The agent removed his hands from his overalls and folded his arms grimly.
“Well?” inquired Briggs, looking up from his perch on the suit-case.
“Well, sir,” continued the agent, “the hull thing bust. I guess the public kinder sickened o’ them art-rockers an’ dinky books without much printin’ into them. Guilford he stuck to it noble, but the shops closed one by one. My wages wasn’t paid for three months; the boys that remained got together that autumn an’ fixed it up to quit in a bunch.
“The poet was sad; he come out to the shops an’ he says, ‘Boys,’ sez he, ‘art is long an’ life is dam brief. I ain’t got the cash, but,’ sez he, ‘you can levy onto them art-rockers an’ the dinky vellum books in stock, an’,’ sez he, ‘you can take the hand-presses an’ the tools an’ bales o’ vellum, which is very precious, an’ all the wagons an’ hosses, an’ go sell ’em in that proud world that refuses to receive my message. The woodland fellowship is rent,’ sez he, wavin’ his plump fingers at us with the rings sparklin’ on ’em.
“Then the boys looked glum, an’ they nudged me an’ kinder shoved me front. So, bein’ elected, I sez, ‘Friend,’ sez I, ‘art is on
the bum. It ain’t your fault; the boys is sad an’ sorrerful, but they ain’t never knocked you to nobody, Mr. Guilford. You was good to us; you done your damdest. You made up pieces for the magazines an’ papers an’ you advertised how we was all cranks together here at Rose-Cross, a-lovin’ Nature an’ dicky-birds, an’ wanderin’ about half nood for art’s sake.
“‘Mr. Guilford,’ sez I, ‘that gilt brick went. But it has went as far as it can travel an’ is now reposin’ into the soup. Git wise or eat hay, sir. Art is on the blink.’”
The agent jingled his keys with a melancholy wink at Briggs.
“So I come back here, an’ thankful to hold down this job. An’ five mile up the pike is that there noble poet an’ his kids a-makin’ up pieces for to sell to the papers, an’ a sorrerin’ over the cold world what refuses to buy his poems—an’ a mortgage onto his house an’ a threat to foreclose.”
“Indeed,” said Briggs dreamily, for it was his business to attend to the foreclosure of the mortgage on the poet’s house.