_And popular taste_ _I'll make a strong effort to please_. "You draw a very blue picture, it seems to me," said Shakespeare, sadly. "Well, it's true," said Carlyle. "The world isn't at all what it used to be in any one respect, and you fellows who made great reputations centuries ago wouldn't have even the ghost of a show now. I don't believe Homer could get a poem accepted by a modern magazine, and while the comic papers are still printing Diogenes' jokes the old gentleman couldn't make enough out of them in these days to pay taxes on his tub, let alone earning his bread." "That is exactly so," said Tennyson. "I'd be willing to wager too that, in the line of personal prowess, even D'Artagnan and Athos and Porthos and Aramis couldn't stand London for one day." "Or New York either," said Mr. Barnum, who had been an interested listener. "A New York policeman could have managed that quartet with one hand." "Then," said Shakespeare, "in the opinion of you gentlemen, we old-time lions would appear to modern eyes to be more or less stuffed?" "That's about the size of it," said Carlyle. "But you'd draw," said Barnum, his face lighting up with pleasure. "You'd drive a five-legged calf to suicide from envy. If I could take you and Caesar, and Napoleon Bonaparte and Nero over for one circus season we'd drive the mint out of business." "There's your chance, William," said Ward. "You write a play for Bonaparte and Caesar, and let Nero take his fiddle and be the orchestra. Under Barnum's management you'd get enough activity in one season to last you through all eternity." "You can count on me," said Barnum, rising. "Let me know when you've got your plan laid out. I'd stay and make a contract with you now, but Adam has promised to give me points on the management of wild animals without cages, so I can't wait. By-by." "Humph!" said Shakespeare, as the eminent showman passed out. "That's a gay proposition. When monkeys move in polite society William Shakespeare will make a side-show of himself for a circus." "They do now," said Thackeray, quietly. Which merely proved that Shakespeare did not mean what he said; for in spite of Thackeray's insinuation as to the monkeys and polite society, he has not yet accepted the Barnum proposition, though there can be no doubt of its value from the point of view of a circus manager.