The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-12-19
AN EPIDEMIC IN RAYMINa.

tOliver Wendell Holmes, In Atlantic.l
 The Society goes on famously. We have had a paper presented and read lately which has greatly amused some of us and provoked few of the weaker sort. The writer is that crabbed old prof :ssor of belle.-letters at that mems college over there. He is dreadfully hard on the poor "poets," as they call themselves. It seems that 8 great many young persons, and more especially great m any young girls, Of whom, the institute has furnished a considerable proportion, have taken to sending him tneir rhymed productions to be criticised-expectingt to be praised, DO doubt, every one of them. l must give you one of the spiciest extracts from his paper in his own words:
 It takes half my time to read the "poems" sent mo by young people of both sexes. They would be more shy of doing 1t if they knew that recognize a tendency to rhyming as common form of mental weakness, and the publication of thin volume of verse as prima face evidence of mediocrity, if not infcriority or course there arc exceptions to this rule ofjudgment, but maintain that the pre- sumption Is always against the rhymester as compared with the less pretentious per sons about him or her, busy with some useful calling-too busy to be tagging rhymed commonplaces together. Just now there seems to be an epidemic of rhvming as bad as the dancing mania or sweating sickness. After reading a Ger. tain amount of manuscript verse one is disposed to anathem atize the inventor oi homophonous syllabi6cation. This phrase made great laugh when it was lead This, that Is. rhymlng, must have been found out very early
 Where are you Adaml
 Here am 1, madam,
 but 1t can never have been habitually practised until after the fall. The lntru sion of tintinua bulating terminations into the conversational intercourse of men and angels would have spoiled Paradise it. self Milton would not have them even in Paradise Lost," you remember. For my own part, l wish certain rhymes could be declared contraband of written or printed language. Nothing should be allowed to be hurled at the world or whirled with it, or turled upon it or curled over it; all eyes should be kept away from the skies, in spite of os homini sub lime dedit; youth should bs coup led with all the virtues except truth; earth should never be reminded of her birth {: death should never be allowed to stop a mortaIs breath, nor the bell to sound his knell, nor flowers from blossoming bow CTS to wave over his grave or show ther bloom upon his tomb. We have rhym- ing dictionaries-let us have one from which all rhymes arc vigorously excluded The sight of poor creature grubbing for rhymes to 6ll up his sonnet, or to cram one of those voracious Thy me-swal. lowing rigmaroles which some of our drudging poetical operatives have been exhausting themselves of late to satiate with jingles, makes my head ache and my stomach rebel. Work, work of some kind, is the business of men and women not the making O. jiugles No, no, no 1 l want 10 sec the young p>ople h our schools and academies and colleges, aud the graduates of these institutions, lifed up out of the little dismal swamp of self contemplation and self.inaulging and self-commiserating emotionallsm which is surfeiting the land with those literary sandwiches-thin slices of tinkling senti- mentality between two covers looking like hard baked gilt gingerbread. But what faces these young folks make up at my good advicel They get tipsy on their rhymes. Nothing intoxicates one like him -or her-own verses, and they hold on to their metre-ballade- monger- ing as the fellows that inhale nitrous oxide hold on to the gas.bag."