The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1886-08-28
A WOuld.Be Literary Light.
Boston Globe.

The following correspondence is now
given to the press for the first time with
the consent of the parties:
WILLIAM NYE, Esq.-Dear Sir II
am young man, twenty years of age,
with fair education and strong desire
to succeed. / have done some writing
for the press, having written up very
nice article on progressive euchre, which
was great success, and published in
our home paper. But it was not copied
so much in other papers as l would liked
to have saw it, and l take my pen in
hand at this time to write and ask you
what there is in the Article enclosed that
prevents its being copied abroad all over
our broad land. l write just as l hope
you would feel perfectly free to write
me at any time. think that writers
ought TO aid each other. Yours, with
kind regards, ADELBERT L. TEwEY.
'P. 0 box 2o2.'
ovet hiaHNe avs engstq!EX{ 556ado doa and progressive
euchre which you send me, Adelbert,
and | cannot see why it should not be
ravenously seized and copied by the
press of the broad land referred to in
your letter. If you have time, perhaps
it would be we'll enough to 60 to the
leading journalists of our country and
ask them what they mean by it. You
might write till your vertebre fell out of
your clothes on the floor, and it would
not do half SO much good as personal
conference with the editors of America.
| First prepare your article, then 60 per
sonally to the editors of the country and
call them one by one out into the hall
in a current of cold air and explain the
article to them. In that way you will
form pleasant acquaintances and get
solid with our leading journalists.
Seriously, Adelbert, l would suggest
that you make bold dash for success
by writing things that other people are
not writing, thinking and saying things
that other people are not saying. You
will say that this advice is easier to give
than to take, and agree with you. But
the tendency of the age is to wear the
same style of collar and coat and hat
that every other man wears and to talk
and write like other men; and, to be
frank with you, Adelbert, 1 think it is
an internal shame. If you will look
carefully about you you will see that the
preacher who is talking mostly 20 dusty
pew cushions is also the preacher who
is thinking the thoughts of other men.
He is Impending his barrel of sermons
annuity, and they were made in the first
place from the sermons of man who
also 'up-ended' his barrel annually. Go
where the preacher is talking to full
houses and you will discover that his
sermons are not written in library by
a man with interchangeable ideas, an
automatic cog-wheel thinker, but they
are prepared by a man who earnestly
and honestly studies the great aching
heart of humanity and, full of sincerity,
originality and old fashioned Christian
itv. aDReals. to yQHr better impulses
fellow traveller and seasick tourist across
life's tempestuous tide, l ask you, Adel,
bert, who is writing the poetry that will
live? Is it the man who is saving out
and sand-papering stanzas of the same
general dimensions as some other poets,
in which he bewails the fact that he
loved tall, we'll behaved, accomplish
ed girl, sixteen hands high who did not
requite his love? All, no. He is not
the poet whose terra Gotta statue will
stand in the cemetery, wearing laurel
wreath and lumpy brow. Show me
the poet who is intimate with nature and
studies the little joys and sorrows of the
poor, who smells the clover and writes
about live, healthy people with ideas
and appetites. He is my poet.
Il Iapologize for speaking SO earnestly,
Adelbert, but saw by your letter that
you felt kindly toward me and rather
invited an expression of opinion on my
part. So I have written more freely.
perhaps, than l otherwise would. We
are both writers Meaeurably 90 e'
| least. You write on progressive euchre
and write on anything that ! can gel
hold of. In the language of the late
Lydia E. Pinkham, yours for health,
BILL NYE.'