Orpheus C. Kerr.
LETTER III.
OUR CORRESPONDENT BECOMES LITERARY, AND FATHOMS CERTAIN MYSTERIES OF JOURNALISM. HE PRODUCES A DISTINCTIVE AMERICAN POEM, AND GAINS THE USUAL REWARD OF YOUTHFUL GENIUS.
Washington, D.C., March 31st, 1861.
As far I can trace back, my boy, we never had a literary character in our family, save a venerable aunt of mine, on my mother's side, who commenced her writing career by refusing to contribute to the Sunday papers, and subsequently won much fame as the authoress of a set of copy-books. When this gifted relative found herself acquiring a reputation, she came in state to visit us, and so disgusted my very practical father by wearing slip-shod gaiters, inking her right hand thumb nail every morning, calling all things by European names, and insisting upon giving our oldest plough horse the romantic and literary title of "Lord Byron," that my exasperated parent incurred a most tremendous prejudice against authorship, my boy, and vowed, when she went away, that he never would invite her presence again.
I was only twenty years old at that time, and the novelty of my aunt's conduct had rather an infatuating effect upon me. With that perversity often observable in youngsters before they have seen much of the world, I became deeply interested in my literary relative as soon as my father commenced to speak contemptuously of her pursuits, and it took very little time to invest me with a longing and determination to be a writer.
Thenceforth I wore negligent linen; frequently rested my head upon the forefinger of my right hand, with a lofty and abstracted air; assumed an expression of settled and mysterious gloom when at church, and suffered my hair to grow long and uncombed.
Speaking of the masculine literary habit of wearing the hair in this way, my boy, I find myself impressed with a profound metaphysical idea. You have probably noticed that writers following this fashion will frequently scratch their heads when inspiration plays the laggard. It is also true that wearers of long and uncombed hair who are not writers, will scratch their heads in the same way, occasionally. The action being the same in both cases, can it be that physiological inspection would develope an affinity between the natural causes thereof?
I have often thought of this, my boy,—I've often thought of this.