George Meredith
He wrote good books, and wrote in vain, and writing, wore out heart and brain. The few would buy his latest tome, and, filled with gladness, take it home, and read it through, from end to end, and lend it to some high-browed friend. The few would say it was a shame that George was scarcely in the game; that grocers, butlers, clerks and cooks would never read his helpful books, but blew themselves for "Deadwood Dick," and "Howling Hank from Bitter Creek," "The Bandit That Nick Carter Caught," and Laura Libbey's tommyrot. Alas! It is a bitter thing! We'd rather have a Zenda king, or hold, with Sinclair, coarse carouse, in some Chicago packing house, or wade, with Weyman, to our knees, in yarns of swords and snickersnees, or trek with Haggard to the veldt, where Zulus seek each other's pelt, than buy a volume, learned and deep, and o'er it yawn ourselves to sleep!
The Smart Children
The other night I took a walk, and called on Jinx, across the block. The home of Jinx was full of boys and girls and forty kinds of noise. Dad Jinx was good, and kind, and straight; he let the children go their gait; he never spoke a sentence cross, he never showed that he was boss, and so his home, as neighbors know, was like the Ringling wild beast show. We tried to talk about the crops; the children raised their fiendish yawps; they hunted up a Thomas cat, and placed it in my stovepipe hat; they jarred me with a carpet tack, and poured ice water down my back; my long coat tails they set afire, and this aroused my slumb'ring ire. I rose, majestic in my wrath, and through those children mowed a path, I smote them sorely, hip and thigh, and piled them in the woodshed nigh; I threw their father in the well, and fired his cottage, with a yell. Some rigid moralists, I hear, have said my course was too severe, but their rebukes can not affright—my conscience tells me I was right.
