Pudge took charge again. "Close your gabs, everybody," he commanded sternly. "There's no sense in going over the prose lit. You can do that better by yourselves. God knows I'm not going to waste my time telling you bone-heads what Carlyle means by a hero. If you don't know Odin from Mohammed by this time, you can roast in Dante's hell for all of me. Now listen; the prof said that they were going to make us place lines, and, of course, they'll expect us to know what the poems are about. Hell! how some of the boys are going to fox 'em." He paused to laugh. "Jim Hicks told me this afternoon that 'Philomela' was by Shakspere." The other boys did not understand the joke, but they all laughed heartily. "Now," he went on, "I'll give you the name of a poem, and then you tell me what it's about and who wrote it." He leafed rapidly through an anthology. "Carl, who wrote 'Kubla Khan'?" Carl puffed his pipe meditatively. "I'm going to fox you, Pudge," he said, frankly triumphant; "I know. Coleridge wrote it. It seems to be about a Jew who built a swell joint for a wild woman or something like that. I can't make much out of the damn thing." "That's enough. Smack for Carl," said Pudge approvingly. "Smack" meant that the answer was satisfactory. "Freddy, who wrote 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'?" Freddy twisted in his chair, thumped his head with his knuckles, and finally announced with a groan of despair, "No soap." "Hugh?" "No soap." "Larry?" "Well," drawled Larry, "I think Jawn Keats wrote it. It's one of those bedtime stories with a kick. A knight gets picked up by a jane. He puts her on his prancing steed and beats it for the tall timber. Keats isn't very plain about what happened there, but I suspect the worst. Anyhow, the knight woke up the next morning with an awful rotten taste in his mouth." "Smack for Larry. Your turn, Carl. Who wrote 'The West Wind'?" "You can't get me on that boy Masefield, Pudge. I know all his stuff. There isn't any story; it's just about the west wind, but it's a goddamn good poem. It's the cat's pajamas." "You said it, Carl," Hugh chimed in, "but I like 'Sea Fever' better. "I must go down to the seas again, To the lonely sea and the sky.... Gosh! that's hot stuff. 'August, 1914's a peach, too." "Yeah," agreed Larry languidly; "I got a great kick when the prof read that in class. Masefield's all right. I wish we had more of his stuff and less of Milton. Lord Almighty, how I hate Milton! What th' hell do they have to give us that tripe for?" "Oh, let's get going," Freddy pleaded, running a nervous hand through his mouse-colored hair. "Shoot a question, Pudge." "All right, Freddy." Pudge tried to smile wickedly but succeeded only in looking like a beaming cherub. "Tell us who wrote the 'Ode on Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.' Cripes! what a title!" Freddy groaned. "I know that Wadsworth wrote it, but that is all that I do know about it."