THE GIRL I LOVE
“I love a maid, and shall I tell you why?
It is not only that her soulful eye
Sets my heart beating at so huge a rate
That I'm appalled to feel it palpitate;
No! though her eye has power to conquer mine.
And fill my breast with feelings most divine,
Another thing my heart in love immersed—
Kate reads the advertising pages first!
“A Sunday paper comes to her fair hand
Teeming with news of every foreign land,
With social gossip, fashions new and rare,
And politics and scandal in good share,
With verse and prose and pictures, and the lore
Of witty writers in a goodly corps,
Wit, wisdom, humor, all things interspersed—
Kate reads the advertising pages first!
“The magazine, in brilliant cover bound,
Into her home its welcome way has found,
But, ere she reads the story of the trust,
Or tale of bosses, haughty and unjust,
Or tale of love, or strife, or pathos deep
That makes the gentle maiden shyly weep,
Or strange adventures thrillingly rehearsed,
Kate reads the advertising pages first!
“Give me each time the maid with such a mind,
The maid who is superior to her kind;
She feels the pulse-beats of the world of men,
The power of the advertiser's pen;
She knows that fact more great than fiction
Is, And that the nation's life-blood is its 'biz.'
I love the maid who woman's way reversed
And reads the advertising pages first!”
“Now, there,” said Biggs, “is something that ought to nail her sure. It is one of the best things I have ever done. I am a poet, and I know good poetry when I see it; and I give you my word that is the real article.”
I took Biggs's word for it, and I think he was right; but he had forgotten to tell me that it was a humorous poem, and when Kate laughed over it, I was a little surprised. I don't know that I exactly expected her to weep over it, but to me it seemed to be a rather soulful sort of thing when I read it. I thought there were two or three quite touching lines. But it worked well enough. She and her poet laughed over it; and, as it seemed the right thing to do, I screwed up my face and ha-ha'd a little, too, and it went off very well. Kate told me again that I was a genius, and her poet assured me that he would never have thought of writing a poem anything like it.
“Well, now,” said Biggs, when I had reported progress, “we want to keep following this thing right up. System is the whole thing. You have told her how nice she is in No. 1, and given a reason why she is loved in No. 2. What we want to do is to give her in No. 3 a reason why she should like you. Has she ever spoken of Codliver Capsules?”
So far as I could remember she had not.
“That is good,” said Biggs; “very good, indeed. She probably doesn't identify you with them yet, or she would have thrown herself at your head long ago. We don't want to brag about it—not yet. We want to break it to her gently. We want to be humble and undeserving. You must be a worm, so to speak.”
“Biggs,” I said, with dignity, “I don't propose to be a worm, so to speak.”
“But,” he pleaded, “you must. It's only poetic license.”
That was the first I knew that poets had to be licensed. But I don't wonder they have to be. Even a dog has to be licensed, these days.
“You must be the humble worm,” continued Biggs, “so that later on you can blossom forth into the radiant conquering butterfly.”
I didn't like that any better. I showed Biggs that worms don't blossom. Plants blossom. And butterflies don't conquer. And worms don't turn into butterflies—caterpillars do.
“Very well,” said Biggs, “you must be the humble caterpillar, then.”
I told him I would rather be a caterpillar than a worm any day; and after we had argued for half an hour on whether it was any better to be a caterpillar than to be a worm.
Biggs remembered that it was only metaphorically speaking, after all, and that nothing would be said about worms or caterpillars in the poem, and he got down to work on No. 3. When he had it done, he put his feet on his desk and read it to me. He called it