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 her, and she wished to say something pleasant to him, so she asked him gently: “Are you feeling better to-day?”

He smiled: “No, but I shall some time.”

She shook her head.

“What are you reading?” he asked softly.

She gave him her book.

“Poetry!” and he burst out with a contemptuous laugh. He looked interrogatively at her.

“From the bottom of my soul I despise our modern rhyming,” he said excitedly. “The poet is now-a-days a disreputable fellow! If he has to write a line, he becomes swollen with conceit, begins to model words, sentences, and rhymes,—the devil knows what he is about,—if only he said something sensible! And what does he write about? About love and troth, about the moon and stars; he glorifies the good, curses rascals, kisses the boots of old kings, and knights, and their fair maidens, prophesies good times to his country and to humanity in