was of still more importance, in stringing together a collection of

platitudes, familiar to every school-boy, and dishing up old plots and
stories that had already been cooked and recooked for the public until

everybody had been surfeited with them.
And the writers read what the critics said and sighed, and gave up

writing books, and went off and hoed potatoes; as advised. They had
had no experience in hoeing potatoes, and they hoed very badly; and

the people whose potatoes they hoed strongly recommended them to leave
hoeing potatoes, and to go back and write books. But you can't do

what everybody advises.
There were artists also in this strange world, at first, and they

painted pictures, which the critics came and looked at through
eyeglasses.

"Nothing whatever original in them," said the critics; "same old
colors, same old perspective and form, same old sunset, same old sea

and land, and sky and figures. Why do these poor men waste their
time, painting pictures, when they might be so much more

satisfactorily employed on ladders painting houses?"
Nothing, by the by, you may have noticed, troubles your critic more

than the idea that the artist is wasting his time. It is the waste of
time that vexes the critic; he has such an exalted idea of the value

of other people's time. "Dear, dear me!" he says to himself, "why, in
the time the man must have taken to paint this picture or to write

this book, he might have blacked fifteen thousand pairs of boots, or
have carried fifteen thousand hods of mortar up a ladder. This is how

the time of the world is lost!"
It never occurs to him that, but for that picture or book, the artist

would, in all probability, have been mouching about with a pipe in his
mouth, getting into trouble.

It reminds me of the way people used to talk to me when I was a boy.
I would be sitting, as good as gold, reading "The Pirate's Lair," when

some cultured relative would look over my shoulder and say: "Bah!
what are you wasting your time with rubbish for? Why don't you go and

do something useful?" and would take the book away from me. Upon
which I would get up, and go out to "do something useful;" and would

come home an hour afterward, looking like a bit out of a battle
picture, having tumbled through the roof of Farmer Bate's greenhouse

and killed a cactus, though totallyunable to explain how I came to be
on the roof of Farmer Bate's greenhouse. They had much better have

left me alone, lost in "The Pirate's Lair!"
The artists in this land of which I dreamed left off painting

pictures, after hearing what the critics said, and purchased ladders,
and went off and painted houses.

Because, you see, this country of which I dreamed was not one of those
vulgar, ordinary countries, such as exist in the waking world, where

people let the critics talk as much as ever they like, and nobody pays
the slightest attention to what they say. Here, in this strange land,

the critics were taken seriously, and their advice followed.
As for the poets and sculptors, they were very soon shut up. The idea

of any educated person wanting to read modern poetry when he could
obtain Homer, or caring to look at any other statue while there was

still some of the Venus de Medicis left, was too absurd. Poets and
sculptors were only wasting their time

What new occupation they were recommended to adopt, I forget. Some
calling they knew nothing whatever about, and that they were totally

unfitted for, of course.
The musicians tried their art for a little while, but they, too, were

of no use. "Merely a repetition of the same notes in different
combinations," said the critics. "Why will people waste their time

writing unoriginal music, when they might be sweeping crossings?"
One man had written a play. I asked what the critics had said about

him. They showed me his tomb.
Then, there being no more artists or _litterateurs_ or dramatists or

musicians left for their belovedcritics to criticise, the general
public of this enlightened land said to themselves, "Why should not

our critics come and criticise us? Criticism is useful to a man.
Have we not often been told so? Look how useful it has been to the

artists and writers--saved the poor fellows from wasting their time?
Why shouldn't we have some of its benefits?"

They suggested the idea to the critics, and the critics thought it an
excellent one, and said they would undertake the job with pleasure.

One must say for the critics that they never shirk work. They will
sit and criticise for eighteen hours a day, if necessary, or even, if

quite unnecessary, for the matter of that. You can't give them too
much to criticise. They will criticise everything and everybody in

this world. They will criticise everything in the next world, too,
when they get there. I expect poor old Pluto has a lively time with

them all, as it is.
So, when a man built a house, or a farm-yard hen laid an egg, the

critics were asked in to comment on it. They found that none of the
houses were original. On every floor were passages that seemed mere

copies from passages in other houses. They were all built on the same
hackneyed plan; cellars underneath, ground floor level with the

street, attic at the top. No originality anywhere!
So, likewise with the eggs. Every egg suggested reminiscences of

other eggs.
It was heartrending work.

The critics criticised all things. When a young couple fell in love,
they each, before thinking of marriage, called upon the critics for a

criticism of the other one.
Needless to say that, in the result, no marriage ever came of it.

"My dear young lady," the critics would say, after the inspection had
taken place, "I can discover nothing new whatever about the young man.

You would simply be wasting your time in marrying him."
Or, to the young man, it would be:

"Oh, dear, no! Nothing attractive about the girl at all. Who on
earth gave you that notion? Simply a lovely face and figure, angelic

disposition, beautiful mind, stanch heart, noble character. Why,
there must have been nearly a dozen such girls born into the world

since its creation. You would be only wasting your time loving her."
They criticised the birds for their hackneyed style of singing, and

the flowers for their hackneyed scents and colors. They complained of
the weather that it lacked originality--(true, they had not lived out

an English spring)--and found fault with the Sun because of the
sameness of his methods.

They criticised the babies. When a fresh infant was published in a
house, the critics would call in a body to pass their judgment upon

it, and the young mother would bring it down for them to sample.
"Did you ever see a child anything like that in this world before?"

she would say, holding it out to them. "Isn't it a wonderful baby?
_You_ never saw a child with legs like that, I know. Nurse says he's

the most extraordinary baby she ever attended. Bless him!"
But the critics did not think anything of it.

"Tut, tut," they would reply, "there is nothing extraordinary about
that child--no originalitywhatever. Why, it's exactly like every

other baby--bald head, red face, big mouth, and stumpy nose. Why,
that's only a weak imitation of the baby next door. It's a