t the
Gate'?" asked the Idiot, to change the subject.

"I have no recollection of it," said the Poet, shortly.

"The name sounds familiar," put in Mr. Whitechoker, anxious not to be
left out of a literary discussion.

"I have read it, but I forget just how it goes," vouchsafed the
School-Master, forgetting for a moment the Robert Elsmere episode and its
lesson.

"It goes something like this," said the Idiot:

"Sombre and sere the slim sycamore sighs;
Lushly the lithe leaves lie low o'er the land;
Whistles the wind with its whisperings wise,
Grewsomely gloomy and garishly grand.
So doth the sycamore solemnly stand,
Wearily watching in wondering wait;
So it has stood for six centuries, and
Still it is waiting the boy at the gate."

"No; I never read the poem," said Mr. Whitechoker, "but I'd know it was
Swinburne in a minute. He has such a command of alliterative language."

"Yes," said the Poet, with an uneasy glance at the Idiot. "It is
Swinburnian; but what was the poem about?"

"'The boy at the gate,'" said the Idiot. "The idea was that the sycamore
was standing there for centuries waiting for the boy who never turns up."

"It really is a beautiful thought," put in Mr. Whitechoker. "It is, I
presume, an allegory to contrast faithful devotion and constancy with
unfaithfulness and fickleness. Such thoughts occur only to the wholly
gifted. It is only to the poetic temperament that the conception of such
a thought can come coupled with the ability to voice it in fitting terms.
There is a grandeur about the lines the Idiot has quoted that betrays the
master-mind."

"Very true," said the School-Master, "and I take this opportunity to say
that I am most agreeably surprised in the Idiot. It is no small thing
even to be able to repeat a poet's lines so carefully, and with so great
lucidity, and so accurately, as I can testify that he has just done."

"Don't be too pleased, Mr. Pedagog," said the Idiot, dryly. "I only
wanted to show Mr. Warren that you and Mr. Whitechoker, mines of
information though you are, have not as yet worked up a corner on
knowledge to the exclusion of the rest of us." And with these words the
Idiot left the table.

"He is a queer fellow," said the School-Master. "He is full of pretence
and hollowness, but he is sometimes almost brilliant."

"What you say is very true," said Mr. Whitechoker. "I think he has just
escaped being a smart man. I wish we could ta