lofty bearing, courtesy, but an unsoaped, ill-clad, turbulent,
high-tempered young fellow, looked up to by his crowd very much as the
champion of the heavy weights is looked up to by his gang of blackguards.
Alexander himself was not much better,--a foolish, fiery young madcap.
How often is he mentioned except as a warning? His best record is that
he served to point a moral as 'Macedonian's madman.' He made a figure,
it is true, in Dryden's great Ode, but what kind of a figure? He got
drunk,--in very bad company, too,--and then turned fire-bug. He had one
redeeming point,--he did value his Homer, and slept with the Iliad under
his pillow. A poet like Homer seems to me worth a dozen such fellows as
Achilles and Alexander."

"Homer is all very well far those that can read him," said Number Seven,
"but the fellows that tag verses together nowadays are mostly fools.
That's my opinion. I wrote some verses once myself, but I had been sick
and was very weak; hadn't strength enough to write in prose, I suppose."

This aggressive remark caused a little stir at our tea-table. For you
must know, if I have not told you already, there are suspicions that we
have more than one "poet" at our table. I have already confessed that I
do myself indulge in verse now and then, and have given my readers a
specimen of my work in that line. But there is so much difference of
character in the verses which are produced at our table, without any
signature, that I feel quite sure there are at least two or three other
contributors besides myself. There is a tall, old-fashioned silver urn,
a sugar-bowl of the period of the Empire, in which the poems sent to be
read are placed by unseen hands. When the proper moment arrives, I lift
the cover of the urn and take out any manuscript it may contain. If
conversation is going on and the company are in a talking mood, I replace
the manuscript or manuscripts, clap on the cover, and wait until there is