ng, to be occasionally seen pasted against the desk of small
retail traders in New England."

"I do hope now, my dear fellow," said the cosmopolitan with an air of
bland protest, "that, in my presence at least, you will throw out
nothing to the prejudice of the sons of the Puritans."

"Hey-day and high times indeed," exclaimed the other, nettled, "sons of
the Puritans forsooth! And who be Puritans, that I, an Alabamaian, must
do them reverence? A set of sourly conceited old Malvolios, whom
Shakespeare laughs his fill at in his comedies."

"Pray, what were you about to suggest with regard to Polonius," observed
the cosmopolitan with quiet forbearance, expressive of the patience of a
superior mind at the petulance of an inferior one; "how do you
characterize his advice to Laertes?"

"As false, fatal, and calumnious," exclaimed the other, with a degree of
ardor befitting one resenting a stigma upon the family escutcheon, "and
for a father to give his son--monstrous. The case you see is this: The
son is going abroad, and for the first. What does the father? Invoke
God's blessing upon him? Put the blessed Bible in his trunk? No. Crams
him with maxims smacking of my Lord Chesterfield, with maxims of France,
with maxims of Italy."

"No, no, be charitable, not that. Why, does he not among other things
say:--

'The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel'?

Is that compatible with maxims of Italy?"

"Yes it is, Frank. Don't you see? Laertes is to take the best of care of
his friends--his proved friends, on the same principle that a
wine-corker takes the best of care of his proved bottles. When a bottle
gets a sharp knock and don't break, he says, 'Ah, I'll keep that
bottle.' Why? Because he loves it? No, he has particular use for it."

"Dear, dear!" appealingly turning in distress, "that--that kind of
criticism is--is--in fact--it won't do."

"Won't truth do, Frank? You are so charitable with everybody, do but
consider the tone of the speech. Now I put it to you, Frank; is there
anything in it hortatory to high, heroic, disinterested effort? Anything
like 'sell all thou hast and give to the poor?' And, in other points,
what desire seems most in the father's mind, that his son should cherish
nobleness for himself, or be on his guard against the contrary thing in
others? An irreligious warner, Frank--no devout counselor, is Polonius.
I hate him. Nor can I bear t