little
nettled. "Exclude poets altogether? I was one, remember."

"Oh, but not much of one, Sir Walter," put in Doctor Johnson,
deprecatingly.

"No," said Confucius. "I don't want them excluded, but they should be
controlled. You don't let a shoemaker who has become a member of this
club turn the library sofas into benches and go pegging away at
boot-making, so why should you let the poets turn the place into a verse
factory? That's what I'd like to know."

"I don't know but what your point is well taken," said Blackstone,
"though I can't say I think your parallels are very parallel. A
shoemaker, my dear Confucius, is somewhat different from a poet."

"Certainly," said Doctor Johnson. "Very different--in fact, different
enough to make a conundrum of the question--what is the difference
between a shoemaker and a poet? One makes the shoes and the other shakes
the muse--all the difference in the world. Still, I don't see how we can
exclude the poets. It is the very democracy of this club that gives it
life. We take in everybody--peer, poet, or what not. To say that this
man shall not enter because he is this or that or the other thing would
result in our ultimately becoming a class organization, which, as
Confucius himself says, we are not and must not be. If we put out the
poet to please the sage, we'll soon have to put out the sage to please
the fool, and so on. We'll keep it up, once the precedent is
established, until finally it will become a class club entirely--a
Plumbers' Club, for instance--and how absurd that would be in Hades! No,
gentlemen, it can't be done. The poets must and shall be preserved."

"What's the objection to class clubs, anyhow?" asked Cassius. "I don't
object to them. If we could have had political organizations in my day I
might not have had to fall on my sword to get out of keeping an
engagement I had no fancy for. Class clubs have their uses."

"No doubt," said Demosthenes. "Have all the class clubs you want, but do
not make one of this. An Authors' Club, where none but authors are
admitted, is a good thing. The members learn there that there are other
authors than themselves. Poets' Clubs are a good thing; they bring poets
into contact with each other, and they learn what a bore it is to have to
listen to a poet reading his own poem. Pugilists' Clubs are good; so are
all other class clubs; but so also are clubs like our own, which takes in
all who are worthy. H