Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it 'the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.' The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of 'Artist.'

But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.

Alas! for that accursed time They bore thee o'er the billow, From love to titled age and crime, And an unholy pillow! From me, and from our misty clime, Where weeps the silver willow!

Of puns it has been said that those who most dislike them are those who are least able to utter them.

A short story is "a short prose narrative, requiring from a half hour, to one or two hours in its perusal...having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out.

Who cares how time advances? I am drinking ale today.

There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.