No, we all set our caps at the same muse and tried to cut one another out.

If I happened to write an ode to a blackbird--and I wrote four or five--every one else must write an ode to a blackbird too; until the luckless songster must have hated the sound of its own name.
It was no easy work finding fit subjects for these poetic competitions.
But the papers lying here before me remind me at least of one which excited great interest and keen rivalry.

Complaints had been made that the club had hitherto devoted itself almost altogether to abstract rhapsodies, and had omitted the cultivation of itself in the epic or heroic side of its genius.

On the other hand, the abstract rhapsodists protested that any one could write ballads, and that the subject to be chosen should at least be such as would admit of any treatment.

One member suggested we should try the fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid, as being both abstract and historical--but he was deemed to be a scoffer.