"'The Whims of New England,'" I repeated. "Let me think how it would look in print:—'We understand that the brilliant, sparkling, and highly humorous poem, entitled "The Whims of New England," which convulsed the élite of Foxden on Friday evening last,' etc., etc. Yes, it sounds well! 'The Whims of New England,' it shall be!"
It was a great satisfaction to have decided upon the style and title; and I sat down at once and began to jot off lines of ten syllables. "What do you think of this for a beginning?" I presently asked:—
"Who shall subdue this headlong-dashing Time,
And lead it fettered through a dance of rhyme?
Where is the coming man who shall not shrink
To lay the Ocean Telegraph—in ink?
Who comes to give us in a form compact
Essence of horse-car, caucus, song, and tract?"
"But why begin with all these questions?" inquired Kate.
"It is the custom, my dear," I replied, decisively. "It is the conventional 'Here we are' of the poetical clown."
"Well, you must remember to be funny enough," said my wife, with something like a sigh. "It is not the humorous side of her hero's character that a woman likes to contemplate; so give me credit for disinterestedness in the advice."
"'Motley's the only wear'!" I exclaimed,—"at least before the Young Men of the Gelasmiphilous Society. I have a stock of Yankee anecdotes that can be worked off in rhyme to the greatest advantage. In short, I mean to attempt one of those immensely popular productions that no library—that is, no circulating library—should be without."
Easier said than done. The evenings of several weeks were pretty diligently devoted to my poem. I determined to begin with a few moral reflections, and in these I think I succeeded in reaching the highest standard of edification and dulness. Not that I didn't succeed in the revel of comicalities I afterward permitted myself; but the selection and polishing of these oddities cost me much more labor than I had expected. I was really touched at the way in which my wife sacrificed her feminine preference for the emotional and sentimental, and heard me read over my piquant periods in order that all the graces of declamation might give them full effect. And when my poem was at length finished, when my stories had been carefully arranged with their points bristling out in all directions, when every shade of emphasis had been studied, I think it might have been called a popular performance,—perhaps too popular;—but that is a matter of opinion.
I felt decidedly nervous, as the time approached when I should make my first appearance before an audience. And the receipt of long letters from Colonel Prowley, overflowing with hopes, expectations, and offers about my contemplated harangue, did not decrease my embarrassment.
"How shall I tell the old gentleman," I exclaimed, one day, after reading one of his Pre-Adamite epistles,—"how shall I tell him, that, instead of the solid discourse he expects, I have nothing but a collection of trumpery rhymes?"