-barrel, and the feather
duster.
What is an aborigine, anyhow?
I see a paste-pot.
Ay, and a well of ink.
Well, well!
Which shall I do?
Ah, the immortal fog!
What am I myself
But a meteor
In a fog?

CHAUCER'S VERSION:

A mayde ther ben, a wordy one and wyse,
Who wore a paire of gogles on her eyes.
O'er theemes of depest thogt her braine she werked,
Nor ever any knoty problemme sherked.
Yette when they askt her if she'd rather sinke
Her penne in payste, or eke her brushe in inke,
"Ah," quo' the canny mayde, "now wit ye wel,
I'm wyse enow to know--too wyse to tel."

HENRY JAMES'S VERSION:

She luminously wavered, and I tentatively inferred that she would soon
perfectly reconsider her not altogether unobvious course. Furiously,
tho' with a tender, ebbing similitude, across her mental consciousness
stole a reculmination of all the truths she had ever known concerning,
or even remotely relating to, the not easily fathomed qualities of paste
and ink. So she stood, focused in an intensity of soul-quivers, and I,
all unrelenting, waited, though of a dim uncertainty whether, after all,
it might not be only a dubitant problem.

SWINBURNE'S VERSION:

Shall I dip, shall I dip it, Dolores,
This luminous paste-brush of thine?
Shall I sully its white-breasted glories,
Its fair, foam-flecked figure divine?

O shall I--abstracted, unheeding--
Swish swirling this pen in my haste,
And, deaf to thy pitiful pleading,
Just jab it in paste?

STEPHEN CRANE'S VERSION:

I stood upon a church spire,
A slender, pointed spire,
And I saw
Ranged in solemn row before me,
A paste-pot and an ink-pot.
I held in my either hand
A pen and a brush.
Ay, a pen and a brush.
Now this is the strange part;
I stood upon a church spire,
A slender, pointed spire,
Glad, exultant,
Because
The choice was mine!
Ay, mine!
As I stood upon a church spire,
A slender, pointed spire.

Perhaps one of the most enjoyable occasions was the night when the
members of the Re-Echo Club discussed the merits of the classic poem:

Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater,
Had a wife and couldn't keep her;
Put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her very well.

In many ways this historic narrative called forth admiration. One must
admit Peter's great strength of character, his power of quick decision,
and immediate achievement. Some held that