"It seems to me," said Shakespeare, wearily, one afternoon at the club--"that this business of being immortal is pretty dull.

Didn't somebody once say he'd rather ride fifty years on a trolley in Europe than on a bicycle in Cathay ?" "I never heard any such remark by any self-respecting person," said Johnson.
"I said something like it," observed Tennyson.
Doctor Johnson looked around to see who it was that spoke.
"You ?" he cried.

"And who, pray, may you be ?" "My name is Tennyson," replied the poet.
"And a very good name it is," said Shakespeare.
"I am not aware that I ever heard the name before," said Doctor Johnson.
"Did you make it yourself ?" "I did," said the late laureate, proudly.
"In what pursuit ?" asked Doctor Johnson.
"Poetry," said Tennyson.

"I wrote 'Locksley Hall' and 'Come into the Garden, Maude.'" "Humph!" said Doctor Johnson.

"I never read 'em." "Well, why should you have read them ?" snarled Carlyle.