"'Tis true my dear. 'Tis very, very true.
Here in my sanctum, high above the pave, ma'am,
I can't help doing all the things I do,
Not e'en my great immortal soul to save, ma'am.
You see, a man who daily has to write
Of things of which Calliope doth side-talk,
Must get above the earth and leave the wight
Who dully plods along along the sidewalk,"
he answered. "That's why I live under the roof instead of hiring chambers on the ground-floor. Up here I am not bothered by what in one of my new poems I shall call 'Mundane Things.' Rather good expression that, don't you think? The first draft reads:
"'Mundane things, mundane things,
Hansom cabs and finger rings,
Drossy glitter and glittering dross,
May I never come across
Merely mundane, mundane things.'
"Rather clever, to be tossed off on a scratch pad while taking a shower-bath, eh?"
"Yes," said I. "What suggested it?"
"The merest accident. I got some soap in my eye and was about to give way to my temper, when I thought to myself that the true poet ought to rise above petty annoyances of that nature—in other words, above mundane things."
"Wonderfully interesting," I put in. "Was your appointment a surprise to you, Mr. Austin?"
"Surprise? Nay, nay, my lovely maid.
Pray why should I surpriséd be?
Despite that Fortune's but a fickle jade,
I knew the thing must come to me,
For in these days commercial, don't you see,
From eyes like mine no thing can e'er be hid;
And when they advertised for poetry,
'Twas I put in the very lowest bid,"
he replied. "You see, as a newspaper man I knew what rates the other poets were getting. There was Swinburne getting seven bob a line, and Sir Edwin Arnold asking a guinea a yard, and old Kipling grinding it out for one and six per quatrain, and Watson doing sonnets on the Yellow North, and the Red, White, and Blue East, and the Pink Sow'west, at five pounds a dozen. So when Salisbury rang me up on the 'phone and said I'd better put in a bid for the verse contract, I knew just how to arrange my rates to get the work."
"You had a great advantage over the others," said I.