“Checks for you on your desks Monday. Congratulations. I’ll see you through, you damfools.
“West.”
“Here’s a quarter for you,” observed West, eying the messenger.
“T’anks. Gimme the note.”
West glanced at the moist, fat poet; then suddenly that intuition which is bred in men of his stamp set him thinking. And presently he tentatively added two and two.
“Mr. Guilford,” he said, “I wonder
whether this note—and my answer to it—concerns you.”
The poet used his handkerchief, adjusted a pair of glasses, and blinked at the penciled scrawl. Twice he read it; then, like the full sun breaking through a drizzle—like the glory of a search-light dissolving a sticky fog, the smile of smiles illuminated everything: footmen, messenger, financier.
“Thank you,” he said thickly; “thank you for your thought. Thought is but a trifle to bestow—a little thing in itself. But it is the little things that are most important—the smaller the thing the more vital its importance, until”—he added in a genuine burst of his old eloquence—“the thing becomes so small that it isn’t anything at all, and then the value of nothing becomes so enormous that it is past all computation. That is a very precious thought! Thank you for it; thank you for understanding. Bless you!”
Exuding a rich sweetness from every feature the poet moved toward the door at a slow fleshy waddle, head wagging, small eyes half closed, thumbing the atmosphere, while his lips moved in wordless self-communion: “The attainment of nothing at all—that is rarest,