Here Eisenberg sighed.
"He did so," he resumed mournfully, "and another idol was shattered. The poems were the worst you ever read, and from that time on the name of Gregory the poet began to sink into oblivion, where it now lies. Had his descendants been less weak, his name would still have remained a household word, such is the force of tradition. As it is, the printed volume is the best testimony that the great poet Gregory was nothing but a commonplace rhymester whose name was not worthy of remembrance.
"And that, sir," concluded Eisenberg, bowing politely to me, "is why I say that a poet who does not publish runs less risk of failing as a poet than he who does publish."
And I? Well, how could I deny that Eisenberg was right? He had proved his point only too well, and even that night, on my return home, I went to my little portfolio and utterly destroyed the dozen or more poems I had written that day. If you will take my word for it, you will think them greater than you might if you insisted upon reading them.
"What think you?" asked Hans, as we went home? "Are they not wise?"
"Wiser than the Three Men of Gotham who went to sea in a bowl," said I, "for I do not believe that Otto, Eisenberg, or Jurgurson would go to sea at all."
"True," was Hans's comment, "for as Otto well says in one of his maxims, 'For a sailor with his sea-legs on there is nothing like the sea, but for a shoemaker who lives by shoes alone, dry land is by much the solider foundation.'"