THE BASHFUL POET AND THE KNOWING YOUNG JOURNALIST.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1898, 24 March 1880, Page 3

THE BASHFUL POET AND THE KNOWING YOUNG JOURNALIST.

Anybody could tell what he had. Every man in the sanctum knew in a minute. The timid knock at the door gave him clear way at the very start. No man or woman ever knocks at a sanctum door unless he comes on that fatal errand. Then ho came inside and took off his hat and bowed all round the room, when every man on the staff roared out, in terrible chorus, “ Dome in!” Then he asked for the editor, and when the underlings, with a fine mingling of truth and grammar, pointed to the youngest and newest man in the office, and yelled, “ That’s him I” he walked up to the [young gentleman designated, and before he could unroll his manuscript, we knew the subject of it, and a deep groan echoed around the room. “ Poetry, young man?” asked the editor. “Yes, sir,” said the young poet; “ a couple of triplets and a sonnet on the marriage of my sister and an old college friend.” “ Old college friendmale or female, young man?” asked the editor severely. “ Male, sir,” said the young man. Ho said “ sir ” every time, and every time he said it all the young gentlemen of the staff, save the young gentleman who personated the governor, snickered. He looked severe. 4: Anything more, young man ? ” he asked, “ Yea sir,” replied the infant Tennyson ; “ a kind of idyl, an ode inscribed * To My Lost Love.’ ” —“ Love been lost very long,_ young man,” asked the journalist, very critically. “ Well, it’s immaterial, that is,” stammered the young man, “ it’s indefinite—it’s ” “ Ever advertised for it ?’ asked the reporter who was writing a puff for Blab’s tombstones, but he was instantly frowned down. “ Anything more ? ” asked the principal interlocutor ; “anything more, young man?”— “Yes sir,” was the hopeful response; “a threnody in memory of my departed brother.” “Brother dead, young man, or gone to Sagetown ? ” brother? ” “No, sir; I never had a real brother - it’s only imaginary.”—Can’t take this, then, young man,” was the chilling reply. “ Poetry, to find acceptance with the ‘ Hawkeve,’ must be true. Have to reject this threnody, not because it is not very beautiful, but because it is not true. Now, how much do you want for these others? ” And he fingered them like a man buying minx skins. The poet really didn’t know. Ho had never published before ; he had barely dared hope to have his verses published _ at all. A few copies of the paper containing them, he waflßure , . “0h.n0,” the editor broke in ; “oh, no, no, sir, can’t do that; we don’t do business in that way ; if a poem or sketch is worth publishing, it is worth paying for. Would 15 dollars pay you for these ?” The poet blushed to the floor with gratitude, and • the young journalist grandly wrote out an

order and banded it to the poet. “ Take that to the court-house,” he said, “ and the auditor’s clerk will give you the money.” The poet bowed and withdrew, and with great merriment the journalists burned his poems and resumed his work. That wasn’t the funny part of it, however. The next day the simple-minded poet presented his order to the clerk designated, and it was so that the clerk owed the paper 18 dollars for subscription and advertising, and he promptly cashed the order and turned it in when the bill was presented, and the manager just charged it to the salary account of the smart young journalist who signed the order, and the happiest man and the maddest man in America are living in Burlington. One of them is a happy, green, unsophiscated young machine poet, and the other a wide-a-wake, up-to-snuff, know-the-world, get-up-and-dust young journalist, who is already a rival of Horace Greeley in the verbal department of journalism.—“ Burlington Hawkeye.”