The Arkansaw traveler., 1885-02-07
HIS LITERARY EVOLUTION.
[Texas SiftinRs.l

"Yss," said the old edit t naeditafive;y, taking up the scissors and blue pencil as he spoke " know the value sf these when l didn't. A time when regarded them only as final resource of an ex- hausted brain, and tho other as the blue devil that ruined many brillian. career. For those were the days when the fire of genius sparkled from this brain like the foaming grapejuice from the crystal
 I suggested that his metaphor was a trife mixed, but he needed me not.
 "Aye, sir p he went on:
 Q, had a grand Byronian soul
 Twenty golden years sgol'
 But l was going to tell you something. In '54 was editor of the Staten Island F1gh0rS, a weekly, and got off story one night that thought would paralyze the town. We'll, it did but not in the way expected. It brought out such a blizzard of ridicule from every paper we exchanged with, and few others, too, that the proprietors intimated that my resignation would not be refused. l resignated. have the darned thing here, and I'll just read it for you" He pulled yellow old clipping from his desk-about three columns-and be- gan:
 "It was the balmy spring time, when the many-tinted, sweet-voiced birds were making music in each freshly.budding hedgerow, and the genial heart of nature throbbed with joy. In richly furnished chamber, on r0seate-tinted couch of down, lay one whose sands of life, al- though few summers suns had poured their rays upon their golden stream, were swiftly ebbing to close. One in whose ruby cup the wine of life, but lately poured from the Eternal press, vet day by day was sinking to the dregs. A being fair as dawn sweet as the even. ing breeze OCT mountain side. Bright as the star that glitters in the dark empy- rean pure as the azure vault in which it shines.
 "Alas fair Geraldine was hastening to an early tomb, fading away like memories in aged minds.
 "Her sweet voice broke the silence with its silvery tones-rose the vox hu- mana of some mighty organ through the grand cathedral aisles of old, and thus it spake:
 q" Mother, isn't it time for my physic ?
 "' My child, replied the broken voice of the aged parent"
 "Say," interrupted, "is there much of this s'
 "Well, l guess that's about enough. The rest of it is worse. The girl dies to soft music in about two columns more. l had an order for story about feur ye ITS ago, and as was up te my neck in work, and didn't care to go prancing around for a new idea, too out this old thing again and overhauled her. put new engines into her, coppered her bottom, caulked up her seams, and set her afoat. You wouldn't have known her. She had the same sort of bowsprit, because that was part of the new plot but her waist and stern were built on new lines. This is how I wrote it:
 Geraldine Maltravers died in the spring.
 "That was all about it. She died, and it was in the spring. There was sim plcity, a medias-res-ishness about 1t that caught on. Yes, young man, you may think yourself full of poetry and genius and lofty thought and noble sentiment, and sling around pages of slush like that first unlucky go of mine but if you want to rake in the shekels and nail your pub- lie down, stick to good, solid, cold, cast iron facts. Facts, sir, are the poetry of the nineteenth century. There isn't as much romance in me now as would put new sleeve-bands on this old shirt, but give people their facts, and very little more than their facts, and they imagine the rest and like it better"