"You're a perfect wonder, Huddy," said Billy Jones. "As a thought-detector you are a beauty. I believe you'd succeed if you opened up a literary bureau somewhere and devoted your time to explaining Browning and Meredith and others to a mystified public." "'Tis an excellent idea," said Tom Snobbe. "I'd really rejoice to see certain modern British masterpieces translated into English, and, with headquarters in Boston, the institution ought to flourish. Do worms honk?" [Illustration: MR. BILLY JONES] "I never heard of any doing so," replied the chairman, "but in these days it is hardly safe to say that anything is impossible. If you have watched the development of the circus in the last five years--I mean the real circus, not the literary--you must have observed what an advance intellectually has been made by the various members of the animal kingdom. Elephants have been taught to sit at table and dine like civilized beings on things that aren't good for them; pigs have been educated so that, instead of evincing none but the more domestic virtues and staying contentedly at home, they now play poker with the sangfroid of a man about town; while the seal, a creature hitherto considered useful only in the production of sacques for our wives, and ear-tabs for our children, and mittens for our hired men, are now branching out as rivals to the college glee clubs, singing songs, playing banjoes, and raising thunder generally. Therefore it need surprise no one if a worm should learn to honk as high as any goose that ever honked. Anyhow, you can't criticise a poet for anything of that kind. His license permits him to take any liberties he may see fit with existing conditions." "All of which," observed Dick Snobbe, "is wandering from the original point of discussion. What is the meaning of Haarley's poem? I can't see that as yet we have reached a definite understanding on that point." "Well, I must confess," said Jones, "that I can't understand it myself; but I never could understand magazine poetry, so that doesn't prove anything. I'm only a newspaper man." "Let's have the title, Haarley," cried Tenafly Paterson. "Was it called 'Life,' or 'Nerve Cells,' or what?" For a second Bridge's cheeks grew red. "Oh, well, if you must have it," he said, desperately, "here it is. It was called, 'A Thought on Hearing, While Visiting Gibraltar in June, 1898, that the War Department at Washington Had Failed to Send Derricks to Cuba, Thereby Delaying the Landing of General Shafter Three Days and Giving Comfort to the Enemy.'" "Great Scott!" roared Dick Snobbe. "What a title!" "It is excellent," said Billy Jones. "I now understand the intent of the poem." "Which was--?" asked Rivers. "To supply a real hiatus in latter-day letters," Jones replied; "to give the public a war poem that would make them think, which is what a true war poem should do. Who has the ninth ball?"