This time I met Keidansky in front of the Jewish theatre. He had just left the rehearsal of a play which he had translated from the German into Yiddish. As I approached he pointed to a huge sign on top of the building across the street advertising, in a pretty jingle of rhymes, a new biscuit of undreamed of deliciousness.

"I have solved the problem," he said proudly. This was not such a surprise to me. To solve problems was my friend's business.

"What problem is that?" I asked.

"The problem of the poet," he answered. "After the ages of oppression, persecution and poverty, after the exiles, insults and negligence of centuries, the poet will at last come into his own, into bread and butter and a respected position in society. Immunity from starvation, peace, prosperity will at last be his. His worth will be recognized and he will be put to work and made a useful member of society."

"What will he do?" I asked.

"He will write the advertisements for manufacturers and storekeepers," said Keidansky; "he will sing the song of the products of modern industry, chant of the wonderful performances of the age and glorify the fruits of our civilization, extol the things of use and of beauty that serve the needs of to-day's humanity. This will be an ample theme for his Muse and the guerdon of his song will be tangible. His talents will serve a great practical need. He will prove at last that there is some advantage in genius. The world, the world of reality, of facts, figures and statistics will no longer ask, 'What's the use of poetry?' The world will recognize its usefulness, and commerce and trade and capital shall become its friends. In graceful rhymes, in silvery stanzas, in beautiful verses will the poet voice the marvels of all the results of the inventiveness, ingenuity and skill with which our era is so richly blessed. And whatever article on the market will be the burden of his song, it will bring good prices and make easy the life of the singer. And people will no longer have to strain their eyes to find the poet's lines in an obscure corner of a magazine, or in a little volume of tiny type; the bards will no longer have to depend upon such poor methods of attracting attention.

"In great, glaring, garish and golden letters their poems will look down upon people from the rooftops, from the high walls of factories and barns, from fences and huge signs by all the roadsides, railroad sides, mountain sides, seasides, and all sides, and people will be compelled to look up to them, because there will be nowhere else to look. There will be no escape. The large letters painted in glowing colors and with their artistic arrangement will arrest the attention of all. And when a foreigner will come here to study this country and write it up, he will not be able to see anything on account of these signs which will cover the land, and after reading the inscriptions upon them, he will go forth saying that it is the most poetic country in the whole world. So inspired will the stranger become that he will go forth and tell the world of the wonderful things we make and advertise here. Thus poetry, at last, become useful, will help us conquer the foreign market. After all, the bards will come down from the clouds and the garrets of starvation, and in their song embrace the whole world; celebrate the things concrete, material and real. Poetry and the world will at last become reconciled; spirit and substance will be united to the practical advantage of the spirit.

"For too long a time has the poet wandered about in distress, begging for a pittance, persecuted everywhere, singing his song for nothing, with starvation and inspiration as his only rewards. For too long a time has the poet, 'the unacknowledged legislator of the world,' been subjected to all manner of scorn, persecution, calumny, and been compelled to seek in vain some one who will pay well for a dedication of his work. His own lot was ever hard, and, besides, he suffered all the sorrows of humanity. He lived with all and grieved with all. He put his life into his songs, yet few paid any heed to them. Poets have ever been the victims of the prosiness of things. The world was ever ugly to them because they made it so beautiful. No matter how great their immortality, they never could pay their rent. 'A genius is an accused man,' said Victor Hugo in his book on Shakespeare, and then he goes on to enumerate all the banishments, persecutions, imprisonments and outrages that were heaped upon the poets of all lands and all ages, including Victor Hugo himself. Yes, a poet has ever been an accused man, and nearly every one has found him guilty. But as I say, these cruelties had for too long been practised upon the singers and the time has come for a change. With the advance of civilization he will be given useful employment, a decent wage, and thus enabled to make a living without working overtime. Richard Le Gallienne shall weep no more for a government endowment for the poet. The poet shall become self-supporting. He will sing of things whereof the owners can afford to pay for the song. Whether he will create immortal works or not he will work, and work is immortal. It will continue unto the end of time."

Here I wished to remonstrate, but Keidansky would not permit me. He continued, as we walked along through the Ghetto.

"The human and other machines of the age are bringing such wonderful things into existence, and the poet will lift his voice in praise of them. It really takes the imagination of a poet to picture and glorify the countless commodities that are manufactured and put upon the markets of our time. It takes a poet to point out their usefulness. What will he not sing of on those huge street signs and in the double-page advertisements in the newspapers? Of pre-digested foods, of squeezeless corsets, of baking powder that bakes the cakes without any form of heat, of ink that endows the pen with brains, of cigars that are conducive to health, of watches that make people up to date, of a hair restorer that keeps the hair you have, of shoes with which you can walk in the air, of clothes that make man and woman out of nothing, pianos that make Paderewskys, of bicycles and typewriters, and razors and house-lots and furniture, and peerless, rare, surpassing, extraordinary everything mentionable. What will he not sing of? These things will be. God will send us a Bobby Burns and he will sing the song of the best steamship company, and he will not only be able to go abroad often, but he may in the course of time even become the general passenger agent. It takes a competent fortune to escape the materialism of the age, and to acquire this the poet will associate himself with the material interests of the time and become as free as a bird in the woods.

"The process has begun, and already one finds pretty little poems and fine sentiments in all advertisements, particularly those that meet one's eyes in the street cars. I usually have a book with me on the cars, but of late I find the advertisements more amusing. Pretty soon the best literature will appear in the advertisements of all publications. One firm advertises in choice epigrams, which show the possibilities for some future wits. I do not know whether they are written by Elbert Hubbard or not, but they sound like it and show which way things are going.

"This is the solution of the problem of the poet. I pondered over it long, but found it at last. Our hope comes from Parnassus. The poets will help us conquer the foreign market."