Wichita eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1886-1890, 1889-01-30
THE EAGLE SCREAMS.
From the Harper Graphic.

From the Harper Graphic.
Ed. EAGLE:-Dear friend and brother;
| you may be surprised at my addressing
| you by SO familiar and endearing title,
| but you wouldn't be if you knew me. i
am proud and naughty if am poet;
although wear diamonds on my Sun
! day clothes, yet on week days adorn
| myself with one suspender and cross
barred shirt and feel just as common as
you do. Don't think that I scorn you
because you work for living, used to
do it myself, and I know that a man
| may be poor and yet never lose his APP
petite although ! cannot say that this
adds materially to his happiness.
often think of you and imagine
that I see you writing your beau
tiful editorials with one hand while
you pi galley of type with the other.
singing all the time in low but musical
voice ''Im fifty-one years old today, to-
day I'm fifty-one years old, years old, :"
until the little composing room is all
aglow with the bright sunshine of your
happy heart.
In your little article in Wednesday S
EAGLE wherein you kindly notice me
under the nom de plume of "I'he Bard
of the Cratic" you seem to be laboring
under the erroneous impression that do
not take kindly to your raw poets, and
unfinished children of song, but this is a
mistake. / never read them without
weeping bitterly and wishing that
had the time and the
cartridges to spare so that l could be-
come more intimately acquainted with
them, as it WERE Nothing would afford
me such unqualified delight as to meet
''JarvIs, chief eunuch of your corps
poetic" in some lonely alley where l
could commune with him for about five
minutes. should also like to gaze upon
marian Gray" British Lion" "King-
man Bard" and "E. P. F." and try to
teach them that the poets home is
heaven and offer them inducements to
60 there with their next production.
My chief objectin communicating with
you is to tearfully confess that am not
the author of that sublime little lullaby
which appeared in the Graphic some
time since, going something like this
''Gayly the gallant ice man
Goes sporting in the sun,
And selleth fifteen hundred weight
And chargeth for a ton"
Our poetical foreman wrote this with
pair of 60-cent shears, and while
should like to reach down into the silent
depths of my aching heart and drag
out such masterpieces of divine song, l
cannot allow you to enormously suppose
that | am the author of the aforesaid
lullaby.
If l am ever inspired to write such
poem C9 as that of the Kingman bard I
want your sympathy, dear colonel.
want you to supply it with club, and
when you have reduced me to a condi-
ton of ''inocuous desuetude" send to this
Office the bill for your services and you
viii be handsomely remunerated. de-
sire your sympathy for the reason that
you have written some poetry yourself
that compares favorably with that of the
Bard, and you, better than anyone else,
could understand and fully appreciate
the depth of my woe, should / rise some
morning and find myself the author of
such lines as these:
80 tell you it was lonesome,
But l had the grit to stand it;
have carted loads of dry bones
Sixty miles across the prairie" ETC., etc.
Hoping that these few lines may re-
move any little prejudice against me,
which may have found Judgement in
your mind, conclude, hoping to hear,
at no distant day, the cheerful twang of
your own tuneful Tyre, amid those of
the musical fiends who poster you with
their unholy burden of song.
Politically Yours,
The POET of Stray Horse Gulch.