to draw upon, there are Skraelings to fight, and
why should not Karlsefni's son kill the last mastodon, and, as
Quetzalcoatl, be the white-bearded god of the Aztecs? After that a
romance on the intrigues to make Charles Edward King of Poland sounds
commonplace. But much might be made of that, too, if the right man took
it in hand. Believe me, there are plenty of stories left, waiting for
the man who can tell them. I have said it before, but I say it again, if
I were king I would keep court officials, Mr. Stanley Weyman, Mr. Mason,
Mr. Kipling, and others, to tell me my own stories. I know the kind of
thing which I like, from the discovery of _Qrart_ to that of the French
gold in the burn at Loch Arkaig, or in "the wood by the lochside" that
Murray of Broughton mentions.

Another cigarette I have, the adventures of a Poet, a Poet born in a
Puritan village of Massachusetts about 1670. Hawthorne could have told
me my story, and how my friend was driven into the wilderness and lived
among the Red Men. I think he was killed in an attempt to warn his
countrymen of an Indian raid; I think his MS. poems have a bullet-hole
through them, and blood on the leaves. They were in Carew's best manner,
these poems.

Another tale Hawthorne might have told me, the tale of an excellent man,
whose very virtues, by some baneful moral chemistry, corrupt and ruin the
people with whom he comes in contact. I do not mean by goading them into
the opposite extremes, but rather something like a moral _jettatura_.
This needs a great deal of subtlety, and what is to become of the hero?
Is he to plunge into vice till everybody is virtuous again? It wants
working out. I have omitted, after all, a schoolboy historical romance,
explaining _why Queen Elizabeth was never married_. A Scottish paper
offered a prize for a story of Queen Mary Stuart's reign. I did not get
the prize--perhaps did not deserve it, but my story ran thus: You must
know that Queen Elizabeth was singularly like Darnley in personal
appearance. What so natural as that, disguised as a page, her Majesty
should come spying about the Court of Holyrood? Darnley sees her walking
out of Queen Mary's room, he thinks her an hallucination, discovers that
she is real, challenges her, and they fight at Faldonside, by the Tweed,
Shakespeare holding Elizabeth's horse. Elizabeth is wounded, and is
carried to the Kirk of Field, and laid in Darnley's chamber, while
Darnley goes out and m