"Yes, first-rate poetry," said Ned. "A few licenses here and there; but that can't be helped, you know."
"Of course not," said Jack.
"We want to make as much money as we can," said Ned, "for Jimmy's folks are awful poor, and he needs it, and poetry's the stuff to make money."
"Is it?" said Jack. "I'm glad to hear it."
"There was Sir Walter Tupper," said Ned, "made thirty thousand dollars, clean cash, on a poem called 'The Lady and the Snake'—probably not half so good as these of Jimmy's. Who'd want to read about such a dreadful thing? And Mr. Barrons was paid seventy-five thousand dollars for his poem called 'The Little Rook,' whatever that is. And there was Lord Moore got three thousand guineas—that's fifteen thousand dollars, you know—for some sort of philosophy all turned into rhyme. I don't see how a philosophy could be in rhyme, though, for you know everything in philosophy has to be exact, and in poetry you have to take licenses. Suppose you came to the five mechanical powers, and the line before ended with sticks, what could you do? You'd have to say there were six of them."
Jack laughed heartily.
"Yes, it would be ridiculous," continued Ned. "But that's Lord Moore's lookout. In these poems of Jimmy's, there isn't any trouble of that sort. They don't need to be exact. Suppose, for instance, one of them says it's a mile from the Four Corners to Lyell street. What odds? Very few people know that it's just seven eighths of a mile and three rods over. I might not have known it myself, if I hadn't happened to be with the surveyors when they measured it. Jimmy admits that he has drawn on his imagination in one or two places; but he isn't going to do it any more, and I think those can be fixed up somehow."
Jack laughed again, said he thought imagination was not altogether objectionable in poetry, and kept on turning over the leaves.
"Where is the title-page?" said he.
"What is that?" said Ned.