"My dear Barry," said I, after greeting him cordially, "you shouldn't--" "Shouldn't what?" "Call Mrs. Muggins names." "Sycorax? She deserved it. Women are Cleopatras until they are thirty, then they are old witches with broomstick propensities! Don't interrupt me. Don't speak to me." I choked down a panegyric on Woman, for I knew that Barry was thinking of a cold, heartless piece of femininity that, years and years ago, forgot her troth to an honest man, and ran away with a moustache and twenty-four gilt buttons. I could never see why he regretted it, for Mrs. Captain Mary O'Donehugh never stopped growing till she could turn down a two hundred weight; and she looks anything but interesting, with her long file of little O'Donehughs--nascent captains and middies in the bud! I knew that Barescythe was not in a mood to be critically just, yet, for the sake of turning his thoughts into different channels, I glanced significantly at the MS. under his arm. "My Novel," I ventured. "Like the man in the play," said Barescythe, "the world should ask somebody to write it down an ass!" With which, he threw the manuscript on the table before me. His remark was uttered with such an air of logic, that I nodded assent, for I never disagree with logicians. "The world is wide-mouthed, long-eared, and stupid--it will probably like that affair of yours, though I doubt if the book sells." And Barry pointed to the curled up novel on the table. I bowed with, "I hope it will." "The world," he continued, "that gave Milton £10 for _Paradise Lost_, ought surely to be in ecstacies over DAISY'S NECKLACE." "Barry," said I, somewhat nettled, "is it my good nature, or your lack of it, that seduces you into saying such disagreeable things?" "Neither, Ralph, for I no more lack good nature than you possess it. But we won't quarrel. I am sore because the day of great books has gone by! Once we could boast of giant minds: we have only pigmies now." "But let them speak, Barry. There may be some among us that are not for a day. Who foresaw in the strolling player, in the wild, thoughtless Will Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon, the Dramatist of all time? Your pet Homer was a mendicant. Legions of our best poets were not acknowledged, until the brain that thought, was worn out, the hand that toiled, cold, and the lips that murmured, patient forever! 'So angels walked unknown on earth, But when they flew were recognized!' What if my poor story is stale and flat beside the _chef-d'oeuvre_ of Sir Walter Scott's genius? Barry, there is a little bird in our New-England woods known only by its pleasant chirp; yet who would break its amber bill because the nightingales in eastern lands warble so deliciously?" Barry laughed.