Having written some verse which has landed in respectable places, I am also asked about poetry. Poems written in trochaic metre with the good old rhymes, “trees and breeze,” “light and night,” soldered on at the end of the lines, are continually brought to me for revision and improvement.
Once, for the benefit of the literary aspirant, I brought out my rhyming dictionary, but I shall never do it again. He looked it over carefully, while I explained the advantage for the writer in having before him all the available rhymes, so that the least common might be quickly chosen and the verse made to run smoothly.
“Humph!” he said; “it’s just the book. Anybody can write poetry with one of these books!”
My invaluable thesaurus is chained to my desk in order that it may not escape, and I frequently have to justify its existence when aliens penetrate my den. “It’s no wonder you can write,” was said to me once. “Here’s all the English language right on your desk, and all you’ve got to do is to put it together.”
“Yes,” I answered wickedly, “but it’s all in the dictionary too.”
Last week I had a rare treat. I met a woman who had “never seen a literary person before,” and who said “it was quite a novelty!” I beamed upon her, for it is very nice to be a “novelty,” and after a while we became quite confidential.
“I want you to tell me just how you write,” she said, “so’s I can tell the folks at home. I’m going to buy some of your books to give away.”
Mindful of “royalty to author,” I immediately became willing to tell anything I could.
“Well, I want to know how you write. Do you just sit down and do it?”