“THE MILLIONAIRE’S FOUR POUNDS.”
He was lunching with me on his return from Egypt, this quiet, unassuming head of a great banking firm.
“What have you written this year?” I asked.
“Twenty-two stanzas on Egypt, a land of ancient tombs and modern worries. They appeared, and I actually got four pounds for them.”
The four pounds delighted him. That he spent more than four thousand pounds in Egypt counted for naught, he had earned four pounds.
“Rather funny, I was motoring in Scotland lately, and I called on the Editor,” continued my guest. “He was charming. We talked on many subjects, and then I said, ‘You don’t pay your contributors very highly, do you?’
“‘Yes, oh yes, we do.’
“‘You only paid me four pounds for twenty-two stanzas the other day.’
“‘Ah, well, you see, that was poetry, and no one reads poetry!’”
He told me the joke with a merry little chuckle on his grave face, and his blue eyes twinkled.