I like better so far as the music of it is concerned; and fully as well, perhaps, as far as ideas go. There is something rather conscious and posing in Mr. Trench's effort. And you see why I think of him when I read Rupert Brooke. There is the same _memento mori_, the same hopelessness of outlook. It seems a pity to me, when a man can write as well as Brooke does in _The Hill_ and in that exquisite sonnet beginning "Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire of watching you," that he should waste his time on stupid, unpleasant cynicisms like _Wagner_ and that _Channel Passage_, in which he doesn't know which pain to choose--nausea or memory. I believe an Englishman can't achieve just the right degree of mockery and brutality necessary for such an effort. Take Heine, if you will--(I'm a Heine enthusiast); _he_ could do it with supreme artistry. Do you remember the sea poems--especially the one where he looks into the depths of the sea, catches sight of buried cities and sees his lost love ("ein armes, vergessenes Kind")? It finishes with the captain pulling him in by the heels, crying, "Doktor, sind Sie des Teufels?" Heine can touch filth and offer it to you, and you are rather amused--as at a child. But Englishmen are too self-conscious for anything of that sort. You are shocked and ashamed when they try it, feeling in a way defiled yourself by reading. It irritates me, and I wish Mr. Brooke would stop it, right away. He's too worth while to waste himself. THE FEMINIST DISCUSSIONS Do you know the story of the man, elected by some political pull to a judgeship in Indiana, who, after listening to the argument for the plaintiff, refused to hear anything further. "That feller wins," he said decisively. On being told that it was customary and necessary to hear the defendant's side also, he duly listened, with growing amazement. "Don't it beat all?" he said, pathetically, at the close; "now the other feller wins."