ld take his word for it, and would
rather not see the passages referred to. I felt indignant. "If," as
I said, "these men--these Platos and Socrateses and Ciceros and
Sophocleses and Aristophaneses and Aristotles and the rest of them had
been taking advantage of my absence to go about the world spoiling my
business for me, I would rather not hear any more about them."

And I put on my hat and came out, and I have never tried to write
anything original since.

I dreamed a dream once. (It is the sort of thing a man would dream.
You cannot very well dream anything else, I know. But the phrase sounds
poetical and biblical, and so I use it.) I dreamed that I was in a
strange country--indeed, one might say an extraordinary country. It was
ruled entirely by critics.

The people in this strange land had a very high opinion of
critics--nearly as high an opinion of critics as the critics themselves
had, but not, of course, quite--that not being practicable--and they had
agreed to be guided in all things by the critics. I stayed some years in
that land. But it was not a cheerful place to live in, so I dreamed.

There were authors in this country, at first, and they wrote books. But
the critics could find nothing original in the books whatever, and said
it was a pity that men, who might be usefully employed hoeing potatoes,
should waste their time and the time of the critics, which was of still
more importance, in stringing together a collection of platitudes,
familiar to every school-boy, and dishing up old plots and stories that
had already been cooked and recooked for the public until everybody had
been surfeited with them.

And the writers read what the critics said and sighed, and gave up
writing books, and went off and hoed potatoes; as advised. They had
had no experience in hoeing potatoes, and they hoed very badly; and
the people whose potatoes they hoed strongly recommended them to leave
hoeing potatoes, and to go back and write books. But you can't do what
everybody advises.

There were artists also in this strange world, at first, and they
painted pictures, which the critics came and looked at through
eyeglasses.

"Nothing whatever original in them," said the critics; "same old colors,
same old perspective and form, same old sunset, same old sea and land,
and sky and figures. Why do these poor men waste their time, painting
pictures, when they might be so much more satisfactorily employed on
ladders painting hou