gentleman when necessary. But all joking aside, I want to ask him this:
Does he consider poetry to be an accomplishment or a vice?'

"'I was going to put something like that to him myself, only I couldn't
think of it,' says Doc Martingale, edging up and looking quite
restrained and nervous in the arms. I was afraid of the doc. I was
afraid he was going to blemish Wilfred a couple of times right there.

"'An accomplishment or a vice? Answer yes or no!' orders the judge in a
hard voice.

"The poet looks round at 'em and attempts to laugh merrily, but he only
does it from the teeth out.

"'Laugh on, my proud beauty!' says Ben Button. Then he turns to the
bunch. 'What we really ought to do,' he says, 'we ought to make a
believer of him right here and now.'

"Even then, mind you, the husbands would have lost their nerve if Ben
hadn't took the lead. Ben didn't have to live with their wives so what
cared he? Wilfred Lennox sort of shuffled his feet and smiled a smile of
pure anxiety. He knew some way that this was nothing to cheer about.

"'I got it,' says Jeff Tuttle with the air of a thinker. 'We're cramping
the poor cuss here. What he wants is the open road.'

"'What he really wants,' says Alonzo, 'is about six bottles of my pure,
sparkling beer, but maybe he'll take the open road if we show him a good
one.'