The Emporia weekly news. [volume] (Emporia, Kan.) 1881-1889, 1885-12-10
An Epidemic Of rsbrm,ne.

The Society goes on famously. We
have had paper presented and read
lately which has greatly amused some of
rs and provoked some of the weaker
sort. The writer is that grabbed old Pro
fessor of Belles-Letters at that mems col
lege over there. He Is dreadfully hard
on the poor "poets," as they call them
selves 1t seems that great many
young persons, and more especially q
great many young girls, Of whom the
Institute has furnished a considerable
proportion, have taken to sending him
their rhymed productions to be criticised,
expecting 70 be praised, no doubt,
every one of them. must give you one
of the spiciest extracts from his paper in
his own words:
at takes half my time TO read the
poems sent me by young people of both
sexes. They would be more shy of do
ing it If they knew that recognize a
OF mental weakness, and the publication
of thin volume of verse as pTin1d facie
evidence of ambitious mediorcity, if not
inferioritY. OF course there are except
ions to this rule of judgment, but main
tain that the presumption is always
against the rhymester as compared with
the less pretent1ous persons about him or
her, busy with some useful calling-too
busy to be tagging rhymed common
places together. Just now there seems
to be an epidemic of rhyming as bad as
the dancing mania, or the sweating sick
ness. After reading certain amount of
manuscript verse one is disposed to an
athematize the inventor of homophonous
rehabilitation. This phrase made a
great laugh when it was read This,
that is rhyming, must have been found
out carly
Where are you, Adamr
Here am 1, Madam
but it can never have been habitually
praciced until after the Fall. The in
trusion of Misunderstanding examinations
into the conversational Intercourse of
men and angels would have spoiled Par
adise itself. Milton would not have them
even in Paradise Lost, you remember.
For my own part, 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 furled upon it or curl
ed over it; all eyes should Be kept away
from the skies, in spite of os honsini sub
Tune dedtt; youth should be coupled
with all the virtues except truth; earth
should never be reminded of her birth;
death should never be allowed to stop a
mortafs breath, nor the bell to sound
his knen, nor flowers from blossoming
bowers to wave over his grave or show
their bloom upon his tomb. We have
rhyning dictionaries-let US have one
from which all rhymes are vigorously
excluded. The sight of poor creature
grubbing for rhymes to ill up his sonnet,
or to cram one of those voracious,
rhyme-swallowing 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 of iinglesI No,
-no,-noi want to see the young
people in our schools and academies and
colleges, and the graduates of these in
stitutons, lifted up out of the little Dis
NAL Swamp of self-contemplating and
selfindulging and self-commiserating
emotiona1ism which is surfeiting the land
with those literary sandwiches-th
slices of linking sentimentality between
two covers looking like hard-baked grit
gingerbread But what faces these
young folks make up at my good adyiceI
They get tpsy on their rhymes Nothing
intoxicates one like his-or her-own
verses, and they hold on to their metre
baliad-mongering as the-fellowH that in
hale nitrous oxide hold on to the gas
bag. n-O lSUer Wendell Holmes ia Decens-
Der Atlantic.