The Poetess of Reform
    
    
      ONE pleasant day in the latter part of eternity, as the Shades of 
    all the great writers were reposing upon beds of asphodel and moly 
    in the Elysian fields, each happy in hearing from the lips of the 
    others nothing but copious quotation from his own works (for so 
    Jove had kindly bedeviled their ears), there came in among them 
    with triumphant mien a Shade whom none knew.  She (for the newcomer 
    showed such evidences of sex as cropped hair and a manly stride) 
    took a seat in their midst, and smiling a superior smile explained:
    
      "After centuries of oppression I have wrested my rights from the 
    grasp of the jealous gods.  On earth I was the Poetess of Reform, 
    and sang to inattentive ears.  Now for an eternity of honour and 
    glory."
    
      But it was not to be so, and soon she was the unhappiest of 
    mortals, vainly desirous to wander again in gloom by the infernal 
    lakes.  For Jove had not bedeviled her ears, and she heard from the 
    lips of each blessed Shade an incessant flow of quotation from his 
    own works.  Moreover, she was denied the happiness of repeating her 
    poems.  She could not recall a line of them, for Jove had decreed 
    that the memory of them abide in Pluto's painful domain, as a part 
    of the apparatus.
    


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