There were twenty of us, if there was one, and we each of us considered our claim to the laurel wreath paramount.

Indeed, like the bards of old, we fell to the most unseemly contentions, and hated one another as only poets can hate.
It was my tragic lot to act as hon.

secretary to the "Poetry Club," which constituted the hospital, so to speak in which our disease worked out its course during that melancholy term.

Why they selected me, it is not for me to inquire.

Some of my friends assured me afterwards that it was because, having no pretensions or even capacity to be a poet myself, I was looked upon as the only impartial member of our afflicted fraternity.