THE PENALTIES OF FAME.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 4824, 29 November 1902, Page 7 (Supplement)

THE PENALTIES OF FAME.

“The Fable of the Author who was Sorry for What Ho did to Willie," shows the penalties of fame. Willie, it should be explained, was the subject of a fugitive poem which to tho surprise of its author brought hiiu sudden fame and fortune when he had failed to secure either by what h© thought to be his best work. This fable might have been suggested ' by- the experience of more than one well-known writer:

But tfhen the verses came out in the monthly he began to get letters from ail parts of the United, states telling him how muon suffering and opening of old wounds had been caused by his little poffm. about Willie, and how proud he ought to bo. Many who wrote expressed sympathy for him, and begged him to bear up. Those letters dazed the author. He never had owned any boy named Willie. He did not so much as know a boy named Willie. He lived in an office budding with a lot of stenographers and bill clerks. If he had been tho father

of a boy named Willie, and Willie had ever come to tell him “goed-night" when he was busy at something else, probably ho would have jumped at Willie and snapped, a piece out of his‘arm. Tho next thing ho knew, some composer in Philadelphia had set the verses to music, and they were sung on the stage with coloured lantern slide x>ictures of little Willie telling papa “good night" in a blue .fiat with laco curtains on the windows and a souvenir cabinet of Chauncey Oloott on the whatnot. The song was sold at music stores, and the author was invited out to private houses to hear/it sung, but ho was light on. his feet and kept away. Several newspapers sent for his picture, and bo was asked to write a Sunday article, telling how and why he did it. He was asked to contribute verses of the same general character to various periodicals. Sometimes he would get away by himself, and read tho thing over again, and shako his head, and remark, “Well, if they are right, then I must be wrong, but to me it is punk." He had his likeness printed in advertisements which told the public to read what the author of “Willie's Good Night" had to say about their lithia water. Some one named a light, free smoking sc. cigar after him and ho began to see weird paintings on the dond walls, and was ashamed to walk along those streets. It came out that ono of the Frohmans wanted to dramatise the masterpiece, and it was rumoured that Stuart Robson, Modjeska, Thomas Q. Soabrooke, Maude Adams, Dave Warfield, and Walter Whiteside had been requested to play the part of Willie. Every morning tho author would get up and say to himself that it could not go on much longer. He felt sure that tho public would com© to its senses some day, and get after him with a rope, but it didn't. His fame continued to spread and increase. All those persons who had not read it claimed that they had, so as to be line, and he had the same old floral tributes handed to him day after day. In the end tho author determined to blot out the memory of Willie by a great and serious work, but when the public found that this masterpiece did not contain any mention of dark skies or headstones they said that the author of “Willie's Good Night" was losing his grip, and seemed to havo written himself out. The moral is “Refrain from Getting Gay with tho Emotions."