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 unnecessary, for the matter of that. You can't give them too much to criticise. They will criticise everything and everybody in this world. They will criticise everything in the next world, too, when they get there. I expect poor old Pluto has a lively time with them all, as it is.

So, when a man built a house, or a farm-yard hen laid an egg, the critics were asked in to comment on it. They found that none of the houses were original. On every floor were passages that seemed mere copies from passages in other houses. They were all built on the same hackneyed plan: cellars underneath, ground floor level with the street, attic at the top. No originality anywhere!

So, likewise, with the eggs. Every egg suggested reminiscences of other eggs.

It was heartrending work.

The critics criticised all things. When a young couple fell in love, they each, before thinking of marriage, called upon the critics for a criticism of the other one.

Needless to say that, in the result, no marriage ever came of it.

"My dear young lady," the critics would say, after the inspection had taken place, "I can discover nothing new whatever about the young man. You would simply be wasting your time in marrying him."

Or, to the young man it would be:

"Oh dear, no! Nothing attractive about the girl at