"It's a good poem," said I. "I don't see how you could make it any better."
"Nor I," said Phaeton. "It tells the whole story."
"I'm glad you like it," said Jimmy. "I felt a little uncertain about dipping into the lyric strain."
"Yes," said Ned; "there's just one spot where it shows the strain, and I don't see another thing wrong about it."
"What's that?" said Jimmy.
"Perhaps we'd better not talk about it till you get well," said Ned.
"Oh, never mind that," said Jimmy. "I don't need my legs to write poetry with, or to criticise it, either."
"Well," said Ned, "I hate to find fault with it, because it's such a good poem, and I enjoyed it so much; but it seems to me you've strained the truth a little where you say 'a hundred thousand miles.'"
"How so?" said Jimmy.
"Calculate it for yourself," said Ned. "No horse is likely to travel more than about fifty miles a day. And if he did that every day, he'd go three hundred miles in a week. At that rate, it would take him more than six years to travel a hundred thousand miles. But no shoe lasts a horse six years—nor one year, even. So, you see, this couldn't have travelled a hundred thousand miles. That's why I say the lyric strain is strained a little too much."