And just as Sleary's Circus was the cup of poetry which benevolent fate held twice to the parched lips of young Thomas Gradgrind's soul, so is the circus of our day, with its regiment of clowns, its roller-skating bears and dancing elephants, its radiant men and women who pirouette on horseback and dart above our heads like swallows, a most wholesome and invigorating tonic for a weary and prosaic generation. We who every morning at the breakfast table read of war and desolation need to cheer our hearts with the burlesque battles of the clowns; we who ride in the subway need to exult when the charioteer, with streaming toga, guides his six white horses on their thunderous course; we whose eyes are daily on our ledgers and sales records need to lift them, if not to the stars, at least to the perilous wire on which a graceful pedestrian gayly flirts with death. We whose lives are prose may well be grateful for the circus, our annual draught of poetry; for the circus, the perennial, irresistible, incomparable, inevitable Renascence of Wonder. THE ABOLITION OF POETS Ever since certain vivacious Frenchmen put on funny little red nightcaps and remarked "Ca ira!" the inevitability of a reform has been the chief article of its propaganda. The Socialist orator says: "Socialism is coming upon us with the speed of the whirlwind and the sureness of the dawn." Therefore he mounts a soap-box and passionately urges six small boys, the town drunkard and a policeman to accelerate the whirlwind and encourage the dawn in its commendable habit of punctuality. The suffragist tells us: "The Votes for Women movement, like a mighty ocean, will break down the barriers of prejudice and flood the country." Therefore, like a perverted Mrs. Partington, she runs out with her little broom to help the ocean along. And so, humbly following these illustrious precedents, I advocate the abolition of poets because poets are rapidly abolishing themselves. For one thing, they have given up the uniform. In the old days it was easy to recognize them. They wore velvet jackets and sombreros, they let their hair hang over their shoulders, they were also, I believe, picturesquely ragged. When you saw M. Paul Verlaine in his great cloak, drinking absinthe at a table on the boulevard, you recognized him as a poet. But when you see Mr. Clinton Scollard in his decorous cutaway drinking a milk shake in a drug store, how are you to guess his profession? Of course, there are people who look like poets. When your literary inclined maiden aunt from West Swansey, New Hampshire (by a sacred convention all maiden aunts are literarily inclined), visits New York, you take her to a restaurant which is supposed to be bohemian because it is near Washington Square. The macaroni is buoyantly elastic, the lettuce is wilted, the chicken tough, the wine a blend of acetic acid and aniline. But your aunt enjoys it, and she is vastly interested in the company.