fortunes. If the satirist who does not accept the remarkable doctrine that while condemning the sin he should spare the sinner were bound to let the life of his work be coterminous with that of his subject his were a lot of peculiar hardship.     

       Persuaded of the validity of all this, I have not hesitated to reprint even certain "epitaphs" which, once of the living, are now of the dead, as all the others must eventually be. The objection inheres in all forms of applied satire—my understanding of whose laws and liberties is at least derived from reverent study of the masters. That in respect of       matters herein mentioned I have but followed their practice can be shown by abundant instance and example.     

       AMBROSE BIERCE.     

 

 THE KEY NOTE

   I dreamed I was dreaming one morn as I lay In a garden with flowers teeming. On an island I lay in a mystical bay, In the dream that I dreamed I was dreaming. The ghost of a scent—had it followed me there From the place where I truly was resting? It filled like an anthem the aisles of the air, The presence of roses attesting. Yet I thought in the dream that I dreamed I dreamed That the place was all barren of roses—   That it only seemed; and the place, I deemed, Was the Isle of Bewildered Noses. Full many a seaman had testified How all who sailed near were enchanted, And landed to search (and in searching died)     For the roses the Sirens had planted. For the Sirens were dead, and the billows boomed In the stead of their singing forever; But the roses bloomed on the graves of the doomed, Though man had discovered them never. I thought in my dream 'twas an idle tale, A delusion that mariners cherished—   That the fragrance loading the conscious gale Was the ghost of a rose long perished. I said, "I will fly from this island of woes."     And acting on that decision, By that odor of rose I was led by the nose, For 'twas truly, ah! truly, Elysian. I ran, in my madness, to seek out the source Of the redolent river—directed By some supernatural, sinister force To a forest, dark, haunted, infected. And still as I threaded ('twas all in the dream That I dreamed I was dreaming) each turning There were many a scream and a sudden gleam Of eyes all uncannily burning! The leaves were all wet with a horrible dew That mirrored the red moon's crescent, And all shapes were fringed with a ghostly blue, Dim, 

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