Also, the bohemians were entertaining. They knew the peculiarities of every editor in town, and exchanged with Perner characteristic experiences. Among them was a stout, middle-aged man named Capers. He was partly bald, with a smooth baby face that gave him somewhat the appearance of Cupid, and, with his merry disposition, made him seem much younger than he really was.
"Well, I've just had a round with Jacky," he said, as he came in one morning, puffing somewhat after the long climb. (Jacky was the name by which a certain very prominent and somewhat difficult magazine editor was irreverently known among the bohemians.) "It was a pretty stiff tussle, but I landed him."
Perner's face showed interest. Jacky, to him, had been always a trying problem.
"How was it?" he asked. "What did you land him with?"
"Christmas poem—twenty-four lines. Wrote it for an autumn poem—twelve lines in the first place. Too late for this year."
"You could change it, of course, easy enough."
"Changed it right there. Put the golden apples and brown nuts in a pan on the table instead of on the sear and yellow trees. Then I showed it to him again, and he said he didn't care much for nuts and apples anyway, so I took 'em out, and put back the trees, and hung tinsel and embroidered slippers on them. I had to add four more lines to do that, and spoke of the holidays connecting the years like a 'joyous snow-clad isthmus' to rhyme with 'Christmas.' He liked that pretty well, but thought it ought to have a little more atmosphere, so I put in at the beginning a stanza with a Star in the East in it, and another at the end with Christmas day as a star in the heart of humanity—sort of a reflection like—"
"That was good—tiptop!"
"Yes; he took it then. He said, if he didn't, I'd keep on adding to it and break up the magazine. Now, Perny, I'll tell you, I've got a poem that runs right straight through the year. Every stanza is complete in itself, and I can give you any kind of a cut you want. You can have it all as it is, or I'll take out the bones and trim it up for you, or you can have slices out of it here and there at so much a slice."
Perner took the manuscript and ran his eye over it casually.