The Abbeville press and banner. [volume] (Abbeville, S.C.) 1869-1924, 1897-06-16

oooAn"
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 it.
They make a fortune every spring out
of the blossoms of May; and they &C
complish it not by raising the BIOS
SONS, 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 lever
bought a spring poem?
Margaret Deland goes into the spring
poetry business wholesale. She has a
woman friend in Boston who loves her
rhymes and encourages her to write
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
5000, 900 in fiction alone, which was az
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 "Miss
Kate" as she is called in her Silver
street kindergarten in San Francisco,
writes verses while doing Homework.
She is one of those versatile women
who can dance a plantation breakdown
for you. If your ears are tired she
soothes them with a song of her OVID
composition. If it is 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 of o
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, a wealthy Virgins
planter and trader, put a stop to the
enormous sums paid her, and declined
to have her checks raised by the pub
fishers. It was too much for so young
and inexperienced a writer to receive.
he said. Amelie Rives's spring poems
had all a touch Of love in them.
John Oliver Hobbies is saidt to have
exhausted all her brightness long age
and to be now repeating herself.
Mrs. Burton Harrison is called a 80
ciety writer because she happens to be
a woman of aristocratic family who has
kept her place in good circles. She
writes, however, for money, not fol
amusement, and has turned her May
muse to- q consideration of the sea anc
sea grasses. She writes off poetry te
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 TO,
doing things up thoroughly. Johr
Ruskin, a dear friend Of her girlhood.
taught her the magic of a well-com'
pleted task. She writes little things
that tell their story without many
words.
Mary E. Wilkins is said to have re-
fused to write q four-line stanza upo1
May for $50 with as much ease a.
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward declined
$40, 900 for q ''snappy'' life of Christ
Miss Wilkins gets $50 a line for he'
May flower verses as readily as Others
accept a cent a word. She is turning
them off with dizzy rapidity in he,
country home, fifteen miles from Bos'
ton, and she is fast reaching the Anne
lie Barr standpoint in poetry when she
can write: 81 can't do q poem for you
this spring, nor next spring, but the
following April, if the weather takes
me right, I will send you a rhyme TO,
your May issue"
An uptown finishing school in New
York decided to call Mrs. Barr TO de-
liver a series of talks upon poetizing,
but the following day the faculty found
half the students scribbling rhymes
upon slips Of paper and h%armonized
"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