George D. Prentice has also done much toward weeding out a class of people who otherwise might have become disagreeable. It is better that these men who write under the influence of rum should fall into the hands of the police as early as possible. The police can handle them better than the editor can.
Do not try, Alfonso, to experiment in this way. Because Mr. Poe and Mr. Prentice could write beautiful and witty things between drinks, do not, oh do not imagine that you can begin that way and succeed at last.
The effect of alcohol on the brain of an adult is to congest it finally. Alcohol will sometimes congest the brain of an adult under the most trying and discouraging circumstances. I have frequently known it to scorch out and paralyze the brain in cases where other experiments had not been successful in showing the presence of a brain at all.
{Illustration: THINKING ABOUT THE POEM.}
That is the reason why some people love to fool with this great chemical. It revives their suspicions regarding the presence of a brain.
The habits of literary men vary a good deal, for no two of them seem to care to adopt the same plan.
I have taken the liberty of showing here my own laboratory and methods of thought. This is from a drawing made by myself, and represents the writer in his study and in the act of thinking about a poem.
Last summer I wrote a large poem entitled, “Moanings of the Moist, Malarious Sea.” I have it still. The back of it has a memoranda on it in blue pencil from the leading editors of our broad land, but otherwise it is just as I wrote it.