When we asked one of the members of this club why the club made such a fuss over the circus, he looked very much astonished; and he answered, "Well, why not? Old Forepaugh is worth over a million dollars, and he always sends us complimentaries whenever he comes to town!" We asked this same gentleman if he had read the new edition of Sappho's poems. We had a good deal of confidence in his literary judgment and taste, because he is our leading linseed-oil dealer; and no man in the West is possessed of more enterprise and sand than he. "My daughter brought home a copy of the book Saturday," said he, "and I looked through it yesterday. Sappho may suit some cranks; but as for me, give me Ella Wheeler or Will Carleton. I love good poetry: I 've got the finest-bound copy of Shakespeare in Illinois, and my edition of Coleridge will knock the socks off any book in the country. My wife has painted all the Doray illustrations of the Ancient Marine, and I would n't swap that book for the costliest Mysonyay in all Paris! "I can't see where the poetry comes in," he went on to say. "So far as I can make out, this man Sapolio--I mean Sappho--never did any sustained or consecutive work. His poems read to me a good deal like a diary. Some of them consist of one line only, and quite a number have only three words. Now, I will repeat five entire poems taken from this fool-book: I learned them on purpose to repeat at the club. Here is the first,-- "Me just now the golden-sandalled Dawn. "That 's all there is to it. Here's the second: "I yearn and seek. "A third is complete in-- "Much whiter than an egg; and the fourth is,-- "Stir not the shingle, which, I take it, was one of Sapphire's juvenile poems addressed to his mother. The fifth poem is simply,-- "And thou thyself, Calliope, which, by the way, reminds me that Forepaugh's calliope got smashed up in a railroad accident night before last,--a circumstance deeply to be regretted, since there is no instrument calculated to appeal more directly to one versed in mythological lore, or more likely to awaken a train of pleasing associations, than the steam-calliope." A South-Side packer, who has the largest library in the city, told us that he had not seen Sappho's works yet, but that he intended to read them at an early date. "I 've got so sick of Howells and James," said he, "that I 'm darned glad to hear that some new fellow has come to the front." Another prominent social light (a brewer) said that he had bought a "Sappho," and was having it bound in morocco, with turkey-red trimmings. "I do enjoy a handsome book," said he. "One of the most valuable volumes in my library I bought of a leading candy-manufacturer in this city. It is the original libretto and score of the 'Songs of Solomon,' bound in the tanned pelt of the fatted calf that was killed when the prodigal son came home."