"Have you composed a sonata yet?"
"No, madam; I was going to do so, but it occurred to me that I should require an orchestra to play it."
"And not having that, you abandoned the idea?"
"Exactly, madam. I then turned to poetry. That is an art fit for the gods; it puts you on a level with kings, and makes you in history even more illustrious than them. You ascend the capitol, and there you are crowned with laurel, like the hero of a hundred fights."
"What is the subject of your principal work in this line?"
"Well, madam, I once finished a verse, and was going on with a second, but, somehow or other, I could not get the words to rhyme."
"Then it occurred to you that you had neither a printer nor readers, and you broke your lyre?"
"I was about to reproach you, Master Jack," said Wolston, "for undertaking too many things at once; but I see the ranks are beginning to thin."
"Beautiful as poetry may be," continued Jack, one gets tired of reading and re-reading one's own effusions."
"It is even often intensely insipid the very first time," remarked Mrs. Wolston.