days, during which time I stayed in the house rather than go out wearing the Whittier gray derby. On the sixth day I wrote him again, as follows:

        Cambridge, Mass.

        Nov. 14, 1890.

        Dear Mr. Whittier:

        How about that hat of mine?

        Yours respectfully,

        ROBERT C. BENCHLEY.

      I received no answer to this letter either. Concluding that the good gray poet was either too busy or too gosh-darned mean to bother with the thing, I myself adopted an attitude of supercilious unconcern and closed the correspondence with the following terse message:

        Cambridge, Mass.

        December 4, 1890.

        Dear Mr. Whittier:

        It is my earnest wish that the hat of mine which you are keeping will slip down over your eyes some day, interfering with your vision to such an

         [pg 007]

        extent that you will walk off the sidewalk into the gutter and receive painful, albeit superficial, injuries.

        Your young friend,

        ROBERT C. BENCHLEY.

      Here the matter ended so far as I was concerned, and I trust that biographers in the future will not let any confusion of motives or misunderstanding of dates enter into a clear and unbiased statement of the whole affair. We must not have another Shelley-Byron scandal.

       [pg 008]

       The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life which does not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the 

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