"Well, I got a little mixed up in what it meant. I got a letter this morning from some man—some poet I guess he is—who said that I should leave my money to subsidize struggling poets, who had a great message to give the world, but who had to work so hard making a livin' that they didn't git no chance to give the message. I'm afraid I got kind of mixed up—I could think of nothin' but etherize. I guess it was the strugglin' that confused my mind, and I been wondering why I could etherize a lot of struggling young poets. But now I understand."
"Well, of all the impertinence—"
"I don't know, Daphne; there's some truth in what he said. He said that nations needed great thoughts as well as they needed great inventions—them's his words not mine—and often rich men subsidized a poor inventor or a poor scientist so's they could have time to make their inventions and not have to worry over their daily bread; so why shouldn't it be done for the poets who would then have time to give great thoughts to the people, thoughts that would inspire them to noble deeds and works. There's a lot of sense in what he says."
"But you would never think of doing such a thing—"
"No, of course not; but I like to hear about it. And I been a studyin' a lot about that young man,—I am sure he was young or he wouldn't have had the courage to write me; it's only the young who have the courage to try."
"I call it nerve," said Daphne scornfully; "plain nerve."
"Yes, perhaps it is. But I was thinkin' about this young man who has got a feelin' inside of him that he could say somethin' that would make the world better, and he tries, then he's got to go to an office or somewhere and perhaps count rolls of cloth, or he may be a newspaper man who has to write stories of murders and divorces and—and—things like that, when beautiful things is just a chokin' him."
She was silent for a moment.
"It's an awful thing to be poor, Daphne—real poor. Yet—" she said musingly, "even when you're real poor you can always find somethin' to give. Like Mis' Sweet. Did I ever tell you about Mis' Sweet? She lived in our village and she was mortal poor all her life. When her husband lived he didn't do no more work than he had to and she had to git along as best she could, and then when he died she lived with her son, who was so mean and stingy that he made her go to bed at dark so's she wouldn't burn kerosene. She was so poor that she never had cookies or cakes to send her neighbors, and it kind o' cut her, because in the country we was always sendin' some little thing we'd been bakin' to each other, because that's about the only kind of presents country women can make to each other, somethin' they make themselves.
"So Mis' Sweet felt kind o' bad that she couldn't make no return. But, as I says, one ain't never too poor but that they kin give something. Now Mis' Sweet and nothin' pretty in her house, and never saw much that was beautiful, but she had beautiful thoughts inside, and she loved the flowers and things that grew around her.