in a newspaper office. We once worked in a place where a
horticultural magazine and a beautiful journal of rustic life were
published, and the delightful people who edited those magazines were
really men about town; but here in the teeming city and in the very
node of urban affairs, to wit, the composing room, one hears nought
but merry gossip about gardens, and the great and good men by whom
we are surrounded begin their day by gazing tenderly upon jars full
of white iris. And has not our friend Charley Sawyer of the dramatic
department given us a lot of vegetable marrow seeds from his own
garden and greatly embarrassed us by so doing, for he has put them
in two packets marked "Male" and "Female," and to tell the truth we
had no idea that the matter of sex extended even as far as the
apparently placid and unperturbed vegetable marrow. Mr. Sawyer
explained carefully to us just how the seeds ought to be planted,
the males and females in properly wedded couples, we think he said;
but we are not quite sure, and we are too modest to ask him to
explain again; but if we should make a mistake in planting those
seeds, if we were to---- Come, we are getting away from our topic.
Peter had told us about his corn, in his garden, that is, out in
Nutley (and that reminds us of the difficulties of reading poetry
aloud. Mr. Chesterton tells somewhere a story about a poem of
Browning's that he heard read aloud when he was a child, and
understood the poem to say "John scorns ale."

Now Mr. Chesterton--you understand, of course, we are referring to
Gilbert Keith Chesterton--being from his very earliest youth an
avowed partisan of malt liquor, this heresy made an impression upon
his tender cortex, and he never forgot about John, in Browning's
poem, scorning ale. But many years afterward, reading Browning, he
found that the words really were: "John's corns ail," meaning