tly frank with you, I cannot even conjure up in my
fancy a picture of you knocking out a tragedy with the right hand on one
machine, while your left hand is fashioning a farce-comedy on another."

"He might do as a great many modern writers do," said Ward; "go in for
the Paper-doll Drama. Cut the whole thing out with a pair of scissors.
As the poet might have said if he'd been clever enough:

_Oh, bring me the scissors_,
_And bring me the glue_,
_And a couple of dozen old plays_.
_I'll cut out and paste_
_A drama for you_
_That'll run for quite sixty-two days_.

_Oh, bring me a dress_
_Made of satin and lace_,
_And a book--say Joe Miller's--of wit_;
_And I'll make the old dramatists_
_Blue in the face_
_With the play that I'll turn out for it_.

_So bring me the scissors_,
_And bring me the paste_,
_And a dozen fine old comedies_;
_A fine line of dresses_,
_And popular taste_
_I'll make a strong effort to please_.

"You draw a very blue picture, it seems to me," said Shakespeare, sadly.

"Well, it's true," said Carlyle. "The world isn't at all what it used to
be in any one respect, and you fellows who made great reputations
centuries ago wouldn't have even the ghost of a show now. I don't
believe Homer could get a poem accepted by a modern magazine, and while
the comic papers are still printing Diogenes' jokes the old gentleman
couldn't make enough out of them in these days to pay taxes on his tub,
let alone earning his bread."

"That is exactly so," said Tennyson. "I'd be willing to wager too that,
in the line of personal prowess, even D'Artagnan and Athos and Porthos
and Aramis couldn't stand London for one day."

"Or New York either," said Mr. Barnum, who had been an interested
listener. "A New York policeman could have managed that quartet with one
hand."

"Then," said Shakespeare, "in the opinion of you gentlemen, we old-time
lions would appear to modern eyes to be more or less stuffed?"

"That's about the size of it," said Carlyle.

"But you'd draw," said Barnum, his face lighting up with pleasure. "You'd
drive a five-legged calf to suicide from envy. If I could take you and
Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte and Nero over for one circus season we'd
drive the mint out of business."

"There's your chance, William," said Ward. "You write a play for
Bonaparte and Caesar, and let Nero take his fiddle and be the orchestra.
Under Barnum's ma