is asked at one time or other, if only at dinner."

At this moment the Poet who shares my chambers came in--later than he
should have done--and interrupted my soliloquy. But I was still hot, and
enlisted his interest in my vision and my apologia, and began drawing up
a list of the questions, in which after a while he became so interested
that he started adding to it. Hours flew like minutes, and only the
splitting headache we both brought upon ourselves drove us to desist.
Here is our first rough list of the questions that confront the modern
man--a disorderly, deficient, and tautological list, no doubt, to which
any reader can add many hundred more.


VEXED QUESTIONS

Queen Mary and Bothwell. Shakespeare and Bacon. Correct
transliteration of Greek; pronunciation of Latin. Sunday opening of
museums; of theatres. The English Sunday; Bank Holiday. Darwinism. Is
there spontaneous creation? or spontaneous combustion? The germ
theory; Pasteur's cures; Mattei's cures; Virchow's cell theory. Unity
of Homer; of the Bible. Dickens v. Thackeray. Shall we ever fly? or
steer balloons? The credit system; the discount system.
Impressionism, decadence, Japanese art, the _plein air_ school.
Realism _v._ romance; Gothic _v._ Greek art. Russian fiction, Dutch,
Bulgarian, Norwegian, American, etc., etc.: opinion of every novel
ever written, of every school, in every language (you must read them
in the original); ditto of every opera and piece of music, with
supplementary opinions about every vocalist and performer; ditto of
every play, with supplementary opinions about every actor, dancer,
etc.; ditto of every poem; ditto of every picture ever painted, with