AN ILL-USED AUTHOR.
"I gather, Sir," remarked my fellow-traveller, after I had put away the writing-block on which I had been jotting down the outline of an article, "that you are a literary man, like myself?"
We were the only occupants of a compartment in a L. & N. W. R. carriage. I had been too absorbed till then to notice his appearance, but I now observed that he had rather unkempt hair, luminous eyes, and a soft hat. "Oh, well," I admitted, "I write."
"But I take it that, whatever you write, it is not poetry," he said. What led him to this inference I cannot say, but I had to confess that it was correct.
"Still, even though you are not a Poet yourself, I hope," he said, "you can feel some sympathy for one who has been so infamously treated as I have."
I replied that I hoped so too.
"Then, Sir," said he, "I will tell you my unhappy story. At the beginning of this War I was approached by certain Railway magnates who shall be nameless. It appeared that they had realised, very rightly, that their official notices were couched in too cold and formal a style to reach the heart of their public. So they commissioned me to supply what I may term the human touch. As a poet, I naturally felt that this could only be effectively done through the medium of verse. Well, I rose to the occasion, Sir; I produced some lines which, printed as they were written, must infallibly have placed me at the head of all of my contemporaries. But they were not printed as they were written. In proof of which I will trouble you to read very carefully the opening paragraph of those 'Defence of the Realm Regulations' immediately above your head ... Only the opening paragraph at present, please!"
I was somewhat surprised, but, thinking it best to humour him, I read the first sentence, which was: "In view of possible attack by hostile aircraft, it is necessary that the blinds of all trains should be kept down after sunset," and gave him my opinion of it.
"Whether," he said, with some acerbity, "it is or is not as lucidly expressed as you are pleased to consider, only the beginning of it is mine. This is what I actually wrote:—