Has laughed, I'll tell you how the colors change—
The colors that are changeless, colorless."
I fear I may have answered Captain Craig's
Epistle Number One with what he chose,
Good-humoredly but anxiously, to take
For something that was not all reverence;
From the tone of Number Two it seemed almost
As if the flanges of the old man's faith
Had slipped the treacherous rails of my allegiance
And left him by the roadside, humorously
Upset, with nothing more convivial
To do than be facetious and austere:—
"If you did not like Don César de Bazan
There must be some imperfection in your vitals.
Flamboyant and old-fashioned? Overdone?
Romantico-robustious?—Dear young man,
There are fifteen thousand ways to be one-sided,
And I have indicated two of them
Already. Now you bait me with a third—
As if it were a spider with nine legs;
But what it is that you would have me do,
What fatherly wrath you most anticipate,
I lack the needed impulse to discern.
