"'Oh, poets!' says I, 'I thought you said porters. Poets! so you've been reading poets, have you? but you oughtn't to believe all that--why, they don't mean it themselves; they write it because they're expected to, but it's all faked up--I know how it's done.' "Old Crabbe begins to talk in his big way. I let him go on for a while, but then I said, 'See here, Crabbe, it's all very well to read that literary stuff, and I suppose it's what you're paid for doing. But don't go and think it's all true, because it isn't, and the sooner you know it the better.' 'There was a man I knew once,' says I, 'who got fearfully let in by just this sort of thing; Oxford don too, Fellow of Queen's named Peake; took to reading poetry; he went to Brighton in the Long, with his head full of it all. Wild sea waves, the moon and all the rest of it; and back comes Peake married; had to turn out of his College rooms, went to live at the other end of nowhere, stuffy little house, full of babies, had to work like a nigger, beastly work too; coached me for Smalls, that's how I know him; no time for moon and sea waves now; and it all came from reading poetry.' "Old Crabbe begins to sit up at this. 'But I don't see,' he says, 'I don't see why--didn't he have his Fellowship money?' "'But you don't suppose that's going to support a wife and a lot of children.' "'Oh, if he had children,' says Crabbe, and the old boy begins to blush and says, 'I don't see the need.' "'Much you know about it, Crabbe,' says I, and I couldn't help laughing, he looked such an idiot. "'Well, anyhow,' he says, 'your friend may have been unfortunate, but I respect him all the same; he was bold, he lived.' "'What does all that mean?--he didn't die, of course!' "'I mean he loved--he had that.' "'Oh yes, he had, but I rather think he wished he hadn't. He said it didn't come to much--and even when he was engaged she used to bore him sometimes.' "'Really!' says old Crabbe, 'that's odd now,' and then he goes on, as if he was talking to himself, 'I wonder if everyone feels like that?' "'Of course they do! But after you're married, just think of it--never quiet, never alone; Peake said it nearly drove him wild. And to think he was tied up like that for the rest of his life!' "'Yes, it is a long time.' Crabbe began to look rather green. 'Your friend--his name was Peake, I think you said--I suppose he couldn't have broken off the engagement?' and he smiled in a sort of sea-sick way. "'Of course he could,' says I, as I got up to go. 'Perfect ass not to--but good-bye, Crabbe, you've got jolly rooms here.' "'Yes, they are nice,' says Crabbe in a kind of sinking voice. "So, a day or two after, I meet the Dean; the old boy seems very much pleased. 'Well Buller, I think you've done the biz,' says he; 'I don't believe old Crabbe will do it after all.'"