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144 finitely according to the conditions of the particular time in which they are examined. Do I make myself clear?"

"I think I see what you mean," replied Kenneth, slowly. "Well, this is no place for a discussion. Think it over. Who's the particular poet just now?"

" "

"They generally have some obscure nonentity they quote as the greatest ever."

"Oh, yes! Giovanni Asperoni."

"Giovanni Asperoni!" repeated Carlson, with a shout of laughter. "Never heard of him!"

"Oh, haven't you?" cried Kenneth, delighted. "I'm glad. Neither had I."

"I got me a poet once and sprung him on them," said Frank, gravely. "He went fine."

"Tell Mr. Boyd about him," urged Carlson.

"I went with the Pet Poets once," grinned Moore. "It was some time ago. I wasn't no hyacinthine boy, you understand, but I was a wild free soul, I think it was. Well, they snowed me under so far I didn't even have no breath hole. That Iredell woman started in on me with the soup. Says she: 'Mr. Moore, what in your opinion was the influence of the early Egyptian mysteries on the Rosicrucians?'"

"What did you tell her?" asked Kenneth, laughing.

"I told her it wasn't a marker on the influence of the Brazilian Aztecs on modern occultism. But they had a dago poet then, too, and they shot me so full of holes with him that if I'd fell down in the gutter any peddlar [sic] would have picked me up for a colander. That Wills girl would spring one of those as one who lines on me and say, 'of course you remember how the rest goes,' and when I said, no ma'am, I didn't, she gave me one of those Lo, the poor insect looks, and I'd peek up at her from under the edge of my plate. She got me hostile after a while, and when I left the pen all raw and bleeding I said to myself, 'I'll get you, young woman'; so I did."

"How?" begged Kenneth.

"I got me a little private dago poet of my own, and sprung him on them."