"Oh—I know. You mean a satchel," said Mollie.
"Maybe I do," observed the Unwiseman. "But I thought the word was snatchel, because it was a thing you could snatch up hurriedly and run to catch a train with. Anyhow, I made one and put some four or five pounds of potery in it, and started out to sell it. The first place I went to they said they liked my potery very much, but they couldn't use it because it didn't advertise anything. They wanted sonnets about the best kind of soap that ever was; or what they called a hook-and-eye lyric; or perhaps a few quatrains about baking-powders, or tooth-wash, or some kind of silver-polish. People don't read poems about mysteries and little red school-houses, and patriotism any more, they said; but if a real poet should write about a new kind of a clothes-wringer or a patent pickle he'd make a fortune, because he'd get his work published on fences and in railroad cars, which everybody sees, instead of in magazines that nobody reads."
"I've seen lots of those kinds of poems," said Mollie.
"They're mighty good reading, too," said Whistlebinkie. "And is that what you are going to do?"
"They'd pay for it when they published it."
"Not I!" retorted the Unwiseman, scornfully. "No, indeed, I'm not. Shakespeare never did such a thing, and I don't believe Milton did either, and certainly I shall not try it. The next place I went to they said they liked my potery well enough to print it, but I'd have to pay for having it done, which was very hard, because I hadn't any money. The next place they took a sonnet and said they'd pay for it when they published it, and when I asked when that would be, they said in about thirty-seven years."
"Mercy!" cried Mollie.
"That's what I said," said the Unwiseman, ruefully. "So again I went on until I found an editor who was a lovely man. He read all my things through, and when he'd finished he said he judged from the quality of my potery I must be a splendid writer of prose."