N'S DIARY, December 20, 1814.

Lamb was in a happy frame, and I can still recall to my mind the
look and tone with which he addressed Moore, when he could not
articulate very distinctly: "Mister Moore, will you drink a glass of
wine with me?"--suiting the action to the word, and hobnobbing.

--ROBINSON'S DIARY, April 4, 1823.

Now that, I maintain, is just the kind of stuff we need in a diary of
today. How fascinating that old book Peyrat's "Pastors of the Desert"
became when we learned that R.L.S. had a copy of the second volume of it
in his sleeping sack when he camped out with Modestine. Even so it may
be a matter of delicious interest to our grandsons to know what book Joe
Hergesheimer was reading when he came in town on the local from West
Chester recently, and who taught him to shoot craps. It is interesting
to know what Will and Stephen Benet (those skiey fraternals) eat when
they visit a Hartford Lunch; to know whether Gilbert Chesterton is
really fond of dogs (as "The Flying Inn" implies, if you remember
Quoodle), and whether Edwin Meade Robinson and Edwin Arlington Robinson,
_arcades ambo_, ever write to each other. It would be
interesting--indeed it would be highly entertaining--to compile a list
of the free meals Vachel Lindsay has received, and to ascertain the
number of times Harry Kemp has been "discovered." It would be
interesting to know how many people shudder with faint nausea (as I do)
when they pick up a Dowson playlet and find it beginning with a list of
characters including "A Moon Maiden" and "Pierrot," scene set in "a
glade in the Parc du Petit Trianon--a statue of Cupid--Pierrot enters
with his hands full of lilies." It would be interesting to resume the
number of brazen imitations of McCrae's "In Flanders Fields"--here is
the most striking, put out on a highly illuminated card by a New York
publishing firm:

Rest in peace, ye Flanders's dead,
The poppies still blow overhead,
The larks ye heard, still singing fly.
They sing of the cause which made thee die.

And they are heard far down below,
Our fight is ended with the foe.
The fight for right, which ye begun
And which ye died for, we have won.
Rest in peace.

The man who wrote that ought to be the first man mobilized for the next
war.

All such matters, with a plentiful bastinado for stupidity and swank,
are the privilege of the diarist. He may indulge himself in the
delightful l