No matter how strong our affection for the ingratiating ne'er-do-well, there are certain charges against the poet which we cannot ignore. It is a serious thing to have an alleged madman, inebriate, and experimenter in crime running loose in society. But there comes a time when our patience with his indefatigable accusers is exhausted. Is not society going a step too far if, after the poet's positive faults have been exhausted, it institutes a trial for his sins of omission? Yet so it is. If the poet succeeds in proving to the satisfaction of the jury that his influence is innocuous, he must yet hear the gruff decision, "Perhaps, as you say, you are doing no real harm. But of what possible use are you? Either become an efficient member of society, or cease to exist." Must we tamely look on, while the "light, winged, and holy creature," as Plato called the poet, is harnessed to a truck wagon, and made to deliver the world's bread and butter? Would that it were more common for poets openly to defy society's demands for efficiency, as certain children and malaperts of the poetic world have done! It is pleasant to hear the naughty advice which that especially impractical poet, Emily Dickinson, gave to a child: "Be sure to live in vain, dear. I wish I had." [Footnote: Gamaliel Bradford, _Portraits of American Women_, p. 248 (Mrs. Bianchi, p. 37).] And one is hardly less pleased to hear the irrepressible Ezra Pound instruct his songs, But above all, go to practical people, go, jangle their door-bells. Say that you do no work, and that you will live forever. [Footnote: _Salutation the Second_.] Surely no one else has had so bad a time with efficiency experts as has the poet, even though everyone whose occupation does not bring out sweat on the brow is likely to fall under their displeasure. The scholar, for instance, is given no rest from their querulous complaints, because he has been sitting at his ease, with a book in his hand, while they have dug the potatoes for his dinner. But the poet is the object of even bitterer vituperation. He, they remind him, does not even trouble to maintain a decorous posture during his fits of idleness. Instead, he is often discovered flat on his back in the grass, with one foot swinging aloft, wagging defiance at an industrious world. What right has he to loaf and invite his soul, while the world goes to ruin all about him?