ary Taste and How to
Acquire It," but we know the answer. It is to read only first-class
stuff. Circumstances may oblige a man to write second-class books, but
there is no reason why he should read such.

* * *

THE STORM.

(_By a girl of ten years._)

It lightnings, it thunders
And I go under,
And where do I go,
I wonder.

I go, I go--
I know.
Under the covers,
That's where I go.

The little poet of the foregoing knew where she was going, which is more
than can be said for many modern bards.

* * *

THE EIGHTH VEIL.

(_By J-mes Hun-k-r._)

There was a wedding under way. From the bright-lit mansion came the
evocations of a loud bassoon. Ulick Guffle, in whom the thought of
matrimony always produced a bitter nausea, glowered upon the house and
spat acridly upon the pave. "Imbeciles! Humbugs! Romantic rot!" he
raged.

Three young men drew toward the scene. Ulick barred their way, but two
of the trio slipped by him and escaped. The third was nailed by Guffle's
glittering eye. Ulick laid an ineluctable hand upon the stranger's arm.
"Listen!" he commanded. "Matrimony and Art are sworn and natural foes.
Ingeborg Bunck was right; there are no illegitimate children; all
children are valid. Sounds like Lope de Vega, doesn't it? But it isn't.
It is Bunck. Whitman, too, divined the truth. Love is a germ; sunlight
kills it. It needs l'obscurite and a high temperature. As Baudelaire
said--or was it Maurice Barres?--dans la nuit tous les chats sont gris.
Remy de Gourmont..."

The wedding guest beat his shirtfront; he could hear the bassoon
doubling the cello. But Ulick continued ineluctably. "Woman is a sink of
iniquity. Only Gounod is more loathsome. That Ave Maria--Grand Dieu! But
Frederic Chopin, nuance, cadence, appoggiatura--there you have it. En
amour, les vieux fous sont plus fous que les jeunes. Listen to
Rochefoucauld! And Montaigne has said, C'est le jouir et non le posseder
qui rend heureux. And Pascal has added, Les affaires sont les affaires.
As for Stendhal, Flaubert, Nietzsche, Edgar Saltus, Balzac, Gautier,
Dostoievsky, Rabelais, Maupassant, Anatole France, Bourget, Turgenev,
Verlaine, Renan, Walter Pater, Landor, Cardinal Newman and the Brothers
Goncourt..."

Ulick seized his head with both hands, and the wedding guest seized the
opportunity to beat it, as the saying is. "Swine!" Ulick flung after
him. "Swine, before whom I have cast a ha