ver, has not been
encouraging.

----X. Y., aet. 18, a cheaply-got-up youth, with narrow jaws, and
broad, bony, cold, red hands, having been laughed at by the girls in
his village, and "got the mitten" (pronounced mittin) two or three
times, falls to souling and controlling, and youthing and training, in
the newspapers. Sends me some strings of verses, candidates for the
Orthopedic Infirmary, all of them, in which I learn for the millionth
time one of the following facts: either that something about a chime is
sublime, or that something about time is sublime, or that something
about a chime is concerned with time, or that something about a rhyme
is sublime or concerned with time or with a chime. Wishes my opinion of
the same, with advice as to his future course.

What shall I do about it? Tell him the whole truth, and send him a
ticket of admission to the Institution for Idiots and Feeble-minded
Youth? One doesn't like to be cruel,--and yet one hates to lie.
Therefore one softens down the ugly central fact of donkeyism,
--recommends study of good models,--that writing verse should
be an incidental occupation only, not interfering with the hoe, the
needle, the lapstone, or the ledger,--and, above all, that there should
be no hurry in printing what is written. Not the least use in all this.
The poetaster who has tasted type is done for. He is like the man who
has once been a candidate for the Presidency. He feeds on the madder of
his delusion all his days, and his very bones grow red with the glow of
his foolish fancy. One of these young brains is like a bunch of India
crackers; once touch fire to it and it is best to keep hands off until
it has done popping,--if it ever stops. I have two letters on file; one
is a pattern of adulation, the other of impertinence. My reply to the
first, containing the best advice I could give, conveyed in courteous
language, had brought out the second. There was some sport in this, but
Dulness is not commonly a game fish, and only sulks after he is struck.
You may set it down as a truth which admits of few exceptions, that
those who ask your _opinion_ really want your _praise_, and will be
contented with nothing less.

There is another kind of application to which editors, or those
supposed to have access to them, are liable, and which often proves
trying and painful. One is appealed to in behalf of some person in
needy circumstances who wishes to make a living by the pen. A
manuscript a