When Dr. Bill Bartlett stepped out of the hum
    Of Mammon's distracting and wearisome strife
  To stand and deliver a lecture on "Some
    Conditions of Intellectual Life,"
  I cursed the offender who gave him the hall
  To lecture on any conditions at all!

  But he rose with a fire divine in his eye,
    Haranguing with endless abundance of breath,
  Till I slept; and I dreamed of a gibbet reared high,
    And Dr. Bill Bartlett was dressing for death.
  And I thought in my dream: "These conditions, no doubt,
  Are bad for the life he was talking about."

  So I cried (pray remember this all was a dream):
    "Get off of the platform!—it isn't the kind!"
  But he fell through the trap, with a jerk at the beam,
    And wiggled his toes to unburden his mind.
  And, O, so bewitching the thoughts he advanced,
  That I clung to his ankles, attentive, entranced!