Irwin presents in this cycle no mean claims to eminence in the truly
lyric vein. Let us turn to a contemplation of his more modest hero.

I have attempted in vain to identify him, the "Willie" of these sonnets.
The police court records of San Francisco abound in characters from
which Mr. Irwin's conception of this pyrotechnically garrulous Hoodlum
might have been drawn, and even his death from cigarette-smoking,
prognosticated in No. XXII, does not sufficiently identify him. Whoever
he was, he was a type of the latter-day lover, instinct with that
self-analysis and consciousness of the dramatic value of his emotion
that has reached even the lower classes. The sequence of the sonnets
clearly indicates the progress of his love affair with Mary, a heroine
who has, in common with the heroines of previous sonnet cycles, Laura,
Stella and Beatricia, only this, that she inspired her lover to an
eloquence that might have been better spent orally upon the object of
his affections. Even the author's scorn does not prevent the reader from
indulging in a surreptitious sympathy with the flamboyant coquetry of
his "peacherino," his "Paris Pansy." For she, too, was of the caste of
the articulate; did she not

"Cough up loops of kindergarten chin?"

and could we hear Mame's side of the quarrel, no doubt our Hoodlum
would be convicted by every reader. But Kid Murphy, the pusillanimous
rival, was even less worthy of the superb Amazon who bore him to the
altar. "See how that Murphy cake-walks in his pride!" is the
cri-du-coeur the gentlest reader must inevitably render.

But "the Peach crops come and go," as Mr. George Ade so eloquently
observes. We must not take our hero's gloomy threats too seriously.