den
Square, and the _Sun_ always writes the check.

Of course it is easy to understand why this first city venture of the
budding author is always successful. He is primed by necessity to a
superlative effort; mid the iron and stone and marble of the roaring
city he has found this spot of singing birds and green grass and trees;
every tender sentiment in his nature is baffling with the sweet pain of
homesickness; his genius is aroused as it never may be again; the birds
chirp, the tree branches sway, the noise of wheels is forgotten; he
writes with his soul in his pen--and he sells it to the _Sun_ for $15.

I had read of this custom during many years before I came to New York.
When my friends were using their strongest arguments to dissuade me
from coming, I only smiled serenely. They did not know of that sparrow
graft I had up my sleeve.

When I arrived in New York, and the car took me straight from the ferry
up Twenty-third Street to Madison Square, I could hear that $15 check
rustling in my inside pocket.

I obtained lodging at an unhyphenated hostelry, and the next morning I
was on a bench in Madison Square almost by the time the sparrows were
awake. Their melodious chirping, the benignant spring foliage of the
noble trees and the clean, fragrant grass reminded me so potently of
the old farm I had left that tears almost came into my eyes.

Then, all in a moment, I felt my inspiration. The brave, piercing
notes of those cheerful small birds formed a keynote to a wonderful,
light, fanciful song of hope and joy and altruism. Like myself, they
were creatures with hearts pitched to the tune of woods and fields; as
I was, so were they captives by circumstance in the discordant, dull
city--yet with how much grace and glee they bore the restraint!

And then the early morning people began to pass through the square to
their work--sullen people, with sidelong glances and glum faces,
hurrying, hurrying, hurrying. And I got my theme cut out clear from
the bird notes, and wrought it into a lesson, and a poem, and a
carnival dance, and a lullaby; and then translated it all into prose
and began to write.

For two hours my pencil traveled over my pad with scarcely a rest. Then
I went to the little room I had rented for two days, and there I cut it
to half, and then mailed it, white-hot, to the _Sun_.

The next morning I was up by daylight and spent two cents of my capital
for a paper. If the word "sparrow" was in it