“Certainly,” answered Ed, “and it is a region with an interesting history. It was there that the Acadians went when they were driven out of their home in British America. Longfellow tells all about it in the poem ‘Evangeline.’ I’ll read some of it,” he added, rising to go below for the book. “No, don’t,” pleaded Irv. “That poem gives me ‘that tired feeling.’ Its story is beautiful. Its sentiment is all that could be desired. But its metre makes me feel as if I were stumbling over stones in the dark.” “I’ll bet your favorite wager, a brass button, Irv, that you can’t quote a single line of the poem you are so ready to criticise,” said Will Moreraud, who was Longfellow mad, as his comrades said. “Well, I’ll take that bet,” said Irv. “And I’ll give you odds. I’ll bet seven brass buttons to your one that I can, off hand, repeat the worst and clumsiest four lines in the whole poem.” “Go ahead,” said Will. “I’ll buy a glittering brass button in New Orleans, ‘scalloped all the way round and halfway back,’ as the boy said of his ginger cakes, and pay the bet if I lose.” “All right,” said Irv. “Here goes:-- ‘Every house was an inn, where all were welcomed and feasted; For with this simple people, who lived like brothers together, All things were held in common, and what one had was another’s. Yet under Benedict’s roof hospitality seemed more abundant.’” “It really doesn’t sound like poetry,” said Phil. “But then, I’m no judge. All the same, Irv wins the bet, and I’ll exercise my authority as commander of this craft and company to compel you, Will, to buy and deliver that brass button.” “But how do you know that those four lines are the worst in the poem?” asked Will. “Because there simply couldn’t be worse ones,” said Phil, “and unless you produce some others equally bad, I shall hold these to be the worst.” “Now,” said Ed, “you fellows are very free with your criticisms. But perhaps you don’t know as much as you might. Longfellow undertook to write in hexameters. We all know what hexameters are, because we have all read some Latin poetry. But there is this difficulty: a hexameter line must end in a spondee--or a foot of two long or equally accented syllables. Now there is only here and there a word in the whole English language that is a spondee. The only spondees available in English are made up of two long, or two equally accented monosyllables. That is why the metre of Evangeline is so hard to read with ease, or at any rate it is one of the reasons. Longfellow uses trochees--that is to say, feet composed of one long and one short syllable, instead. In one case he uses the word ‘baptism’ as a spondee, but in fact it is a dactyl, consisting of one long and two short syllables. Edgar Allan Poe pointed that out.” “Why did he write in that metre, then,” asked Will, “if it is impossible in English?”