that Watts had been rhyming
some time when he got a fatherly flogging for this exercise of his
genius, and he sobbed out, between the blows,

"Dear father, do some pity take,
And I will no more verses make."

That couplet was not his first one, by a good deal. The habit, it
would seem, had taken a pretty strong hold of him, when the whipping
drew that out of him.

It seems to me that the childhood and early youth of a genius are more
interesting than any riper periods of his life; or rather, that they
become so, when time and circumstances have developed what there was
in the man, and when from the stand-point of his fame in manhood, we
look back upon his early history. What small beginnings there have
been to all the efforts of those who have made themselves masters of
the particular art to which they have directed their attention.

I wonder what kind of a thing Washington Irving's first composition
was. There must have been a first one; and, without doubt, it was a
clumsy affair enough. If I were going to write his history, I would
find those who knew him when he was a mere child, and I would pump
from them as many anecdotes about his little scribblings as I possibly
could, and I would print them, lots of them. I hardly think I could do
the reader of his biography a better service.

I wonder what his first experience was with the editors. These
editors, by the way, are often very troublesome to the young sprig of
genius. Placed, as they are, at the door of the temple of fame, they
often seem to the unfledged author the most disobliging, iron-hearted
men in the world. He could walk right into the temple, and make
himself perfectly at home there, if they would only open the door. So
he fancies; and he wonders why the barbarians don't see the genius
sticking out, when he comes along with his nicely-written verses, and
why they don't just give him, at once, a ticket of admission to the
honors of the world. "These editors are slow to perceive merit," he
says to himself.

Your old friend Uncle Frank once set himself up for a genius. Don't
laugh--pray, don't laugh. I was young then, and as green as a juvenile
gosling. Age has branded into me a great many truths, which, somehow
or other, were very slow in finding their way to my young mind. The
notion that I am a genius does not haunt me now, and a great many
years have passed since such a vision flitted across my imagination.
But I will tell you how I was co