The loyalty of men to their Alma Mater is ever charming, but the loyalty of a youth to his prospective Mother-in-Law is sublime. In the past two weeks every mail has brought me letters from Harvard men protesting against a certain preachment that appeared in the May PHILISTINE entitled, “By Rule of Three.” For the most part the literary style of these missives corroborates the strictures made as to English as she is writ at Harvard. But the crowning feature of the paper fusilade is a foolscap proposition signed by four sophomores wherein they offer to put the author of “By Rule of Three” under the pump if he will name a day and hour when he dare walk across Harvard Yard. The author, I believe, is not a Baptist, but even if he were, and if the rite referred to should be performed (in lieu of argument), why, Barrett Wendell would still be an Anglomaniac and the facts about English at Harvard would remain unchanged! * * * * * Mr. S. E. Kiser, that good honest Wit, writes me after this wise: At present not more than three out of every possible five persons to be met in this country are possessed of the honest conviction that Nature intended them for dalliance with the Muse. Why does this deplorable state of affairs exist? The answer is not far to seek. We do not give our poets enough encouragement. On the contrary, there seems to be a widespread conspiracy to keep them down. Every time champing Pegasus is mounted by a new aspirant you may see a score of critics flirt their lassoos at him, with the hope of yanking him from his perch; unless, perchance, he be an adept in the Free Masonry that occasionally exempts some favored one from the onslaughts of the iconoclasts. To come to a case in point, _Duncey’s_ endeavors to dispose of a few bards who are presumed to have furnished Uncle Frank’s critic with complimentary volumes of their own make. One of them, a Mr. W. B. Yeats, is taken to task for asserting that “Down by the salley gardens he and his love did meet.” The salley garden is objected to, forsooth, upon the ground that nobody but the inventor knows what it is. Here is a fine proposition! What would some of our most prosperous bards amount to in the estimation of the public if their verses were always couched in terms that anybody could understand? In the very number of the magazine that contains the raillery against Mr. Yeats’ salley garden, Samuel Minturn Peck warbles in this wise: I’m dreaming of the fragrant South, My native pine clad hills afar; I seem to feel upon my mouth The sweetness of a jasmine star! Soon time and space are vanished, And leagues on leagues away, With every grief far banished, My aching heart is hay.