Shakespeare might have wrote that line, do you not think so?"

"No doubt he might," sez I, calmly, "but he didn't."

I see she looked mad and I hastened to say: "He wuzn't aquainted
with the cat."

She looked kinder mollyfied and continued:

"Ardelia dashes off things with a speed that would astonish a mere
common writer. Why she dashed off thirty-nine verses once while
she wuz waitin' for the dish water to bile, and sent 'em right off
to the printer, without glancin' at 'em agin.'

"I dare say so," sez I, "I should judge so by the sound on 'em."

"Out of envy and jealousy, the rankest envy, and the shearest
jealousy, them verses wuz sent back with the infamous request that
she should use 'em for curl papers. But she sot right down and
wrote forty-eight verses on a `Cruel Request,' wrote 'em inside of
eighteen minutes. She throws off things, Ardelia does, in half an
hour, that it would take other poets, weeks and weeks to write."

"I persume so," sez I, "I dare persume to say, they never could
write 'em."

"And now," sez Miss Tutt, "the question is, will you put Ardelia
on the back of that horse that poets ride to glory on? Will you
lift her onto the back of that horse, and do it at once? I
require nothin' hard of you," sez she, a borin' me through and