The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers, Series 1. R. H. Newell
her presence again.
I was only twenty years old at that time, and the novelty of my aunt's conduct had rather an infatuating effect upon me. With that perversity often observable in youngsters before they have seen much of the world, I became deeply interested in my literary relative as soon as my father commenced to speak contemptuously of her pursuits, and it took very little time to invest me with a longing and determination to be a writer.
Thenceforth I wore negligent linen; frequently rested my head upon the forefinger of my right hand, with a lofty and abstracted air; assumed an expression of settled and mysterious gloom when at church, and suffered my hair to grow long and uncombed.
Speaking of the masculine literary habit of wearing the hair in this way, my boy, I find myself impressed with a profound metaphysical idea. You have probably noticed that writers following this fashion will frequently scratch their heads when inspiration plays the laggard. It is also true that wearers of long and uncombed hair who are not writers, will scratch their heads in the same way, occasionally. The action being the same in both cases, can it be that physiological inspection would develope an affinity between the natural causes thereof?
I have often thought of this, my boy—I've often thought of this.
My bearing during this period of infatuation could hardly fail to attract considerable attention in our village, and there were two opinions about me. One was that I had been jilted; the other, that I was about to become a vagabond and an actor. My father inclined to the former, and left me, as he thought, to get over my disappointment in the natural way.
My peripatetic spell had lasted about six weeks, my boy, when I formed the acquaintance of the editor of the Lily of the Valley, who permitted me to mope in his office now and then, and soothed my literary inflammation by permitting me to write "puffs" for the village milliner.
Oh! the fierce and tremendous ecstasy of that moment when I first saw my own words in print, with not more than six typographical errors in each line:—"Quebn Victoria, it is said, is comind to this coontry for the xpress purpose of obtoining one of these beautiful spring bunnets at Madame Smith's."
I noticed as I went home on the day of publication, that all whom I passed paused to look after me. I was already famous. The discovery, on reaching our house, that one of my temples was somewhat fingered with printers' ink, did not shake me in this belief, my boy; I was too far gone for that.
The editor of the Lily treated me considerately, and even asked me at times to accompany him to the place where he daily sipped inspiration, gaining thereby a fresh flow of ideas and the qualified immortality of certain additional chalk-marks on the back of a door. I refer to a spirituous establishment.
Finding that the editorial treasury did not redeem its verbal promissory notes, my boy, the proprietor of this establishment suddenly put forth a new sign, conspicuously reading:—
The editor went to him, and says he:
"What do you mean by this impertinence, Timothy?"
The liquor chap stuck his hands into his pockets, my boy, and says he:
"If I furnish inspiration for nothing, I may as well have some literary credit. The village swallows what you furnish," says the chap, reasoningly, "and you swallow what I furnish, and so I'm the head editor after all."
But he took down the sign, my boy, when the editor dissolved the partnership by paying his score.
What are called Spirited Editorials in the New York papers, my boy, very often involve two swallows as well as a spread-eagle.
While looking over some old magazines in the Lily office one day, I found in an ancient British periodical a raking article upon American literature, wherein the critic affirmed that all our writers were but weak imitators of English authors, and that such a thing even as a Distinctively American Poem sui generis, had not yet been produced.
This radical sneer at the United States of America fired my Yankee blood, my boy, and I vowed within myself to write a poem, not only distinctively American, but of such a character that only America could have produced it. In the solitude of my room, that night, I wooed the aboriginal muse, and two days thereafter the Lily of the Valley contained my distinctive American poem of
THE AMERICAN TRAVELER.
To Lake Aghmoogenegamook,
All in the State of Maine,
A man from Wittequergaugaum came
One evening in the rain.
"I am a traveler," said he,
"Just started on a tour,
And go to Nomjamskillicook
To-morrow morn at four."
He took a tavern bed that night,
And with the morrow's sun,
By way of Sekledobskus went,
With carpet-bag and gun.
A week passed on; and next we find
Our native tourist come
To that sequestered village called
Genasagarnagum.
From thence he went to Absequoit,
And there—quite tired of Maine—
He sought the mountains of Vermont,
Upon a railroad train.
Dog Hollow, in the Green Mount State,
Was his first stopping-place,
And then Skunk's Misery displayed
Its sweetness and its grace.
By easy stages then he went
To visit Devil's Den;
And Scrabble Hollow, by the way,
Did come within his ken.
Then, via Nine Holes and Goose Green,
He traveled through the State,
And to Virginia, finally,
Was guided by his fate.
Within the Old Dominion's bounds,
He wandered up and down,
To-day, at Buzzard Roost ensconced,
To-morrow, at Hell Town.
At Pole Cat, too, he spent a week,
Till friends from Bull Ring came,
And made him spend a day with them
In hunting forest game.
Then, with his carpet-bag in hand,
To Dog Town next he went;
Though stopping at Free Negro Town,
Where half a day he spent.
From thence, into Negationburg
His route of travel lay,
Which having gained, he left the State
And took a southward way.
North Carolina's friendly soil
He trod at fall of night,
And, on a bed of softest down,
He slept at Hell's Delight.
Morn found him on the road again,
To Lousy Level bound;
At Bull's Tail, and Lick Lizzard, too,
Good provender