"You write poems?" asked Miss Morgan. "My dear lady," sighed Hamilton-Cox, "nobody writes poems nowadays, or if they do they keep the fact a secret. I have a younger brother who writes poetry----" "Thought you said no one wrote it." "Younger brothers are nobodies. I say I have a younger brother, he writes most excellent verse--reams of it. Some years ago he would have been pursued by publishers. Well, only the other day he copied out some of his most cherished productions and approached a London publisher with them. He entered the office at five o'clock, and some few minutes later the people in Piccadilly were asking of each other, 'What's all that row in Vigo Street?' No, a publisher of to-day would as soon see a burglar in his office as a poet." "I never took much stock in poetry," said the practical Miss Morgan. "I'm like Mr Bevan." "I can't stand the stuff," said Charles. "_The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck_, and all that sort of twaddle, makes me ill." Pamela looked slightly pained. Charles was enjoying his dinner; Burgundy and Moselle had induced a slight flush to suffuse his countenance. If you are engaged and a gourmand never let your _fiancée_ see you eat. A man mad drunk is to the sensitive mind a less revolting picture than a man "enjoying his food." "I heard a man once," said Miss Morgan, "he was squiffy----" "Lulu!" "Well, he was; and he was reciting _I Stood on the Bridge at Midnight_. He'd got everything mixed, and had got as far as "'I stood on the moon by bridgelight As the church was striking the tower--' when every one laughed, and he sat down--on another man's hat. That's the sort of poetry I like, something to make you laugh. Gracious! what's the good of manufacturing misery and letting it loose in little poems to buzz round and torment people? isn't there enough misery ready made? Hood's _Song of the Shirt_ always makes me cry." "Hood," said Professor Wilson, "was a man of another age, a true poet. He could not have written his _Song of the Shirt_ to-day; the decadence----" "Now, excuse me," said Hamilton-Cox, "we have fought that question of decadence out, you and I. Hood, I admit, could not have written his _Song of the Shirt_ to-day, simply because shirts are manufactured wholesale by machinery, and he would have to begin it. 'Whir--whir--whir,' which would not be poetry. Women slave at coats and waistcoats and other garments nowadays, and you could scarcely write a song of the waistcoat or a song of the pair of--you understand my point. Poetry is very false, the matchbox-maker is as deserving of the poet's attention as the shirt-maker, yet a poem beginning 'Paste, paste, paste' would be received with laughter, not with tears. You say we are decadents because we don't encourage poetry. I say we are not, we are simply more practical--poetry is to all intents and purposes dead----"