SANDFORD You well-fed and unprofitable grooms, Maintained for state, not use; You lazy feasters at another's cost, That eat like maggots into an estate, And do as little work, Being indeed but foul excrescences,

High he loomed above the feasters in the torchlight dim and weird, From his eyes hot tears were streaming, sparkling in his tawny beard; Shining in his sea-blue mantle stood he, 'mid that wondering throng, And each maiden thought him fairest, and each warrior vowed him strong.

The Harmon B. Driscolls, young Jim and his wife, the Thurber Van Degens, the Chauncey Ellings, and all the other Fifth Avenue potentates, seemed to have their doors perpetually open to a stream of feasters among whom the familiar presences of Grace Beringer, Bertha Shallum, Dicky Bowles and Claud Walsingham Popple came and went with the irritating sameness of the figures in a stage-procession.

There is no needI grant him all you say and more, Vain, ambitious, large of purpose, Fantastic, fiery, swift and confident, A wayward child of vanity and spleen, A hair-brain'd mad-cap, dreamer of gold dreams, A daily feaster on high self-conceit, With many glorious faults beside, Weak minds mistake for virtues.