My bearing during this period of infatuation could hardly fail to attract considerable attention in our village, and there were two opinions about me. One was that I had been jilted; the other, that I was about to become a vagabond and an actor. My father inclined to the former, and left me, as he thought, to get over my disappointment in the natural way.
My peripatetic spell had lasted about six weeks, my boy, when I formed the acquaintance of the editor of the Lily of the Valley, who permitted me to mope in his office now and then, and soothed my literary inflammation by permitting me to write "puffs" for the village milliner.
Oh! the fierce and tremendous ecstasy of that moment when I first saw my own words in print, with not more than six typographical errors in each line:—"Quebn Victoria, it is said, is comind to this coontry for the xpress purpose of obtoining one of these beautiful spring bunnets at Madame Smith's."
I noticed as I went home on the day of publication, that all whom I passed paused to look after me. I was already famous. The discovery, on reaching our house, that one of my temples was somewhat fingered with printers' ink, did not shake me in this belief, my boy; I was too far gone for that.
The editor of the Lily treated me considerately, and even asked me at times to accompany him to the place where he daily sipped inspiration, gaining thereby a fresh flow of ideas and the qualified immortality of certain additional chalk-marks on the back of a door. I refer to a spirituous establishment.
Finding that the editorial treasury did not redeem its verbal promissory notes, my boy, the proprietor of this establishment suddenly put forth a new sign, conspicuously reading:—
The editor went to him, and says he:
"What do you mean by this impertinence, Timothy?"
The liquor chap stuck his hands into his pockets, my boy, and says he: