shall stay here. For, as the poet says,

"''Tis best to bear the ills we hov

Nor fly to those we know not of.'"

"Ho!" jeered the Poet. "I must confess, my dear Idiot, that I do not think you are a success in quotation. Hamlet spoke those lines differently."

"Shakespeare's Hamlet did. My little personal Shakespeare makes his Hamlet an entirely different, less stilted sort of person," said the Idiot.

"You have a personal Shakespeare, have you?" queried the Bibliomaniac.

"Of course I have," the Idiot answered. "Haven't you?"

"I have not," said the Bibliomaniac, shortly.

"Well, I'm sorry for you then," sighed the Idiot, putting a fried potato in his mouth. "Very sorry. I wouldn't give a cent for another man's ideals. I want my own ideals, and I have my own ideal of Shakespeare. In fancy, Shakespeare and I have roamed over the fields of Warwickshire together, and I've had more fun imagining the kind of things he and I would have said to each other than I ever got out of his published plays, few of which have escaped the ungentle hands of the devastators."

"You mean commentators, I imagine," said Mr. Pedagog.

"I do," said the Idiot. "It's all the same, whether you call them commentors or devastators. The result is the same. New editions of Shakespeare are issued every year, and people buy them to see not what Shakespeare has written, but what new quip some opinionated devastator has tried to fasten on his memory. In a hundred years from now the works of Shakespeare will differ as much from what they are to-day as to-day's versions differ from what they were when Shakespeare wrote them. It's mighty discouraging to one like myself who would like to write works."

"You are convicted out of your own mouth," said the Bibliomaniac. "A moment since you wasted your pity on me because I didn't mutilate Shakespeare so as to make him my own, and now you attack the commentators for doing precisely the same thing. They're as much entitled to their opinions as you are to yours."

"Did you ever learn to draw parallels when you were in school?" asked the Idiot.

"I did, and I think I've made a perfect 

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