And this mere boy, who could make himself equal to an emergency,—what of him? I can fancy him a fond mothers pride, a venerable father's hope,—ay, even a tender sister's favorite snub. When this record of his glory reaches them, will they remember, in the midst of their proud exultation, the poor scribe whose humble pen relates to them the glories of their house? Will they drop one burning tear to the memory of him who at this moment does not know what on earth to write about next, and heartily wishes that he had been content to earn a respectable living as a reputable wood-sawyer, instead of turning writer? Will they sometimes give one idle thought to the unpretending litérateurwho has found the glorious reward of literary merit to be an assumption by one-horse country newspapers of the right to talk about him by his family name without troubling themselves to put in the civilized courtesy of "Mr."? Will they mention in their less urgent prayer, occasionally, the modest child of the quill, who would exceed all the horrors of the Inquisition with the foes of his country, by actually forcing them to write a column for a newspaper when they felt mentally incapable of penning a single coherent paragraph? Will they?
Ah! this is no country to appreciate genius; as they wrote upon the tomb of my early friend, the sweet-singing Arkansaw Nightingale, whose last sad manuscript to me described
"A BIG DOG FIT.
"Lige Simmons is as cute a chap
As ever you did see,
And when the feller says a thing,
It's sure as it can be.
"He owns a dog—and sich a brute
For smellin' round a chap,
I never see in all my life,