The Arkansaw traveler., 1884-03-01
KINDLY ADVICE.

To the young men of country who are endeavoring to write verse we would like to say word: The time you spend in running over your fingers trying to catch eccentric meter is wasted. The public doesn't care whether or not you under stand measure. The average man under whose eyes your work will be likely to fall does not care whether you spent two hours or ten days on a line. If you have anything to say he would like to know what it is, but he has no sympathy with your forced jingle. Your sentiments may be pure and breathe breath from the orchard your song may silence the bird that carols at morning while sitting in the old locust tree, but the public is not like ly to suspend business and institute an investigation. If you have anything to say, and you no doubt have, say it in s,raigh, prose. Measured sentiment was the resort of the ancients-men who had leisure and imagination, to say nothing of originality, fresh from the muses. You may have the leisure, but the other qualities are doubtless lack ing. Men who have spent life time in literature have about come 10 the conclusion that the worlds poetry has been written. The poetic age has crumbled. This is the day of prose. You may improve on the prose of the men who lived years ago, but you are not likely to improve on their poetry. You may write rhyme that will find welcome with editors, but your thoughts are not apt to be so we'll expressed as fyou had delivered them in straight, unconhned prose. Five lines of poetry may convey to.a man the intelligence that he is liar, but two lines of prose will accomplish the end in manner much more satisfactory. Now there is young Spodmore. The other day he sent us poem in which it doubt less took him several days to say that the old spring house on his father farm was still there. This is all very pretty, for to know that an old structure still holds its own casts a mellow glow over us all, bu, ! well arranged paragraph could have imparted the needed intelligence, and during the time thus saved, young Spodmore could have half soled his sisters shoes or made an OK yoke. He could have broken up an acre or so of "new ground" or shelled turn of corn We do not wish to dis courage any one, bu, we would be wlhng to bet that this young man might work for three whole weeks and then not pro- duce an improvement on " Paradise Lost
 and even this grand work falls short of the excellence attained by some of the anoients. When we spoke of this fact to young Spodmore, he swelled up and said
 You advise me to write prose, but yet might not be able to equal some of the moderns. Must man smother his ris- ng desires simply because he feels that some one else has mounted to a height which he cannot attain? l don't think that could write novel like the great works of George Eliot, yet would you advise me to write prose fiction in the face of such facts S' We must confess that the young man stunned us little there, and we might have gone away without giving him an answer, but his persistency forced reply. We told him that if he were not satisfied with our advice, not 10 write anything. ard we are in hopes that he will abide by our disinteres,ed counsel. So far as we are concerned, he needn't write any prose, and, in fact, we would ad- wise him to cultivate a more intimate ac- quaintance with the plow. This is not written 10 discourage young men who as- pire to literature. Bless you, no. Go ahead and write, if you have nothing else to do, but remember that prose is the most direct means of communication.
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