know the individual named Tennyson to whom you refer; but if
he is the scribbler who is perpetually sending me copies of his verses,
please tell him that I read no poetry except my own. Why can't you leave
me alone?

J. MOGGRIDGE, Poet Laureate.

These letters of Jimmy's remind me of our famous competition, which took
place on the night of the Jubilee celebrations. When all the rest of
London (including William John) was in the streets, the Arcadians met as
usual, and Scrymgeour, at my request, put on the shutters to keep out
the din. It so happened that Jimmy and Gilray were that night in wicked
moods, for Jimmy, who was so anxious to be a journalist, had just had
his seventeenth article returned from the _St. John's Gazette_, and
Gilray had been "slated" for his acting of a new part, in all the
leading papers. They were now disgracing the tobacco they smoked by
quarrelling about whether critics or editors were the more disreputable
class, when in walked Pettigrew, who had not visited us for months.
Pettigrew is as successful a journalist as Jimmy is unfortunate, and
the pallor of his face showed how many Jubilee articles he had written
during the past two months. Pettigrew offered each of us a Splendidad
(his wife's new brand), which we dropped into the fireplace. Then he
filled my little Remus with Arcadia, and sinking weariedly into a chair,
said:

"My dear Jimmy, the curse of journalism is not that editors won't accept
our articles, but that they want too many from us."

This seemed such monstrous nonsense to Jimmy that he turned his back on
Pettigrew, and Gilray broke in with a diatribe against critics.

"Critics," said Pettigrew, "are to be pitied rather than reviled."

Then Gilray and Jimmy had a common foe. Whether it was Pettigrew's
appearance among us or the fireworks outside that made us unusually
talkative that night I cannot say, but we became quite brilliant, and
when Jimmy began to give us his dream about killing an editor, Gilray
said that he had a dream about criticising critics; and Pettigrew, not
to be outdone, said that he had a dream of what would become of him if
he had to write any more Jubilee articles. Then it was that Marriot
suggested a competition. "Let each of the grumblers," he said, "describe
his dream, and the man whose dream seems the most exhilarating will
get from the judges a Jubilee