Page 41 - Poetry-Books

A Literary Success

An honest—therefore poor—young man, just cut adrift from college,
Was driven to devise a plan for bartering his knowledge.
He thought and though a weary while, then off his coat he stript,
And in one heat reeled of some seventeen pages of manuscript,
Note size, and written only on one side, from which you’ll guess
That it was meant for nothing less than “copy” for the press.
Naught mean about this youth: He quoted French, and Greek, and Latin;
He pressed ancient and modern history into service; and, though he
had only a small stock of metaphysics on hand, he didn’t hesitate to
work that in.
Then straightway he concealed the article upon his person,
And went on publication day (he couldn’t have chosen a worse one)
To the office of a weekly, where he somehow found the editor,
Who eyed him with an ugly glare, as though he were a creditor.
The editor clutched the manuscript; fumbled it half a minute,
Looked at the first page, then the last, and knew all that was in it.
He gave it back. “It’s very good,” he said, “but we can’t use it.
We should have to plow up several acres of flowers of rhetoric,
translate, boil it down, and put a head on it; and, as there is no news
in it, anyhow, though it is a capital article, I fear we must refuse it.”

The young man went away, and pondered. “It’s quite plain,” said he,
“That what I’ve written is too good. What a genius I must be!
Ergo, if I could but contrive to write a little badly,
The editor, undoubtedly, would take my matter gladly.”
He set to work again, and all his powers he put a tax on,
Until he had produced a piece of rough-hewn Anglo-Saxon.
He tried to make it seem abrupt, and to have the language terse.
“I’ve got along without quotations and metaphors,” he said, “and
tethered myself to plain statements, and have used only two or three
kinds of epithets; on the whole, I couldn’t write much worse.”

He went again to the editor, with a kind of sense of shame.
“If you should see fit to publish this,” he said, “don’t use my name.”
The editor turned the pages o’er with evident interest.
“It’s better than the last,” he said, “though hardly in request.”
“I won’t give up,” the young man said, as he sadly walked away.
“I’ve got to harness my genius down, if I want to make it pay.”
So he tried once more, and , after nights of labor, he succeeded
In writing such a shockingly bad thing that he didn’t dare look it
over. He broke away from every cherished tradition; crammed whole

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