There is, in this city, a Poetry Society. Once a month they gather together at a handsome club to talk and be talked to. Once a year they foregather at a grand hotel for a handsome dinner and some more talk. I am inquisitive, God help me! He and good training have made me so. To gratify my curiosity concerning the makers of American poetry, I asked Master Witter Bynner, one of their band, to take me to their monthly meeting at the National Arts Club. I ache still from suppressed laughter. (Dear sense of humor, what would I do without you when I visit the habitations of the pretentious and the congregation of the hum-bugs?) It is the custom of this body of—of—the word I want will come to me later. It is their custom, I say, to ask for unpublished verse to be read aloud to the assemblage. The reader of the evening was Witter Bynner. Now Mr Bynner is a poet with a fine, vibrant voice and a rare appreciation for pause and effect, but when he read the verse of those anonymous poets such feeling did he put into them that his legs quivered and showed great emotion. That distressed and distracted me. After each poem was read it was criticized by the audience. Criticism of a certain type is the easiest thing in the world. That type, that petty, empty, wordy type, was present in all its glory. Its chief exponent was one Shaemas O’Sheel, a wordy fellow loving the sound of his own voice and giving vent to many empty phrases with much gusto and argumentative fervor. Mr O’Sheel once wrote and had published in a book this plaintive thing: My song is such a little thing Oh, such a little thing! It is not loud; it is not long, And wherefor should I sing? Echo answers, Wherefor? Another fellow who fancied himself as critic was a youth named Joyce Kilmer. Perhaps you have heard of him. He is the author of charming conceits, in verse, on trees and delicatessen stores. He has also written some sweet roundels and ballades. Incidentally he is a member of the staff of _The New York Times_. Occasionally he makes excursions to Women’s Clubs and other intellectual organizations to tell them all he knows about poetry. God save him! And God save me from ever hearing another night of such criticism from ponderous youths and knowing old maids!