"The Grammarians, grim, snuffy and wrinkled though they might be, were
no more impervious to his allures than are the rest of us, and in
consequence appointed him to an office. This office was, I glean of
mediaeval legend, that of teaching dunderheaded mortals the First
Conjugation. So Eros donned cap and gown, took lodgings with a quiet
musical family, and set _amo_ as the first model verb; and ever since
this period has the verb 'to love' been the first to be mastered in
all well-constituted grammars, as it is in life.

"Heigho! it is not an easy verb to conjugate. One gets into trouble
enough, in floundering through its manifold nuances, which range
inevitably through the bold-faced 'I love', the confident 'I will
love', the hopeful 'I may be loved', and so on to the wistful, pitiful
Pluperfect Subjunctive Passive, 'I might have been loved
if'--Then each of us may supply the Protasis as best befits his
personal opinion and particular scars, and may tear his hair, or
scribble verses, or adopt the cynical, or, in fine, assume any pose
which strikes his fancy. For he has graduated into the Second
Conjugation, which is _moneo_; and may now admonish to his heart's
content, whilst looking back complacently into the First Classroom,
where others--and so many others!--are still struggling with that
mischancy verb, and are involved in the very conditions--verbal or
otherwise--which aforetime saddened him, or showed him a possible
byway toward recreation, or played the deuce with his liver, according
to the nature of the man.

"Eros is a hard, implacable pedagogue, and for the fact his scholars
suffer. He wields a rod rather than a filigree bow, as old romancers
fabled,--no plaything, but a most business-like article, well-poised
in the handle, and thence tapering into graceful, stinging