“What are you talking about?” I said, recalled abruptly from my own thoughts.
“Free verse!” cried Finchsifter. “That’s my scheme!—but don’t you tell it—It is between only ourselves—fifty-fifty—we split everything—we create the demand—we corner the supply, you and me together corner all the free verse in the United States—in this world for that matter and sell it for—” Again he hesitated—“If I might ask it—about what does a Poet get for such a little piece of poetry? The kind that is not free. A piece so long I mean.”—He measured a sonnet’s width of air between his thumb and fore-finger—“what do you get for that much?” I told him what the magazines pay me.
“What! A dollar a line! Gott in Himmel! we make a fortune! That’s what I tell Rebecca—If we corner all the free verse in the United States and sell it for no more as five cents a line—we make our fortune! but a dollar a line!—Himmel!”—he fairly danced for ecstasy and then it was I made the discovery, by which I lost if not a Fortune at least a Finchsifter.
I stood still as the tide of words with its flotsam of tossing gestures, continued—I heard nothing. I only waited for Finchsifter to subside.
“Am I right!” He gasped at length with what by every law of supply and demand should have been his latest breath.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about”—I replied angrily. “All I know is we’re walking the wrong way.”
“What do you mean the wrong way?” said Finchsifter.
“The wrong way round the Lake that’s what I mean!”
. . . .
I don’t know how long we stood there arguing the question, I only know that his mind was inaccessible to reason, persuasion—even bribery, for, as a last resort, I offered to give him a list of all the best free verse writers in America if he would only listen to reason—nothing would move him—Finchsifter had always walked round the lake from right to left and always would—and what I said about his rubbing its precious plush corsage the wrong way of the nap was all rot.