VI
HE DISCUSSES FAME
MR. POET,” said the Idiot, the other morning as his friend, the Rhymster, took his place beside him at the breakfast-table, “tell me: How long have you been writing poetry?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said the Poet, modestly. “I don’t know that I’ve ever written any. I’ve turned out a lot of rhymes in my day, and have managed to make a fair living with them, but poetry is a different thing. The divine afflatus doesn’t come to every one, you know; and I doubt if anybody will be able to say whether my work has shown an occasional touch of inspiration, or not until I have been dead fifty or a hundred years.”
“Tut!” exclaimed the Idiot. “That’s all nonsense. I am able to say now whether or not your work shows the occasional touch of inspiration. It does. In fact, it shows more than that. It shows a semi-occasional touch of inspiration. How long have you been in the business?”
“Eighteen years,” sighed the Poet. “I began when I was twelve with a limerick. As I remember the thing, it went like this:
“There was a young man of Cohasset
Turned on the red-hot water-faucet.
When asked: ‘Is it hot?’
He answered, ‘Well, thot
Is a pretty mild way for to class it.’”
“Good!” said the Idiot. “That wasn’t a bad beginning for a boy of twelve.”
“So my family thought,” said the Poet. “My mother sent it to the Under the Evening Lamp Department of our town paper, and three weeks later I was launched. I’ve had the cacœthes scribendi ever since—but, alas! I got more fame in that brief hour of success than I have ever been able to win since. It is a mighty hard job, Mr. Idiot, making a name for yourself these days.”