James did this, and more. He took the wild-eyed and morbid Blackwell's Island Hamlet, and made him a $2 parlor humorist who could be the life of the party, or give lessons in elocution, and take applause or crackers and cheese in return for the same.
There is really a good lesson to be learned from the pitiful and pathetic tale of James Owen O'Connor. Injudicious friends, doubtless, overestimated his value, and unduly praised his Smart Aleckutionary powers. Loving himself unwisely but too extensively, he was led away into the great, untried purgatory of public scrutiny, and the general indictment followed.
The truth stands out brighter and stronger than ever that there is no cut across lots to fame or success. He who seeks to jump from mediocrity to a glittering triumph over the heads of the patient student, and the earnest, industrious candidate who is willing to bide his time, gets what James Owen O'Connor received—the just condemnation of those who are abundantly able to judge.
In seeking to combine the melancholy beauty of Hamlet's deep and earnest pathos with the gentle humor of "A Hole in the Ground," Mr. O'Connor evidently corked himself, as we say at the Browning Club, and it was but justice after all. Before we curse the condemnation of the people and the press, let us carefully and prayerfully look ourselves over, and see if we have not overestimated ourselves.
There are many men alive to-day who do not dare say anything without first thinking how it will read in their memoirs—men whom we can not, therefore, thoroughly enjoy until they are dead, and yet whose graves will be kept green only so long as the appropriation lasts.
MY MATRIMONIAL BUREAU
X
The following matrimonial inquiries are now in my hands awaiting replies, and I take this method of giving them more air. A few months ago I injudiciously stated that I should take great pleasure in booming, or otherwise whooping up, everything in the matrimonial line, if those who needed aid would send me twenty-five cents, with personal description, lock of hair, and general outline of the style of husband or wife they were yearning for. As a result of thus yielding to a blind impulse and giving it currency through the daily press, I now have a huge mass of more or less soiled postage stamps that look as though they had made a bicycle tour around the world, a haymow full of letters breathing love till you can't rest, and a barrel of calico-colored hair. It is a rare treat to look at this assortment of hair of every hue and degree of curl and coarseness. When I pour it out on the floor it looks like the interior of a western barber shop during a state fair. When I want fun again I shall not undertake to obtain it by starting a matrimonial agency.
I have one letter from a man of twenty-seven summers, who pants to bestow himself on some one at as early a date as possible. He tells me on a separate slip of paper, which he wishes destroyed, that he is a little given to "bowling up," a term with which I am not familiar, but he goes on to say that a good, noble woman, with love in her heart and an earnest desire to save a soul, could rush in and gather him in in good shape. He says that he is worthy, and that if he could be snatched from a drunkard's grave in time he believes he would become eminent. He says that several people have already been overheard to say: "What a pity he drinks." From this he is led to believe that a good wife, with some means, could redeem him. He says it is quite a common thing for young women where he lives to marry young men for the purpose of saving them.