"I never'n the world would 'a got that guy,
If I'd waited till after the First o' July."
And of all glad words of prose or rhyme,
The gladdest are, "Act while there yet is time."
The Carlyles
[I was talking with a newspaper man the other day who seemed to think that the fact that Mrs. Carlyle threw a teacup at Mr. Carlyle should be given to the public merely as a fact.
But a fact presented to people without the proper—or even, if necessary, without the improper—human being to go with it does not mean anything and does not really become alive or caper about in people's minds.
But what I want and what I believe most people want when a fact is being presented is one or two touches that will make natural and human questions rise in and play about like this:
"Did a servant see Mrs. Carlyle throw the teacup? Was the servant an English servant with an English imagination or an Irish servant with an Irish imagination? What would the fact have been like if Mr. Browning had been listening at the keyhole? Or Oscar Wilde, or Punch, or the Missionary Herald, or The New York Sun, or the Christian Science Monitor?"—Gerald Stanley Lee in the Satevepost.]
BY OUR OWN ROBERT BROWNING
As a poet heart- and fancy-free—whole,
I listened at the Carlyles' keyhole;
And I saw, I, Robert Browning, saw,
Tom hurl a teacup at Jane's jaw.
She silent sat, nor tried to speak up
When came the wallop with the teacup—
A cup not filled with Beaune or Clicquot,
But one that brimmed with Orange Pekoe.
"Jane Welsh Carlyle," said Thomas, bold,
"The tea you brewed for m' breakfast's cold!
I'm feeling low i' my mind; a thing
You know b' this time. Have at you!"... Bing!
And hurled, threw he at her the teacup;
And I wrote it, deeming it unique, up.