Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1897-07-14
Money From Flowers.

You can turn May flowers into
money if you have the trick of doing
it. Margaret Deland, John Strange
Winter, Kate Douglas Wiggin,
Amelia Barr, Mrs. Burton Harrison,
Mary E. Wilkens, Mrs. Humphrey
Ward and John Oliver Hobbs all do 1t:
They make a fortune every spring odt
Of the blossoms of May; and they &C:
eomplisR it not by raising the bios;
soms; but by telling other people how
beautiful they are:
People who cannot get out into the
woods to pick flowers are willing to
pay considerable money to read how
lovely is the shape and how sweet the
, scent of the posies that bloom afar off.
You who doubt this, have you never
Thought spring poem9
c Margaret Deland goes ipt spfitrs
p5etfsSs fsSseeA O. b,.As.ssss-wg .Asss Wholesale. She has
woman friend In Boston who loves her
rhymes and encourages Bel to wr;t5
them.
Mrs. Humphrey Ward does up verses
as neatly as she does up prose. Of
late, however, she has given up the
idea of publishing her poetry in book
form and contents herself with serving
it to publications to be used and for
gotten. James Payn estimates that in
the last five years Mrs. Ward has cleared
100000 in fiction alone, which was as
much as George Eliot made in her life
time; SO it is no wonder that she does
not labor over rhymes.
Mrs. Kate Douglas Wiggin, or tMiss
Kate" as she is called in her Silver
street kindergarten in San Francisco;
writes verses while doing housework:
She is one of those versatile women
who can dance plantation breakdown
for you. If your ears are tired she
seothes them with song of her own
composition. If tits your head that
aches, she writes verses that tell of
green hills far away. Some. of her
best work has been done on the spur
Of the moment. She is the wife 6i d
wealthy gentleman who. divides his
time between London and America.
Amelie Rives, as her pen name still
is, though she is an italian princess,
made SO much with her miscellaneous
poems during the two years she wrote
that her father, wealthy Virginia
planter and trader, put stop to the
enormous sums paid her, and declined
to have her checks raised by the pub
fishers. 1t was too much for SO young
end inexperienced d writer to receive,
he said. Amelie Rives's spring poems
had oil d touch of love in them.
John Oliver Hobbies is said to have
exhausted ali her brightness long ago
and to be now repeating herself.
Mrs. Burton Harrison is called q So
ciety writer because she happens to be
woman of aristocratic family who has
kept her place in good circles. She
writes, however, for money, not for
amusement, and has turned her May
muse to a consideration of the sea and
sea grasses. She writes off poetry to
| order, gets we'll paid for it, and she
may truthfully be said to ''make money
out of May flowers"
John Strange Winter is noted for
doing things up thoroughly. John
Ruskin, dear friend of her girlhood,
taught her the magic of well-com-
pleted task. She writes little things
that tell their story without many
words.
Mary E. Wilkins is said to have re'
| fuead In write a four-line stanZa upon
'May" for $50 with as much ease as
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward declined
$40, 900 for "snappy" life of Christ.
Miss Wilkins gets $50 line for her
May flower verses as readily as others
accept cent word. She is turning
them off with dizzy rapidity in her
country home, fifteen miles from Bos-
ton, and she is fast reaching the Anne
lie Barr standpoint in poetry when she
can write: "I can't do poem for you
this spring, nor next spring, but the
following April, if the weather takes
me right, I will send you rhyme for
your May ISSUE.
An uptown finishing school in New
| York decided to call Mrs. Barr to de-
liver series of talks upon poetizing,
but the following day the faculty found
half the students scribbling rhymes
upon slips of paper and harmoriized
"May" and "day," cray" and "fay,"
to the exclusion of other tasks. Upon
which the faculty agreed to forget the
resolution to call Mrs. Barr and to let
nature take her couse with the students
in the matter of poetry.-New York
( News