Etc. [pp. 104-109]

188).] A
Question on question follows thick and fast;
"Do you remzember? " forms the text for all,
While incidents, forgotten, of the past,
Each to the other's memory we recall.
"Do you remember how I washed that shirt,
At Hawkins Bar in eighteen forty-nine?
And having cleansed it of the mud and dirt,
The owner came and said it wasn't mine?
"Do you reinember crossing to discover
New claims upon the river's further side,
How at your wink'Steve' turned the pirogue over,
And laughed to see me stem the icy tide?
"Do you remember how we lost the trowels,
In that same accident to the canoe,
How'Robert' wondered'that we had the bowels
To come to camp, and come without them too'?
"Do you remember, you mendacious cuss,
That mnule we jayhawked down on Woods's
creek?
And how, when that mule's owner made a fuss,
You lied, and'Griff' and I endorsed your
cheek?
"Alas, poor' Griff,' we'll meet no more on earth;
He's staked a claim in Campo Santo's ground;
His voice no more, in sadness or in mirth,
Will greet us with the old familiar sound
' Bruce,' too, has journeyed to the land of souls,
And'Tribbie's' earthly pilgrimage is o'er;
He who all human destinies controls
Has called them from us to the unknown shore.
"And you and I who have been boys together,
Though now grown old, will try and cherish
still
Those friendly ties, which through all winds and
weather,
Have yet survived; let's trust they ever will.
"Heigho, old boy, it's time for us to part,
The minute hands mark'leven forty-five.
Let's have another glass before we start,
And then together leave this human hive.
"You for your home by Mississippi's stream,
And I for mine beneath the northern pine.
Where this amid past memories will gleam,
And cast a halo around Friendship's shrine."
The driver calls, "You've got five minutes still
To reach the station, and you'll need'em all."
I hail him as he goes with "So long Will,"
And he responsive answers, "So long Cal."
H. C. G.
Literary Training.
EDITOR OVERLAND: The present is emphatically
an age of technical schools. They have been established for almost every art, science, and trade in the
whole range of human effort. It is the purpose of
this letter to call attention to the fact that in one de
'c.
107
partment of industry the school has not kept pace
with the times. For authorship, profession or trade,
there is offered no special training. The classical
and literary courses in schools and colleges furnish
excellent general preparation for the literary life, but
it is a training more practical and technical to which
reference is now made. Ever since the days when
authors starved in Grub Street garrets (what a fine
sarcasm in the name!), the young writer has floundered along as best he could, till he has become discouraged, or has chanced to make a hit.
Let us suppose a young man that has made up his
mind to become an author. His most obvious course
is to begin by writing for some magazine. He submits his article, prose or verse, to the editor.'The
chances are a hundred to one that his manuscript
comes back to him with a courteous form expressing
regret that it is "not available." Here is a perplexity. Why? Had the editor no time to read the
manuscript carefully, or was there an overplus of accepted matter, so that the article was declined on
general principles? Or, supposing, as more likely,
that the fault is in the production itself, what is it?
Is the subject matter unsuitable, so that what he has
said was not worth saying, or has he not said it well?
Then there are the more practical questions: Is it
waste of time for him to try again? or, if not, how
shall the second attempt differ from the first?
It may be said that the young writer is his own
best judge; for if he has the divine afflatus, it will so
impel him to write that no adverse circumstances
will deter him. This is very beautiful in theory, but
unfortunately it is belied time and again in experience. Indeed, there are so many things to warp an
author's judgment-and especially in the case of a
young author-of his own work, that the opinion of
almost any other person of intelligence is of more
value. Instances in support of this proposition will
occur to every reader: Virgil, desiring with his latest
breath that the " /Eneid" be destroyed, because it
had not received his final polish; Walter Scott, as he
tells us in the charmingly confidential introduction to
"The Lay of the Last Minstrel," burning the first
part of that poem, discouraged by the silence of two
friends to whom he had read it; Milton, believing
that his fame would rest on "Paradise Regained,"
rather than on its great predecessor; John Hay,
piqued becanse the public chooses to recognize him
as the author of "Little Breeches," the trifle of an
idle hour, and forgets his more serious work: on the
other hand, Salmni Morse, proclaiming that the "Passion Play " is second only to " Paradise Lost;" and
the inspired being of every neighborhood, who insists
on writing and publishing his worthless poems, despite the neglect of an unappreciative world.
Since, then, his own judgment stands him in little
stead as to the course to be pursued in order to satisfy his craving for literary fame and for things more
substantial, to whom shall he go for advice? Of
course, his immediate friends and relatives are ready