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38 he denounces, too, the elegant Hexasticons inscribed on them as meaningless nonsense; and, as to Peter Morwyng’s translation of them, he wonders that I can have the audacity to place such before you, deeming it far below the standard of the smallest school-boy.

He seems to say:—“Love’s Garland!” Bah! sentimental rubbish! One may handle a stone,—it is absolute, real, tangible; but poetry, sentiment, and love! what are they? mere idealistic fancies of the brain; you try to grasp them—they are gone!

To this Brother I reply,—

My dear dry-as-dust, pachydermatous friend, the “arrow” I have shot has failed to pierce your unemotional matter-of-fact soul; and I beseech you “cudgel your brains no more about” this matter, for assuredly “your dull ass will not mend his pace with beating.”

You still ask for the Philosopher’s Stone.