CHAPTER VI.
THE PRICE OF POETRY.
When I went over in the evening, I found that Ned had gone to Jimmy's house, and obtained thirteen of his poems in manuscript, and was now carefully looking them over, correcting what he considered errors.
"I tell you what 'tis," said he, "Jimmy's an awful good poet, but he needs somebody to look out for his facts."
"Do you find many mistakes?" said I.
"Yes; quite a few. Here, for instance, he calls it a mile from the Four Corners to Lyell street. I went with the surveyors when they measured it last summer, and it was just seven eighths of a mile and three rods over."
"But you couldn't very well say 'seven eighths of a mile and three rods over' in poetry," said I.
"Perhaps not," said Ned; "and yet it wont do to have that line stand as it is. It'll be severely criticised by everybody who knows the exact distance."
I felt that Ned was wrong, but I could not tell how or why. In later years I have learned that older people than he confidently criticise what they don't understand, and put their own mechanical patches upon the artistic work of others.
"Perhaps we'd better see what Fay thinks about it," said I. "He probably knows more about poetry than we do."
"He's in the library, getting Father to help him on a hard sum," said Ned. "He'll be here in a minute."
When Phaeton returned, we pointed out the difficulty to him.
"That's all right," said he. "That's poetic license."
"What is poetic license?" said I.
"Poetic license," said Phaeton, "is a way that poets have of making things fit when they don't quite fit."
"Like what?" said Ned.
"Like this," said Phaeton; "this is as good an example as any. You see, he couldn't say 'seven eighths of a mile and three rods over,' because that would be too long."
"That would be the exact distance," said Ned.
"I mean it would make this line too long," said Phaeton; "and, besides, it has to rhyme with that other line, which ends with the word style."
"And if that other line ended with cheek, would he have to call it a league from the Four Corners to Lyell street?" said Ned.
"I suppose so," said Phaeton, "though it wouldn't be a very good rhyme."
"And is that considered all right?"
"I believe it is."
"Then you can't depend upon a single statement in any poem," said Ned.
"Oh, yes, you can," said Phaeton—"a great many."
"Mention one," said Ned.
| "'Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November,'" |
said Phaeton.
"That's true," said Ned; "but it's only because the words happen to come so. At any rate, you've greatly lessened my respect for poetry, and I don't know whether I'd better publish them, after all."
"These poems?—were you going to publish them?" said Phaeton.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"To make a little money for Jimmy. You know his folks are very poor," said Ned.
"The papers wont pay you anything for them," said Phaeton. "Alec Barnes's sister had a poem two columns long in the Vindicator last week, and Alec told me she didn't get a cent for it."
"But we're going to make a book of them," said Ned. "You can make money on a book, can't you?"
"I believe you can," said Phaeton. "Wait a minute."
He went to the library, and came back with three volumes of a cyclopædia, out of which, after looking through several articles, he got, at intervals, these bits of information:
"Moore received three thousand guineas for 'Lalla Rookh.'"
"How much is that?" said Ned.
"Over fifteen thousand dollars," said Phaeton.
"Whew!" said Ned.
"Scott made a profit of ten thousand dollars on 'The Lady of the Lake.'"
"Good gracious!" said Ned.
"Byron received more than seventy-five thousand dollars for his poems."
"Great Cæsar!" said Ned.
"Tupper must have made thirty thousand dollars on his 'Proverbial Philosophy.'"
"That's enough!" said Ned. "That's plenty! I begin to have great respect for poetry, in spite of the license. And I suppose that if the poets make all that money, the publishers make a little something, too."
"They probably know how to look out for themselves," said Phaeton. "But who is going to publish this book for you?"
"I'm going to publish it myself. You know we haven't used up the capital I got from Aunt Mercy," said Ned.
"But you're not a publisher."
"Nobody is a publisher until after he has published something," said Ned.
"But that won't be capital enough to print a book," said Phaeton. "Printing costs like fury."
"Then I shall have to get more from Aunt Mercy."
"Yes, I suppose you can—she'd give you anything; but, the truth is, Ned, I—I had a little plan of my own about that."
"About what?"
"About the fifteen dollars—or a part of it. I don't think I should need all of it."
"What is it? Another foolish invention?"
"Yes, it is a sort of invention; but it is sure to go—sure to go."
"Let's hear all about it," said Ned.
"Will you lend me the money to try it?"
"How much will it take?"
"Six or eight dollars, I should think."
"Yes; I'll lend you six dollars on it. Or, if it is really a good thing, I'll put in the six dollars as my share, and go partnership."
"Well, then, it's a substitute for a balloon," said Phaeton. "Much cheaper, and safer, and better in every way."
"How does it work?" said Ned.
"It makes a horizontal ascension. I could tell you all about it; but I would rather wait a week, and then show you."
"All right!" said Ned. "You can have the money, and we'll wait."
"Thank you!" said Phaeton. "But now tell me how you are going to publish Jimmy's poems."
"Why, just publish them, of course," said Ned.
"And what do you understand by that?"
"Take this copy to the printer, and tell him to print the books. When it's done, load them into big wagons, and drive around to the four book-stores and leave them. After a few days, call around and get the money, and divide with Jimmy. We wouldn't ask them to pay for them till they had a chance to look them over, and see how they liked them."
"I don't believe that would work," said Phaeton.
"Why not?" said Ned.
"The booksellers might not take them."
"Not take them!" said Ned. "They'd be only too glad to. Of course they would make a profit on them. I suppose the price would be—well, about half a dollar; and we should let them have them for—well, say for forty-seven cents apiece. Maybe if they took a large number, and paid cash down, they might have them for forty-five."
Phaeton laughed.
"They don't do business for any such small profits as that," said he.
"I've heard Father tell of a man," said Ned, "that made his fortune when wheat rose three cents on a bushel. And who wouldn't rather have a volume of Jimmy's poems than a bushel of wheat? If nobody happened to buy the wheat for a year or two, it would spoil; but that volume of poems could stand on the shelf in the book-store for twenty years, and be just as good at the end of that time as the day it was put there."
"All that sounds very well," said Phaeton; "but you'd better talk with some one that knows about it, before you rush into the enterprise."
"I'll go and see Jack-in-the-Box, of course," said Ned. "He must know all about books. I never yet asked him anything that he didn't know all about."
Ned could hardly wait for the night to pass away, and when the next day came, off we posted once more to see Jack-in-the-Box. When we got there, Ned plunged at once into the business, before we had fairly said good morning.
"Jack," said he, "did you ever publish a book?"
Jack blushed, and asked why he wanted to know.
"I am thinking of publishing one," said Ned.
"Indeed?" said Jack. "I didn't know that you had written one."
"I haven't," said Ned. "Jimmy the Rhymer wrote it. But I talk of publishing it."
"I see," said Jack. "I didn't understand you before."
"I thought you would understand all about it," said Ned.
"Your expression might have meant either one of two things," said Jack. "When a publisher prints a book and sells it, he of course is said to publish it; and when a person writes a book, and gets a publisher to publish it for him, he also is said to have published a book."
"I see," said Ned. "And did you ever publish one?"
"I never was a publisher," said Jack.
"Still, you may know a good deal about it."
"I know a little about it," said Jack, "and shall be glad to give you all the advice I can. Is this the manuscript?"
Ned said it was, and handed him a roll which he had brought in his hand.
"Ah, poetry, I see," said Jack, turning over the leaves.
"Yes, first-rate poetry," said Ned. "A few licenses here and there; but that can't be helped, you know."
"Of course not," said Jack.
"We want to make as much money as we can," said Ned, "for Jimmy's folks are awful poor, and he needs it, and poetry's the stuff to make money."
"Is it?" said Jack. "I'm glad to hear it."
"There was Sir Walter Tupper," said Ned, "made thirty thousand dollars, clean cash, on a poem called 'The Lady and the Snake'—probably not half so good as these of Jimmy's. Who'd want to read about such a dreadful thing? And Mr. Barrons was paid seventy-five thousand dollars for his poem called 'The Little Rook,' whatever that is. And there was Lord Moore got three thousand guineas—that's fifteen thousand dollars, you know—for some sort of philosophy all turned into rhyme. I don't see how a philosophy could be in rhyme, though, for you know everything in philosophy has to be exact, and in poetry you have to take licenses. Suppose you came to the five mechanical powers, and the line before ended with sticks, what could you do? You'd have to say there were six of them."
Jack laughed heartily.
"Yes, it would be ridiculous," continued Ned. "But that's Lord Moore's lookout. In these poems of Jimmy's, there isn't any trouble of that sort. They don't need to be exact. Suppose, for instance, one of them says it's a mile from the Four Corners to Lyell street. What odds? Very few people know that it's just seven eighths of a mile and three rods over. I might not have known it myself, if I hadn't happened to be with the surveyors when they measured it. Jimmy admits that he has drawn on his imagination in one or two places; but he isn't going to do it any more, and I think those can be fixed up somehow."
Jack laughed again, said he thought imagination was not altogether objectionable in poetry, and kept on turning over the leaves.
"Where is the title-page?" said he.
"What is that?" said Ned.
"The one with the name on it—the first page in the book," said Jack.
"Oh!" said Ned, "we never thought about that. Won't the printer make it himself?"
"Not unless you write it first."
"Then we've got to name the book before we go any further," said Ned.
"That's it, exactly," said Jack.
"Couldn't you name it for us?"
"I might suggest some names," said Jack, "and let you choose; but it seems to me, the person who wrote it ought to name it."
"Oh, never mind Jimmy," said Ned. "He'll be satisfied with anything I do."
"It might be called simply, 'Poems. By Jimmy the Rhymer,'" said Jack.
"His name is James Redmond," said Ned.
"I'll write down a few," said Jack, as he reached into the box under his chair and took out a sheet of paper and a pencil, and in five minutes he showed us the list:
"Rhymes and Roundelays. By James Redmond."
"A Picnic on Parnassus. By James Redmond."
"The Unlucky Fishermen, and other Poems. By James Redmond."
"Jimmy's Jingles."
"Songs of a School-boy."
"Minutes with the Muses. By James Redmond."
It did not take Ned very long to choose the third of these titles, which he thought "sounded the most sensible."
"Very well," said Jack, as he wrote a neat title-page and added it to the manuscript. "And how are you going to publish it?"
"I thought I'd get you to tell me how," said Ned, who by this time had begun to suspect that he knew very little about it.
"The regular way," said Jack, "would be to send it to a firm in New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia."
"And then what?"
"They would have a critic read it and tell them whether it was suitable."
"He'd be sure to say it was; but then what?"
"Then they would have it printed and bound, and advertise it in the papers, and sell it, and send it to other stores to be sold."
"But where would our profits come from?"
"Oh, they would pay you ten per cent. on all they sold."
"And how many do you think they would sell?"
"Nobody can tell," said Jack. "Different books sell differently—all the way from none at all up to a great many."
Ned borrowed Jack's pencil, and figured for two or three minutes.
"Then," said he, "if they should sell a hundred of our book, we would only get five dollars—two and a half for Jimmy, and two and a half for me."
"That's about it," said Jack.
"Then that won't do," said Ned. "Jimmy's folks are very poor, and he needs more than that. Isn't there some way to make more money out of it?"
"Not unless you pay for the printing and binding yourself," said Jack.
"And how much would that cost?"
Jack looked it over and said he guessed about two hundred dollars for an edition of five hundred.
"We can't do it," said Ned, with a sigh. "Aunt Mercy wouldn't give me so much money at a time."
"There is one other way," said Jack.
"How is it?"
"To get up a little printing-office of your own, and print it yourselves."
"That sounds like business; I guess you've hit it," said Ned, brightening up. "How much money would it take for that?"
"I should think twenty-five or thirty dollars would get up a good one."
"Then we can do it," said Ned. "Aunt Mercy will let me have that, right away."
"Do you know anything about printing?" said Jack.
"Not much; but my brother Fay knows all about it. He worked in a printing-office one vacation, to earn money to buy him a chest of tools."
"Indeed! what did your brother do in the printing-office?" said Jack.
"They called him second devil," said Ned, "but he was really a roller-boy."
"They're the same thing," said Jack. "There's no harm in a printer's devil; he's only called so because he sometimes gets pretty well blacked up with the ink."
"I'm glad to hear you say so," said Ned, who had been a little ashamed to tell what Fay did in the office, but now began to think it might be rather honorable. "In fact, he was first devil one week, when the regular first devil was gone to his grandfather's funeral in Troy."
"Then he knows something about the business," said Jack; "and perhaps I can help you a little. I understand the trade to some extent."
"Of course you do," said Ned. "You understand everything. And after we've finished Jimmy's book, we can print all sorts of other things—do a general business, in fact. I'll see what Fay says, and if he'll go in, we'll start it at once."
While Ned was uttering the last sentence, Jack's alarm-clock went off, and Jack took his flag and went out to flag the Pacific express, while we walked away. We must have been very much absorbed in the new project, for we never even turned to look at the train; and a train of cars in swift motion is a sight that few people can help stopping to look at, however busy they may be.
Readers who have followed this story thus far will perhaps inquire where the scene of it is laid. I think it is a pertinent question, yet there is a sort of unwritten law among story-writers against answering it, excepting in some vague, indefinite way; and I have transgressed so many written laws, that I should like at least to keep the unwritten ones. But if you are good at playing "buried cities," I will give you a chance to find out the name of that inland city where Phaeton and his companions dwelt. I discovered it buried, quite unintentionally, in one of Jimmy the Rhymer's poems. Here is the couplet:
| "Though his head to the north wind so often is bared, At the sound of the siroc he's terribly scared." |