“But,” sez he with a wise air, “you have to be so careful in poetry. You can’t use strong phrases much, if any. And then, knowin’ that I wuz writin’ in the same book with kings, etc., I felt that it must be genteel and stylish. And I knew you always loved to be remembered, and so I brung your name in, Samantha.”
“Yes,” sez I, “you brung it in in sech a way as to hurt his folkses feelin’s as long as they make them chairs of hisen.”
“Wall,” sez he, “it looks well for pardners to remember each other, and it’s a rare quality, too.”
I felt that he wuz right, and didn’t dispute him, and sez he—
“Samantha, I wanted you to be jined with me on the pillow of fame. I don’t want to be anywhere where you hain’t, Samantha.”
His tenderness touched my heart, and I kep’ still and let him go on, only I merely remarked—
“As for its bein’ melodious, Josiah, your first line has got 2 words in it, and your last one seventeen.”
“Wall,” sez he, “that’s the way with great writers—they warm with their subject as they go on, and git all het up with inspiration. Jest think of Browning and Walt Whitman.”
Sez I, “Don’t go to comparin’ that verse of yourn with Browning. Why, folks know what you wuz a-writin’ about! Don’t compare yourself with Robert Browning.”
He see in a minute his deep mistake—he see that folks could find out what he’d undertook to write about.