have not quoted from. But
where--where," he added, musing, "did you get that last idea but two
from? It's the only one I don't seem to remember. It isn't a bit of your
own, is it?"

He said that, if so, he should advise me to leave it out. Not that it
was altogether bad, but that the interpolation of a modern thought among
so unique a collection of passages from the ancients seemed to spoil the
scheme.

And he enumerated the various dead-and-buried gentlemen from whom he
appeared to think I had collated my article.

"But," I replied, when I had recovered my astonishment sufficiently to
speak, "it isn't a collection at all. It is all original. I wrote the
thoughts down as they came to me. I have never read any of these people
you mention, except Shakespeare."

Of course Shakespeare was bound to be among them. I am getting to
dislike that man so. He is always being held up before us young authors
as a model, and I do hate models. There was a model boy at our school,
I remember, Henry Summers; and it was just the same there. It was
continually, "Look at Henry Summers! he doesn't put the preposition
before the verb, and spell business b-i-z!" or, "Why can't you write
like Henry Summers? He doesn't get the ink all over the copy-book and
half-way up his back!" We got tired of this everlasting "Look at Henry
Summers!" after a while, and so, one afternoon, on the way home, a few
of us lured Henry Summers up a dark court; and when he came out again he
was not worth looking at.

Now it is perpetually, "Look at Shakespeare!" "Why don't you write like
Shakespeare?" "Shakespeare never made that joke. Why don't you joke like
Shakespeare?"

If you are in the play-writing line it is still worse for you. "Why
don't you write plays like Shakespeare's?" they indignantly say.
"Shakespeare never made his comic man a penny steamboat captain."
"Shakespeare never made his hero address the girl as 'ducky.' Why don't
you copy Shakespeare?" If you do try to copy Shakespeare, they tell you
that you must be a fool to attempt to imitate Shakespeare.

Oh, shouldn't I like to get Shakespeare up our street, and punch him!

"I cannot help that," replied my critical friend--to return to our
previous question--"the germ of every thought and idea you have got
in that article can be traced back to the writers I have named. If
you doubt it, I will get down the books, and show you the passages for
yourself."

But I declined the offer. I said I wou