"I never wrote anything in my life."
"Oh!" says the shabby chap, pleasantly, "anything will do—your early poems in the weekly journals—anything."
"But," says Samyule, regretfully, "I never wrote a line to a newspaper in all my life."
"What!" says the publishing chap, almost in a shriek—"never wrote a line to a newspaper? Gentleman," says the chap, looking toward us, suspiciously, "this man can't be an American." And he departed hastily.
Believing, my boy, that there would be no more interruptions, Samyule went on dying; but I was called from his bedside by a long-haired chap from New York. Says the chap to me:
"My name is Brown—Brown's Patent Hair-Dye, 25 cents a bottle. Of course," says the hirsute chap, affably, "a monument will be erected to the memory of our departed hero. An Italian marble shaft, standing on a pedestal of four panels. Now," says the hairy chap, insinuatingly, "I will give ten thousand dollars to have my advertisement put on the panel next to the name of the lamented deceased. We can get up something neat and appropriate, thus:
"There!" says the enterprising chap, smilingly, "that would be very neat and moral, besides doing much good to an American fellow-being."
I made no reply, my boy; but I told Samyule about it, and it excited him so that he regained his health.
"If I can't die," says the lamented Samyule, "without some advertising cuss's making money by it, I'll defer my visit to glory until next season."