THE TROUBLES OF A POET.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 623, 21 February 1879, Page 2

THE TROUBLES OF A POET.

While Colonel Bangs was Bitting m his office one day, a man, whose brow waa clothed m thunder, entered. Fiercely seizing a chair, he slammed his hat on the table, hurled his umbrella on the floor, and sat down. " Are you the editor ?" he asked. " Yes." " Can you read writing ?" "Of course." " Read that, then," he said, thrusting at the colonel an envelope with an inscription on it. " B ," said the colonel, trying to spell it. " That's not a B ; its an S." said the man. " S ; oh, yes ; I see ! Well, the words look like • Salt for Dinner,' ' Souls of Sinners,'" said the colonel. ''No, sir," replied the man, " nothing of the kind ! That's my name, Samuel H. Brunner. I knew you could'nt read. I called to see you about the poem of mine you printed the other day, on the " Surcease of Sorrow.'" "I don't remember it," said the colonel. " Of course you don't because it went into the paper under the title of " Smearcase To-morrow.'" "A stupid blunder of the compositor, I suppose." " Yes, sir ; that't what I want to see you about. The way m which that poem was mutilated was simply scandalous. I haven't slept a night since. It exposed me to derison. People think me an ass. Let me show you.". " Go-ahead," said the colonel. " The first line I wrote it read m this way — * Lying by a weeping willow, underneath a gentle slope'" — " That is beautiful, poetic, affecting. Now; how did your vile sheet present it to the public 1 There it is. Look at it I Made it read it this way : ' Lying to a weeping widow, to induce her to elope. 1 Weeping widow I Mind you I A widow ! O, thunder and lightning ! This is too much 1 It's enough to set a man crazy 1" " I'm sorry," said the colonel, « but—" ' 1 ' But look a-here at the fourth Terse, " said the poet. " That's worse yet. What I said was — ' Cast the pearls upon the swine, and lose them m the dirt.' I wrote that out clearly and distinctly, m a plain round hand. Now, what does your compositor do ? Does he catch the Bense of that beautiful sentiment ? Does it sink into his soul ! No sir ! He sets it up m this fashion. Listen. ' Cart my pills before the sunrise, and lose them if they hurt.' Now isn't that a cold-blooded outrage on a mana feelings. I'll leav« it to you if.it isn't hard ?" " It's hard, that's a fact said the colonel. "And then take the fifth verse. In the original manuscript it said, as plain as daylight : • Take away the jingling money, it's only glittering dross.' A man with only one ej c could have read the words correctly. But your pirate upstairs there — do you know what he did 1 He made it read : ' Take away the jeering monkey on a sorely glaudering hoss.' By Geoage, I feel like braining him with a fire-shovel ! I was never so cut up m my life." " It's natural too," said the colonel. " There, for instance, was the sixth verse. I wrote : 'I am weary of the tossing of the ocean, a3 it heaves.' It's a lovely line, but imagine my horror, and the anguish of my family, when I opened your paper and saw the lines transformed into : •I am wearing out my trousers till they're open at the knees.' That's a little too much ! That seems me like carrying the thing an inch too far. I think I have a constitutional right to murder the compositor ; don't you ? "I think you have." " Let me read you one more verse I wrote : ' I swell the flying echoes as they roar among the hills, And I feel my soul awaken to the ecstasy that thrills.' Now, what do you s'pose your miserable outcast turned that into? Why into this : ' I smell the frying shoes, as they coast along the bulls, And I feel my soul awaken to the etcetery that whirls.' Gibberish, sir ! Awful gibberish ! I must slay that man. Where is he V "He is out just now," said the Colonel. «« Come m to-morrow." " I will," said the poet, " and I will come armed." Then he put on his hat, shouldered his umbrella, and drifted downstairs.

Stage perforjklnces have Ifcfcried was intended. Joe Rainbolt, one of the sharpshooters of the variety theatres, shot off one of his wife's fingers hi Cincinnati, instead of hitting the potato that she was holding for a nwrk. In j# pathetic scene m "A woman of thit People," m Baldwin's Theatre, San' Francisco, the wooden head of the baby'" that the agonised mother *-as holding fell off and rolled noisily to the footlights. The. actress coolly picked it up and put it on the body again.