"But I want to tell you, while we are on this subject of the artist and the orator," Mr. Reed continued, "that I believe there is as much of a rhythm in prose as there is in poetry, and if a man has not the intuitive feeling of that subtile thing, rhythm, he can never amount to anything as an orator. Certain books of George William Curtis--'Prue and I,' especially--have helped me as much as anything to realize how delightful a quality rhythm is." There is a side to Mr. Reed which few people suspect. He is a lover of good novels, especially such novels as those of Balzac and Thackeray, which present human nature in a rugged, truthful manner. I should think that Mr. Reed would have about as much respect for a namby-pamby novel as he has for a wishy-washy politician. Of the English novelists he likes Thackeray by far the best. "Pendennis," "The Adventures of Philip," and "The Virginians" he esteems as his most interesting works, though Thackeray reached high-water mark, in Mr. Reed's opinion, in "Vanity Fair." Charles Reade, too, has found in him an assiduous reader. He thinks "The Cloister and the Hearth" the finest and truest picture that has been made of life in the fifteenth century, and that Charles Reade is the best story-teller that ever wrote English. In poetry his preference is for Tennyson, but he is a constant reader of Browning, Holmes, Longfellow, and Whittier also. "Would you mind," said Mr. Reed, while talking of poets, "if I descend from the great names and say that I have a great liking for the rhymes of a Kansas lawyer, Eugene F. Ware, who writes over the nom-de-plume of 'Ironquill'? They are so direct; they present a moral in so few and so strikingly well chosen words; and then they have just enough of that quality of language which is always attractive because it is language in the making. How do you like this example of Mr. Ware's sturdy popular muse? "'Once a Kansas zephyr strayed Where a brass-eyed bull-pup played; And that foolish canine bayed At that zephyr in a gay, Semi-idiotic way. Then that zephyr in about Half a jiffy took that pup, Tipped him over wrong side up; Then it turned him wrong side out. And it calmly journeyed thence With a barn and string of fence. MORAL. When communities turn loose Social forces that produce The disorders of a gale, Act upon a well-known law, Face the breeze, but close your jaw; It's a rule that will not fail. If you bay it in a gay, Self-sufficient sort of way, It will land you, without doubt, Upside down and wrong side out.'"