* * * * *

[Illustration: ICHABOD!

GOG. "NO PRIME MINISTER! NO FURRIN SECKETARY! NO CHANCELLOR O' TH'
EXCHEQUER!"

MAGOG (_bitterly_). "S'POSE WE SHAN'T HAVE NO LORD MAYOR NEXT!!"]

* * * * *

THE MAN WHO WOULD.

I.--THE MAN WHO WOULD BE LAUREATE.

[Illustration]

His name was LEGION. He had kept his eye on the Laureateship from his
early boyhood, when he sent verses to the Poets' Corner of the _Bungay
Weekly Mail_, which sometimes published them; then he cut them out,
and pasted them neatly in a book, which he still possesses. He always
wrote on an occasion. "Lines on the Recovery of My Sister EMILY from
the Mumps"; "Dirge on the Decease of a Favourite Squirrel," beginning,
"No more!" but there was always plenty more where that came from, and
is still. At College he was one of the three men who wrote in _College
Rhymes_, and secured for that periodical a circulation by taking a
hundred copies each. LEGION sent dozens of his, marked, to every poet
he heard of, generally addressing them "Dear ALURED" (if that was the
Minstrel's Christian name), or, in verse, "Brother, my Brother, my
sweet, swift Brother!" This annoyed some poets, who did not answer;