“Wall, Walt Whitman,” sez he, “he writ jest as long and short lines. I’ve seen ’em to home in that ‘Leaves of Grass’ Thomas J. owns.”
“Wall, I wish your grass wuz to home, too,” sez I; “but,” sez I, a-sithin’ hard, “I’ve got to stand it, I spoze. But,” sez I warmly, “there hain’t a spot, from Egypt to Jonesville, but what I’d ruther had you broke out into poetry in than in this house.”
And I turned onto my heel and left him, feelin’ cheap as dirt about it, though I comforted myself with the thought that his poetry wuzn’t the only foolish lines writ there.
Shakespeare’s ghost reading the effusions on the walls of his house.
I believe that if Shakespeare’s ghost comes back and hants this old spot—as it seems likely to spoze it duz—about the hardest thing it has to bear is to read the effusions writ all over the walls and in the visitors’ book, though some on ’em are quite good.
Prince Lucian writ a very good verse. But, then, he writ in it that—
“He shed jest one tear.”
How under the sun anybody can make calculations ahead on sheddin’ jest one tear, no more, no less, is a mystery to me, and it must have been jest out of one eye, and not the other.
But bein’ a Prince, I spoze he done it; but I never could. I couldn’t calculate closter than a dozen or twenty before I begun to cry, and I couldn’t cry with one eye and keep the other dry to save my life.