Chapter 8 - Page 2

it's entirely fresh. It's good enough to
print, and I don't think the butter is."

"What did your friend do next?" asked Mr. Whitechoker.

"He was employed by a funeral director in Philadelphia to write obituary
verses for memorial cards."

"And was he successful?"

"For a time; but he lost his position because of an error made by a
careless compositor in a marble-yard. He had written,

"'Here lies the hero of a hundred fights--
Approximated he a perfect man;
He fought for country and his country's rights,
And in the hottest battles led the van.'"

"Fine in sentiment and in execution!" observed Mr. Whitechoker.

"Truly so," returned the Idiot. "But when the compositor in the
marble-yard got it engraved on the monument, my friend was away, and
when the army post that was to pay the bill received the monument, the
quatrain read,

"'Here lies the hero of a hundred flights--
Approximated he a perfect one;
He fought his country and his country's rights,
And in the hottest battles led the run.'"

"Awful!" ejaculated the Minister.

"Dreadful!" said the landlady, forgetting to be sarcastic.

"What happened?" asked the School-master.

"He was bounced, of course, without a cent of pay, and the company
failed the next week, so he couldn't make anything by suing for what
they owed him."

"Mighty hard luck," said the Bibliomaniac.

"Very; but there was one bright side to the case," observed the Idiot.
"He managed to sell both versions of the quatrain afterwards for five
dollars. He sold the original one to a religious weekly for a dollar,
and got four dollars for the other one from a comic paper. Then he wrote
an anecdote about the whole thing for a Sunday newspaper, and got three
dollars more out of it."

"And what is your friend doing now?" asked the Doctor.

"Oh, he's making a mint of money now, but no name."

"In literature?"

"Yes. He writes advertisements on salary," returned the Idiot. "He is
writing now a recommendation of tooth-powder in Indian dialect."

"Why didn't he try writing an epic?" said the Bibliomaniac.

[Illustration: "'HE GAVE UP JOKES'"]

"Because," replied the Idiot, "the one aim of his life has been to be
original, and he couldn't reconcile that with epic poetry."

At which remark the landlady stooped over, and recovering the Idiot's
bill from under the table, called the maid, and ostentatiously requested
her to hand it to the Idiot. He,