Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1911-06-25
. 7HEN an aspiring young author
w takes one of those correspond
w a,ca co,,rcac -, Hoy, RI tur;ta

with fTeehand Spencer1an movement rat
tie them right off SO that when strange
things begin to happen to the hero the
readers eyes bug out and he marvels-
although the Bible distinctly says, Mar
vel not" Then, when he has worked the
reader up to perfectly awful nervous
state, he relieves the whole situation in a
minute by letting you see that back there
on page one, paragraph three, where the
little row of stars was, the hero went to
sleep, and all of these terrible things didn't
really happen at ALL and were only a
dream. And you are SO pleased over the
matter that you forgive the author and
say
But that was not what this story IS
about It's about the time Tom went to
sleep and dreamed about all there was to
the story. And the author thereof, not
being graduate of one of the schools we
were just talking about, hasn't the knowl-
edge of inside baseball, or the finesse or
the something or other to deceive the
reader; so we shall just come right out and
admit at the start that the biggest part OF
the story was dream.
Besides that, there isn't SO much differ
ence between reading what some fellow
really dreamed and reading ordinary fic-
ton, because ordinary fiction is nothing
more nor less than what some fellow
dreamed when he was awake. And re-
member also that when man dreams
when he is awake and puts it down on
paper, he does it for money, and so gets
himself into the professional ranks; and
everybody knows that what man really
dreams in the middle of the night is the
purest amateur sport, for he doesn't do 1t
for money or even for a medal. So night
dreams should be more pure literature than
day dreams; for there is no faint OF money
about them.
Tom had been reared in the country, and
had lived up there till he was twenty years
old, when the glitter of the jiggle picture
shows, the rumors o. good salaries, and
dissemination for milking lured him away
from his boyhood's happy home down on
the farm, as the poet puts 1t. He got
iob-or rather he accepted situation
in a railroad office, where he rose in due
and ancient form, like a story hero, from
forty dollars a month to fourteen hundred
a year-which sounds larger, although it
won't buy any more than one hundred and
sixteen dollars and sixty-seven cents a
month. He was wonder with figures, and
during the ten years of his employment by
the company he dived into mess of them
every morning at nine, rose at twelve with
a cipher round his neck, to eat, and then wa.
again till five, when he went home with sey
hooked over one ear.
But from time to time he heard the call
farm 1t rose louder and louder; till now, a
call was becoming well nigh irresistible. H
tickle the dimples in the face of old mother
a hoe, and make her laugh a lapful of onio
now year and half since he married the
in the world. Her name was Rose, and he
cause it sounded like Gods great out of {
before his marriage he had given man v
full of notes for why pay rent9" and wa:
in it. This was the nearest approach to cot
could see. He owned little piece of grou
happy over it. even if the part the house di
was Just the size of the Bokhara rug on the
general traffic managers office. He took JOY
back yard, and watered and tended it with i
He perused every article he saw on country
voted much time to those parts of the adv
umns where mushrooms, ginseng, and sc
The stories of men who grew rich out of ha
ground were more interesting to him than the
ing detective story.
The Story of Tom
NOV we have got rid of the preliminar
- story may be told.
He had eaten his dinner one night, and
the bull pup, and gone out to the back yard
grass. He fixed the hose firmly on the lit
which he had rolled it out of the cellar. He
nozzle to the fine spray, and then turned OF