or, thinking it over, I'm sure we two
Were doing the best that we honestly knew.

(Though, of course, I cannot escape a touch
Of suspicion that _you_ never knew too much!)

THE DILETTANT.

To lie outright in the light of day
I'm not sufficiently skilful,
But I practice a bit, in an amateur way,
The lie which is hardly wilful;
The society lie and the business lie
And the lie I have had to double,
And the lie that I lie when I don't know why
And the truth is too much trouble.

For this I am willing to take your blame
Unless you have sometimes done the same.

To be a fool of an A1 brand
I'm not sufficiently clever,
But I often have tried my 'prentice hand
In a callow and crude endeavor;
A fool with the money for which I've toiled,
A fool with the word I've spoken,
And the foolish fool who is fooled and foiled
On a maiden's finger broken.

If you never yourself have made a slip,
I'm willing to watch you curl your lip.

And yet my blood and my bone resist
If you dub me fool and liar.
I set my teeth and double my fist
And my brow is flushed with fire.

You I deny and you I defy
And I vow I will make you rue it;
And I lie when I say that I never lie,
Which proves me a fool to do it!

You may jerk your thumb at me and grin
If liar and fool you never have been.

THE CONSERVATIVE.

At twenty, as you proudly stood
And read your thesis, "Brotherhood,"
If I remember right, you saw
The fatuous faults of social law.

At twenty-five you braved the storm
And dug the trenches of Reform,
Stung by some gadfly in your breast
Which would not let your spirit rest.

At thirty-five you made a pause
To sum the columns of The Cause;
You noted, with unwilling eye,
The heedless world had passed you by.

At forty you had always known
Man owes a duty to His Own.
Man's life is as man's life is made;
The game is fair, if fairly played.

At fifty, after years of stress
You bore the banner of Success.
All men have virtues, all have sins,
And God is with the man who wins.

At sixty, from your captured heights
You fly the flag of Vested Rights,
Bounded by bonds collectable,
And hopelessly respectable!

HUSH.

What's the best thing that you ev