me too much--would you, Mildred?--if
I undertook it now. I really have no choice. And there is plenty of
hackwork of that sort available to keep us going until more solvent
days, when I shall have opportunity to write something quite worthy of
you."

"For the present, dear, it would be much more sensible, I think, to
'do' the bishops and the Corn Laws. You see, that kind of thing pays
very well, and is read by the best people; whereas poetry, of course--
But you can always come back to the verse-making, you know----"

"If you ever let me," he said, with a flash of prescience. "And I
don't believe you mean to let me. You are your mother's daughter,
after all! Nefarious woman, you are planning, already, to make a
responsible member of society out of me! and you will do it,
ruthlessly! Such is to be Prince Fribble's actual burial--in his own
private carriage, with a receipted tax-bill in his pocket!"

"What nonsense you poets talk!" the girl observed. But to him,
forebodingly, that familiar statement seemed to lack present
application.

THE LADY OF ALL OUR DREAMS

"_In JOHN CHARTERIS appeared a man with an inborn sense of the supreme
interest and the overwhelming emotional and spiritual relevancy of
human life as it is actually and obscurely lived; a man with
unmistakable creative impulses and potentialities; a man who, had he
lived in a more mature and less self-deluding community--a community
that did not so rigorously confine its interest in facts to business,
and limit its demands upon art to the supplying of illusions--might
humbly and patiently have schooled his gifts to the service of his
vision. . . . As it was, he accepted defeat and compromised
half-heartedly with commercialism._"

And men unborn will read of Heloise,
And Ruth, and Rosamond, and Semele,
When none remembers your name's melody
Or rhymes your name, enregistered with these.

And will my name wake moods as amorous
As that of Abelard or Launcelot
Arouses? be recalled when Pyramus
And Tristram are unrhymed of and forgot?--
Time's laughter answers, who accords to us
More gracious fields, wherein we harvest--what?

JOHN CHARTERIS. _Torrismond's Envoi, in Ashtaroth's Lackey_.

THE LADY OF ALL OUR DREAMS

"Our distinguished alumnus," after being duly presented as such, had
with vivacity delivered much the usual sort of Commencement Address.
Yet John Charteris was in reali