ing you are not easily moved. But you have
a mean, grasping disposition and a tendency to want more
than your share. You have formed an attachment which you
hope will be continued throughout life, but your selfishness
threatens to sever the bond."

Having written which, Mr. Scalper arranges his manuscript
for the printer next day, dons his hat and coat, and
wends his way home in the morning twilight, feeling that
his pay is earned.

The Passing of the Poet

Studies in what may be termed collective psychology are
essentially in keeping with the spirit of the present
century. The examination of the mental tendencies, the
intellectual habits which we display not as individuals,
but as members of a race, community, or crowd, is offering
a fruitful field of speculation as yet but little exploited.
One may, therefore, not without profit, pass in review
the relation of the poetic instinct to the intellectual
development of the present era.

Not the least noticeable feature in the psychological
evolution of our time is the rapid disappearance of
poetry. The art of writing poetry, or perhaps more fairly,
the habit of writing poetry, is passing from us. The poet
is destined to become extinct.

To a reader of trained intellect the initial difficulty
at once suggests itself as to what is meant by poetry.
But it is needless to quibble at a definition of the
term. It may be designated, simply and fairly, as the
art of expressing a simple truth in a concealed form of
words, any number of which, at intervals greater or less,
may or may not rhyme.

The poet, it must be said, is as old as civilization.
The Greeks had him with them, stamping out his iambics
with the sole of his foot. The Romans, too, knew
him--endlessly juggling his syllables together, long and
short, short and long, to make hexameters. This can now
be done by electricity, but the Romans did not know it.

But it is not my present purpose to speak of the poets
of an earlier and ruder time. For the subject before us
it is enough to set our age in comparison with the era
that preceded it. We have but to contrast ourselves with
our early Victorian grandfathers to realize the profound
revolution that has taken place in public feeling. It is
only with an effort that the practical common sense of
the twentieth century can realize the excessive
sentimentality of the earlier generation.

In those days poetry stood in high and universal esteem.
Parents read