I had to leave him alone part of the afternoon. Duncan Duncan sent me word that he was sick and that the Advocate was in dire need. So I floundered through the alley to the printing-office, and learned from the proof-reader that they had to have six inches of poetry immediately or the paper would be very much delayed. I did n't know what to do, as we had n't any poems of that length in stock, so to speak. While I was sitting there in despair, one of the printers gave me a piece of paper and a pencil, and said,—
"Here, hurry up and write a couple of sticks of po'try; I want to go home." He was quite serious; so I got to work, and in about fifteen minutes had written twenty lines about the pigeons in the blizzard; only I referred to them, for various technical reasons, as doves. There was a heavenly smell of printer's ink in the place which made it easier to write somehow.
No letters came that day from any direction on account of the storm. The next afternoon I met the postman on the steps. He stopped to chat, and I thought I should grab the letters from his hand before he finished, as I caught sight of one in Duggie's handwriting addressed to me. I thought of course that he had postponed his trip and had written to tell me why. The postman talked on and on, but he told me one tale that interested me in spite of myself.
One Sunday morning old Professor Pallas (my ally in the hieroglyphics course) went over to the post-office for his letters. He must have been thinking very deeply about recent discoveries or cuneiform inscriptions or some such thing, because when he went up to the window he could n't remember whose letters he had come for. So he said to the clerk,—
"Young man, do you know who I am?"
The clerk unfortunately was a new one, and had to confess, with regret, that he did n't. So Professor Pallas, after a moment or two of reflection, looked up and murmured through the window,—
"I ask you this because I am equally at a loss myself; but perhaps if I take a little walk it may come to me." Then he strolled away, and in about ten minutes returned, very much pleased, with a slip of paper in his hand.
"I remembered it all by myself," he exclaimed, "and wrote it down."
I got Duggie's letter at last, and ran upstairs to read it. This is what it said:—
DEAR GRANNY,—We are steaming slowly out of the harbor, and I am sitting in a sheltered corner of the deck writing you this note for the pilot to take back with him. My fingers are stiff with cold, but as the air down below is thick with what Mrs. Chester calls "floral tributes." I 'd rather stay here and say good-by to you and the Goddess of Liberty at the same time.