The good old year is with the past

"A Song for New Year's Eve" (1857) by William Cullen Bryant:

Stay yet, my friends, a moment stay—
     Stay till the good old year,
So long companion of our way,
     Shakes hands, and leaves us here.
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One little hour, and then away.

The year, whose hopes were high and strong,
     Has now no hopes to wake;
Yet one hour more of jest and song
     For his familiar sake.
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One mirthful hour, and then away.

The kindly year, his liberal hands
     Have lavished all his store.
And shall we turn from where he stands,
     Because he gives no more?
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One grateful hour, and then away.

Days brightly came and calmly went,
     While yet he was our guest;
How cheerfully the week was spent!
     How sweet the seventh day's rest!
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One golden hour, and then away.

Dear friends were with us, some who sleep
     Beneath the coffin-lid:
What pleasant memories we keep
     Of all they said and did!
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One tender hour, and then away.

Even while we sing, he smiles his last,
     And leaves our sphere behind.
The good old year is with the past;
     Oh be the new as kind!
          Oh stay, oh stay,
One parting strain, and then away.

Birth of Charles E. Carryl

Charles Edward Carryl was born in New York on December 30, 1841. Though he earned his living as a businessman and working on Wall Street, he also delved into children's literature, publishing short stories in children's magazines like St. Nicholas. His 1884 book Davy and the Goblin; or, What Followed Reading "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" earned him enough popular esteem that he was called the American Lewis Carroll (the fact that their names were pronounced the same way was only coincidence). His poem, "The Walloping Window Blind," may or not reach the same achievement as "Jabberwocky" (you be the judge):

A capital ship for an ocean trip
Was the Walloping Window Blind.
No gale that blew dismayed her crew
Or troubled the captain's mind.

The man at the wheel was taught to feel
Contempt for the wildest blow.
And it often appeared when the weather had cleared
That he'd been in his bunk below.

The boatswain's mate was very sedate,
Yet fond of amusement too;
And he played hopscotch with the starboard watch
While the captain tickled the crew.

And the gunner we had was apparently mad
For he stood on the cannon's tail,
And fired salutes in the captain's boots
In the teeth of a booming gale.

The captain sat in a commodore's hat
And dined in a royal way
On toasted pigs and pickles and figs
And gummery bread each day.

But the rest of us ate from an odious plate
For the food that was given the crew
Was a number of tons of hot cross buns
Chopped up with sugar and glue.

We all felt ill as mariners will
On a diet that's cheap and rude,
And the poop deck shook when we dipped the cook
In a tub of his gluesome food.

Then nautical pride we laid aside,
And we cast the vessel ashore
On the Gulliby Isles, where the Poohpooh smiles
And the Anagzanders roar.

Composed of sand was that favored land
And trimmed in cinnamon straws;
And pink and blue was the pleasing hue
Of the Tickletoeteasers claws.

We climbed to the edge of a sandy ledge
And soared with the whistling bee,
And we only stopped at four o'clock
For a pot of cinnamon tea.

From dawn to dark, on rubagub bark
We fed, till we all had grown
Uncommonly thin. Then a boat blew in
On a wind from the torriby zone.

She was stubby and square, but we didn't much care,
And we cheerily put to sea.
We plotted a course for the Land of Blue Horse,
Due west 'cross the Peppermint Sea.

Perhaps appropriate for a man who wrote for children, Carryl's own son grew up to be a writer as well. Guy Wetmore Carryl did not delve in fantasy the way his father did, though he did write humor tales and poetry.

2010: An American Literary Year in Review

Now that the year 2010 is rapidly drawing to a close, I wanted to thank all of you for following the American Literary Blog. It's been fun for me as I research some of my favorites and learn new things about writers I'd never heard of - all in the attempt at giving you, the reader, something interesting tidbits iin American literary history almost every day. I'll admit, the blog has taken up much more of my personal time than I ever anticipated but the pay-off has been that lots of people actually read it!

I thought it might be interesting to look at the most popular entries of the year (based on the blog's built-in statistics, these were the most-visited entries).

10. Great Astronomical Discoveries (August 25, 2010)

The infamous "Moon-Hoax" of 1835 in the New York Sun 

9. Tramping over the soil (August 5, 2010)

The day that Nathaniel Hawthorne met Herman Melville in the Berkshires of Massachusetts in 1850

8. Emerson's first wife and "Wild Apples" (February 8, 2010)

Ellen Tucker, wife of Ralph Waldo Emerson, died in 1831; exactly 29 years later, Emerson's daughter by his second wife (named after Ellen) reflected on a lecture given by Henry David Thoreau, Emerson's protege

7. Walden published, waxwork yellowing (August 9, 2010)

In 1854, Henry David Thoreau casually remarked on the publication of his masterpiece, Walden, as if it was just any other day

6. Alcott: In a month, I mean to be done (November 1, 2010)

Louisa May Alcott sets the goal of completing volume two of Little Women within 30 days. This post gained popularity at least in part due to Twitter connecting it to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoMo).

5. Fuller: That the anguish may be brief (July 19, 2010)

160 years after her death at sea, Margaret Fuller is getting lots of attention, thanks in part to her bicentennial being this year.

4. Whitman's funeral and burial (March 30, 2010)

Part two of the story of Walt Whitman's death; people seemed most interested in seeing the poet's death mask.

3. Death of Virginia Clemm Poe (January 30, 2010)

For the death of the wife of Edgar Allan Poe, this entry focused on their unique relationship and the controversy behind it.

2. And the papers will tell you the rest (November 7, 2010)

The first poem published by a young Ezra Pound was the first (and likely the last) entry on the Modernist on the blog.

1. Guest blog: Death of Poe and Holmes (October 7, 2010)

The dual death of Edgar Allan Poe and Oliver Wendell Holmes, though decades apart, proved the biggest draw this year. Written as a guest blog by contemporary novelist Matthew Pearl (The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, The Last Dickens), I'm not sure if it was Pearl, Holmes, or Poe that pulled the most people in.

I promise to keep things interesting throughout 2011. I also promise to balance out the authors represented a little better (I'm vowing to limit myself on entries related to Longfellow, Poe, and Hawthorne). I'm also hoping to inspire more and more guest entries. In the meantime, I'll be cutting back a bit (consider it my New Year's resolution). This year, I averaged about six posts a week; next year, I'm aiming only for four per week. To make up for it, I'd like to encourage more interaction. That means more discussions on the Facebook page, more comments on the blog itself, more votes for future posts, etc. I hope to get everyone who is reading to show me they're enjoying it. We'll see how it goes!

Moulton: as the fragrance of a rose

In 1889, the Connecticut-born writer Louise Chandler Moulton published her book of poems In the Garden of Dreams (she gave a copy as a Christmas gift to her friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson; that copy has been digitally scanned here). Though a published author for 35 years, she turned to a veteran writer for advice: Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. In a letter dated December 29, 1889, Holmes wrote to her:

I thank you most cordially for sending me your beautiful volume of poems. They tell me that they are breathed from a woman's heart as plainly as the fragrance of a rose reveals its birthplace. I have read nearly all of them — a statement I would not venture to make of most of the volumes I receive, the number of which is legion, and I cannot help feeling flattered that the author of such impassioned poems should have thought well enough of my own productions to honor me with the kind words I find on the blank leaf of a little book that seems to me to hold leaves torn out of the heart's record.

Holmes may have been impressed as early as the first page, which printed a poem of lament for the past titled "Come Back, Dear Days":

Come back, dear days, from out the past!
...I see your gentle ghosts arise;
You look at me with mournful eyes,
And then the night grows vague and vast:
You have gone back to Paradise...

You left no pledges when you went:
The years since then are bleak and cold;
No bursting buds the Junes unfold.
While you were here my all I spent;
Now I am poor and sad and old.

Within a couple years of this letter, Holmes would become one of the last of his generation of authors still living — a frequently lamented fact. Earlier, Holmes had written a poem, "No Time Like the Old Time," about his own nostalgia for the "dear days" of old:

There is no time like the old time, when you and I were young,
When the buds of April blossomed and the birds of springtime sung!

Birth of Catharine Maria Sedgwick

Catharine Maria Sedgwick was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts on December 28, 1789. She became a popular writer, particularly through her novel Hope Leslie (1827). In a letter describing her childhood recollections, Sedgwick recounted the story of her birth:

I was born... in 1789, December 28th, in a bitter cold night, as I have heard my Aunt Dwight say, who was present on the occasion... I came into the world two months before I was due... I believe... that the people who surround us in our childhood, whose atmosphere infolds us, as it were, have more do with the formation of our characters than all our didactic and preceptive education.

In her novels, Sedgwick often depicted America in its infancy. Her novel The Linwoods (1835), for example, was set during the American Revolution. She also tackled more serious topics, including the ideal relationship between servants and employees. After a few years without publishing, Sedgwick released Married or Single? in 1857. In that book, Sedgwick (who never married) dared to suggest that women should avoid marriage if it would mean a loss of self-respect. She quoted St. Paul: "I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them if they abide."

Reviews were mixed. The Albion, for example, claimed that "the tale was designed to plead the case of Spinster-hood. If this were so, the cause is not well pleaded: in fact this object is well-nigh lost sight of." Though Sedgwick presented several examples of "emptiness and wretchedness" in poor marriages, the reviewer wrote, not one example of a happy single woman was presented to show its benefit. On the other hand, a critic in the Ladies Repository called it, "the most thoroughly American, and the most real book I have read in a long while."

*Recommended reading: Catharine Maria Sedgwick: Critical Perspectives, edited by Victoria Clements.

Bierce: for an unknown destination

At 71 years old, Ambrose Bierce began a tour of Civil War battlefields. Making his way through Louisiana and Texas, Bierce went further south into Mexico, a country then undergoing a revolution. He predicted he would visit Mexico as early as April, when he mentioned as much in a letter to friend H. L. Mencken (he noted "thank god, there is something doing [there]"). A veteran himself and a some time journalist, Bierce probably saw a good opportunity and followed the army of Pancho Villa as an observer.

On December 26, 1913, Bierce wrote a letter to friend and journalist (and possible lover) Blanche Partington. Her husband painted a portrait of Bierce, above, before his death in 1899. The letter closed with the words, "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination."

Bierce was never heard from again.

Speculation is rampant, fueled in part by Bierce's settling of personal affairs before leaving for his travels south, implying he knew of his impending death (suicide?). He may have been executed or killed in battle; some claim he was working as a spy the whole time. Many claimed to have found his grave. The Ambrose Bierce Appreciation Society has an article on the mystery here.

Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary defines "kill": "To create a vacancy without nominating a successor." And, "epitaph" is defined as: "An inscription on a tomb, showing that virtues acquired by death have a retroactive effect."

Timrod: peace in all our hearts!

How would one celebrate a holiday when war has torn your world apart? That is the question South Carolina-born poet Henry Timrod asked in his poem "Christmas." Timrod, whose own enlistment in the Confederate Army was short-lived, recognizes that his battle-torn home land of the South can not look at their sacred holiday the same way:

   How grace this hallowed day?
Shall happy bells, from yonder ancient spire,
Send their glad greetings to each Christmas fire
   Round which the children play?

...How shall "we grace the day?
With feast, and song, and dance, and antique sports,
And shout of happy children in the courts,
   And tales of ghost and fay?

"Dread shapes of battle" will appear in our mind's eye, no matter how much we try to celebrate. We will sadly remember "some loved reveller" who now lies mute beneath the snow "in cold Virginian earth." Timrod, later nicknamed the Poet Laureate of the Confederacy, comes to the conclusion that there is only one way to celebrate Christmas now: pray for peace. The message is substantially different from his earlier sentiment to prepare for battle. The poem is almost heart-wrenching in its sincere plea:

...Pray for the peace which long
Hath left this tortured land, and haply now
Holds its white court on some far mountain's brow,
   There hardly safe from wrong!

   Let every sacred fane
Call its sad votaries to the shrine of God,
And, with the cloister and the tented sod,
   Join in one solemn strain!

...He, who, till time shall cease,
Will watch that earth, where once, not all in vain,
He died to give us peace, may not disdain
   A prayer whose theme is—peace...

   Oh, ponder what it means!
Oh, turn the rapturous thought in every way!
Oh, give the vision and the fancy play,
   And shape the corning scenes!

   Peace in the quiet dales,
Made rankly fertile by the blood of men,
Peace in the woodland, and the lonely glen,
   Peace in the peopled vales!

   Peace in the crowded town,
Peace in a thousand fields of waving grain,
Peace in the highway and the flowery lane,
   Peace on the wind-swept down!

   Peace on the farthest seas,
Peace in our sheltered bays and ample streams,
Peace wheresoe'er our starry garland gleams,
   And peace in every breeze!

   Peace on the whirring marts,
Peace where the scholar thinks, the hunter roams,
Peace, God of Peace! peace, peace, in all our homes,
   And peace in all our hearts!

Death of Ellery Channing

One of the forgotten writers of the writer-heavy town of Concord, Massachusetts, Ellery Channing died there on December 23, 1901. He was 83 years old, and still not particularly recognized for his poetry.

Promoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson and encouraged by Bronson Alcott, friends with Henry David Thoreau (even appearing as "The Poet" mentioned in Walden), and the brother-in-law of Margaret Fuller, Channing never got out from the shadow of his uncle, the Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing, to build a significant reputation of his own. Legend has it that, when a young William Dean Howells visited Emerson, he admitted he had only heard of Channing through a review by Edgar Allan Poe, who wrote, "It may be said in his favor that nobody ever heard of him." Even his cousin, William Henry Channing, wrote in a review that, "Your daily thoughts are better poems than you can write."

Predominantly a nature poet, Channing outlived all the other Concord writers except Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, who edited a posthumous collection of his poetry. That collection included the poem "The Concord Sexton's Story," one which allegedly "arrested the attention" of another Concord writer named Nathaniel Hawthorne:

The Sexton of our village was an old
And weather-beaten artisan, whose life
Led him to battle with the depths of cold.
Amid the woods he plied a vigorous arm;
The tall trees crashed in thunder at his stroke,
And a hale cheer was spread about his form.
Death does not stand or falter at the cold,
And our brave Sexton plied his pickaxe bright,
Whether the soft snow fell, or 'mid the rains;
This day, this Winter's day, he 'd made a grave
For a young blossom that the frost had nipped;
And, toward the sunset hour, he took his way
Across the meadows wide, and o'er the Brook
Beyond the bridge, and through the leafless arch
Of willows that supports the sunken road,
To the sad house of Death.

The Sexton had forgotten what Death is,
For Death provided him with home and bread,
And graves he dealt in as some deal in farms.
He reached the house of Death, — a friendly house, —
And sat in peace to see the wood-fire flash
Its cheerful warmth, and then he spoke as one
Who came from living worlds...

Channing is buried on "Author's Ridge" at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, just beyond the Hawthorne family plot and within sight of the Thoreaus.

Robinson: a hell of a name for a poet

Edwin Arlington Robinson once said his three-part name sounded "like a tin bathtub bumping down an uncarpeted flight of stairs." By 1926, he concluded, "I have always hated my name with a hatred that is positively pathological." Though he went by the nickname "E.A.," he signed his works with his full name.

He was born on December 22, 1869 at Head Tide, Maine and went the first six months of his life unnamed. According to legend, while his parents were on vacation, a traveler from Arlington, Massachusetts picked "Edwin" from a hat and her home town was added in the middle. The future three-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry later sarcastically thought it "a hell of a name for a poet."

Robinson grew up at a time when the Fireside Poets were waning. Like many of his generation, he broke away from that genteel tradition and followed a new pattern forged by the likes of Walt Whitman. Robinson published his first book, The Torrent and The Night Before, in 1896. The book includes a poem dedicated to Whitman and another one dedicated "Dear Friends":

Dear friends, reproach me not for what I do,
Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say
That I am wearing half my life away
For bubble-work that only fools pursue.
And if my bubbles be too small for you,
Blow bigger then your own:—the games we play
To fill the frittered minutes of a day,
Good glasses are to read the spirit through.

And whosoreads may get hiin some shrewd skill;
And some unprofitable scorn resign,
To praise the very thing that he deplores: —
So friends (dear friends), remember, if you will,
The shame I win for singiug is all mine,
The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours.

*Some of the information for this post comes from Scott Donaldson's Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet's Life (2006). The portrait above, dated 1916, is from the E. A. Robinson site by the Gardiner (Maine) Public Library; the original image is in the special collections of Colby College.

Lanier: a huge cantle out of the world

Though (wrongly) forgotten today, poet and travel writer Bayard Taylor had a major impact on his generation. His death in Germany in 1878 at the age of 53 inspired several poetic tributes, for example. Among his many admirers was Sidney Lanier (pictured). On December 21, 1878, Lanier wrote a letter to a friend, noting his surprise over the death of Taylor:

Bayard Taylor's death slices a huge cantle out of the world for me. I don't yet know it, at all; it only seems that he has gone to some other Germany, a little farther off. How strange it all is: he was such a fine fellow, one almost thinks he might have talked Death over and made him forego his stroke. Tell me whatever you may know, outside the newspaper reports, about his end.

Only a few months earlier, Lanier (then living in Baltimore, Maryland) paid a visit to Taylor. Though the two missed one another, Lanier kindly returned a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass which he had borrowed. In a letter to Taylor from February of 1878, Lanier calls the book "a real refreshment to me — like rude salt spray in your face."

Taylor, who had shown an interest in Lanier's poem "The Symphony," called him "the representative of the South in American song." In 1876, Taylor presented at the Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia and, hoping to re-connect the North and South through poetry, invited Lanier to write an original cantata for the celebration. After Taylor's death, Lanier also wrote a poem "To Bayard Taylor":

Not into these, bright spirit, do we yearn
    To bring thee back, but oh, to be, to be
Unbound of all these gyves, to stretch, to spurn
    The dark from off our dolorous lids, to see
Our spark, Conjecture, blaze and sunwise burn,
    And suddenly to stand again by thee!

The hour of darkness and peril and need

Though it was issued two days earlier in a Boston newspaper, the first official publication of the poem "Paul Revere's Ride" occurred on December 20, 1860 — 150 years ago today. The Atlantic Monthly introduced the now-famous poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in its issue dated January 1861. Longfellow and editor James T. Fields were both surprised to see that six lines were accidentally omitted; its iconic first lines, however, were intact:

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Coincidentally, on the day the poem was published, South Carolina seceded from the Union — one of the many steps that led to the American Civil War. That event only emphasizes the period in which Longfellow was motivated to write the poem. His mythologized version of the historic ride on the 18th of April in '75 was never meant as an accurate representation but as a message about the importance of liberty and joining together in times of national crisis. By invoking our shared past, he was trying to warn us of the future. Though the opening lines are the poem's most famous, it may be more appropriate to consider its final stanza in light of that time of national crisis:

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,—
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.

*For the information in this post, I am indebted to the recent research of historian Charles Bahne, author of The Complete Guide to Boston's Freedom Trail. For more information on Longfellow's poem, please visit www.paulreveresride.org.

Taylor: one so strong in hope, so rich in bloom

The poet Bayard Taylor died on December 19, 1878. Perhaps the worst part of his death was that he could no longer defend himself from being called "James Bayard Taylor" — never his legal name, though his parents did name him after politician James A. Bayard. The error comes from anthologist Rufus Wilmot Griswold, who encouraged the younger man to publish his poems. Taylor, certainly unable to predict the confusion over his name, dedicated that 1844 volume of poems to Griswold, "as an expression of kind gratitude for the kind encouragement he has shown the author." Griswold, who assisted in the publication of that book, also had "James Bayard Taylor" put on the title page, an error which continues to this day.

Perhaps on a happier note, Taylor's friend Christopher Pearse Cranch paid a posthumous tribute through a sonnet:

Can one so strong in hope, so rich in bloom
   That promised fruit of nobler worth than all
   He yet had given, drop thus with sudden fall?
   The busy brain no more its worth resume?
Can Death for life so versatile find room?
   Still must we fancy thou mayst hear our call
   Across the sea, with no dividing wall
   More dense than space to interpose its doom.
Ah then—farewell, young-hearted, genial friend!
   Farewell, true poet, who didst grow and build
   From thought to thought still upward and still new.
Farewell, unsullied toiler in a guild
   Where some defile their hands, and where so few
   With aims as pure strive faithful to the end.

Another poetic tribute came from Southern writer Paul Hamilton Hayne (appropriate, considering Taylor's attempts to reunite North and South through poetry). Hayne said this poem was inspired in part by a letter Taylor wrote to him only weeks before his death:

"Oft have I fronted Death, nor feared his might!—
To me immortal, this dim Finite seems
Like some waste low-land, crossed by wandering streams
Whose clouded waves scarce catch our yearning sight:
Clearer by far, the imperial Infinite!—
Though its ethereal radiance only gleams
In exaltations of majestic dreams,
Such dreams portray God's heaven of heavens aright!"

Thou blissful Faith! that on death's imminent brink
Thus much of heaven's mysterious truth hast told!
Soul-life aspires, though all the stars should sink;—
Not vain our loftiest Instinct's upward stress,—
Nor hath the immortal Hope shone clear and bold,
To quench at death, his torch in Nothingness!

More from another of Taylor's Southern admirers will be posted in a couple days.

Lowell and Cranch: with this abominable pen

In a letter dated December 18, 1868, James Russell Lowell wrote to Christopher Pearse Cranch, "I... would rather have (if I can say so with this abominable pen) one old friend with a silver-mine in his hair, than all the new ones that were ever turned out." Lowell notes that he intends to send "C.P.C." a copy of his new book once it is printed but admits he doesn't care if he likes it, "provided you will continue to like J.R.L." In fact, Lowell says, he almost hopes Cranch will dislike it, saying he'd rather have "a pennyweight of honest friendship than a pound of fame, or — what is about as solid — flattery."

Lowell was approaching 50 years old, as he notes in the letter, and demands a "test of friendship" from Cranch: for his birthday, he wants him to pay a visit at the Lowell home, Elmwood. Though living in New York at the time, Cranch came through, and even wrote a birthday poem for Lowell. Perhaps as a response to Lowell's value of fame mentioned above, the poem concludes that "our love" makes "his fame."

The letter is sincere and warm, reflecting a friendship not generally recognized by history. Cranch, a minister, was also a poet and artist — and deserves the title of best sense of humor among the Transcendentalists. Lowell, for all his varied efforts, was also a humor poet, publishing his A Fable for Critics in 1848 at the age of 29.

As Lowell concludes his letter to Cranch:

My old clock in the entry has just given that hiccup with which tall fellows of their hands like him are wont to prelude the hours — and the hour is midnight. My fire and my pipe are both low. I must say good-night. I have had great difficulty in saying what I wished with this pen, which has served me I know not how long. But I have stood by it, and that should convince you (if you needed convincing, as I am sure you didn't) that I don't give up an old friend even when he has lost his point. But that is something you can never do for me, and I shall expect you on [my birthday]... You shall... have a warm welcome from Mrs. Lowell (who thinks you handsome — that way madness lies!).

John Greenleaf Whittier's 70th birthday

John Greenleaf Whittier was born in the family homestead in Haverhill, Massachusetts on December 17, 1807. As was traditional in the 19th century, his 70th birthday party in 1877 was a major event — in more ways than one.

The party was thrown by the Atlantic Monthly at Boston's Brunswick Hotel. Guests included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Charles Eliot Norton, Richard Henry Stoddard, and about fifty others. Speeches were presented in Whittier's honor, and Oliver Wendell Holmes presented a poem. Perhaps out of place among these New England literary giants was Mark Twain — who ended up stealing the show.

Twain, invited by his friend and Atlantic editor William Dean Howells, presented a speech intended to be humorous. He described a man he met while traveling who had recently hosted Emerson, Holmes, and Longfellow. According to Twain, the man referred to Emerson as "a seedy little bit of a chap," while Holmes was "as fat as a balloon... and had double chins all the way down to his stomach," while Longfellow had "cropped and bristly" hair "as if he had a wig made of hair brushes." The three men start quoting obscure passages of poetry to the man, who clearly does not understand.

The man tells Twain that he now plans to move, saying, "I ain't suited to a littery atmosphere." Twain responds by telling him they must not have been the true "gracious singers" but imposters. When the newspapers reported the speech as an "attack," Twain sent letters of apology to Emerson, Holmes, Longfellow and Whittier. Longfellow responded that the newspapers were responsible for the "mischief" and that everyone else recognized the "bit of humor." Longfellow concluded: "It was a very pleasant dinner, and I think Whittier enjoyed it very much." No response from Whittier regarding Twain's speech is known.

Dana and a "select company"

In his journal entry for December 16, 1854, Richard Henry Dana, Jr. noted his dinner plans. The author of Two Years Before the Mast, a novel published in 1840, was among a "select company" that included Ralph Waldo Emerson, James Russell Lowell, A. Bronson Alcott, and a young Franklin Benjamin Sanborn. Presumably with restraint, he concluded, "It was very agreeable."

Of Emerson, Dana recorded he was "a gentleman, never bores or preaches or dictates... and has even skill and tact in managing his conversation." He said the same of Alcott and noted, "it is quite surprising to see these transcendentalists appearing well as men of the world."

Perhaps more interesting, however, is that all these gentlemen were anti-slavery men. Dana himself had only recently defended the fugitive Anthony Burns in a trial meant to challenge the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Dana also paired with Robert Morris, an African-American lawyer; their efforts, however, were unsuccessful.

Emerson was a strong voice against slavery in the 1850s through his speeches; Lowell used his pen. For a short time, he edited an apolitionist newspaper in Pennsylvania but focused his poetic voice on the cause in poems like "The Present Crisis" and "On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves Near Washington." Alcott hosted at least one man escaped from enslavement in his Concord home years earlier and was part of a crowd that attempted to free Anthony Burns from a Boston courthouse. Dana referred to the young Sanborn, then a Harvard student, as "clever and promising." Only a few years later, Sanborn funded the radical abolitionist John Brown in his raid on Harper's Ferry as a member of the so-called "Secret Six."

Duyckincks, anthologies, and Young America

The second and final volume of the Cyclopedia of American Literature was published on December 15, 1855. Edited by the two brothers Evert Augustus Duyckinck and George Long Duyckinck, the book was meant to be a comprehensive biographical dictionary of notable (and not so notable) American writers. It was substantially successful and expanded volumes were published throughout the 19th century. Pictured here is a later edition with E. A. Duyckinck on the title page.

In their preface, the Duyckinck brothers explain their aims: "to bring together as far as possible... convenient for perusal and reference, memorials and records of the writers of the country and their works, from the earliest period to the present day." Further, they attempted to present as complete yet as brief a selection as possible in a printed format that is both affordable and attractive. They chose to be as open-minded as possible in their selections, including both poetry and prose, as well as humor and song (frequently ignored by other anthologists). Unlike Rufus Griswold's anthology of poetry, they made a concerted effort to represent the whole country, especially the South, and several women. The book even did not limit itself to "writers born in this country," but anyone who had written in the United States or about it.

Of course, it was Griswold himself who responded the loudest. In a long review, Griswold denounced the book for minor errors, and for not emphasizing New England writers (his own book was criticized for doing that). The angry response is not entirely surprising: both Griswold and the Duyckincks were competing to establish the literary canon. Further, their respective anthologies were politically motivated. Griswold, a Whig, had an elitist view of literature and took care to represent those with Whig leanings. The Duyckincks, leaders in the "Young America" movement, tried to bring the country together through balanced representation, while still highlighing writers with similar leanings like Cornelius Mathews.

Griswold had antagonized the movement earlier. In compiling his own anthology of prose (The Prose Writers of America), he purposely excluded Mathews and others. He rightfully predicted, "Young America will be rabid." Griswold and the Duyckincks carried on a rivalry for their entire lives.

Longfellow: of my inner life, not a word

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a private man. Suddenly overcome with the rising interest in his work, he became concerned that people would delve into his personal life to satisfy their own curiosity. In an entry dated December 14, 1853, Longfellow admitted that even his journal would remain aloof:

How brief this chronicle is, even of my outward life. And of my inner life, not a word. If one were only sure that one's journal would never be seen by any one, and never get into print, how different the case would be! But death picks the locks of all portfolios, and throws the contents into the street for the public to scramble after.

This exact quote was published after his death by his brother, Rev. Samuel Longfellow. Within a year of writing it, Longfellow left his full-time job at Harvard College and focused solely on his writing. Using it as his only regular source of income for the rest of his life, he is today considered America's first professional poet.

Despite this major accomplishment, few modern scholars approach Longfellow. Certainly, this reticence comes at least in part from a disdain for the perceived simplicity of his poetry, spurned by a Modernist aggression against Longfellow. But, his acknowledged refusal to admit his "inner life" at the height of his popularity remains an important obstacle. For the poet's bicentennial, for example, Prof. Christoph Irmscher prepared a booklet to go along with an exhibit at Harvard titled Public Poet, Private Man.

Brooks: The wondrous gift is given!

Today best remembered as a clergyman and reformer, Phillips Brooks was born in Boston on December 13, 1835. On his 50th birthday, he wrote: "I reached the half century, and shook myself as I started out upon another half century." Brooks also wrote poems intended to be sung in the form of hymns. One remains popular today:

O Little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent hours go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.

For Christ is born of Mary,
And, gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth!
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace to men on earth.

How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming;
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

O holy Child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray!
Cast out our sin and enter in;
Be born in us to-day.
We hear the Christmas angels
The groat glad tidings tell:
Oh, come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!

Brooks had traveled through the Holy Land and wrote to a friend about his experience on Christmas eve, standing in an old church in Bethlehem, "close to the spot where Jesus was born." He wrote the hymn above for his Sunday school students, based on his own experience. From what I have found, it was sung for the first time in 1868 to a tune written by Philadelphian Lewis Redner, who claimed there is a lost verse:

Where children pure and happy
Pray to the Blessed Child,
Where misery cries out to Thee,
Son of the Mother mild;
Where Charity stands watching,
And Faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks,
And Christmas comes once more.

Aldrich: Wheeling down to Death!

The four-day Battle of Fredericksburg started on December 11, 1862. The battle was bloody, but particularly one-sided: the Union army lost double the number of those lost on the Confederate side.

Earlier, Thomas Bailey Aldrich had moved to New York to work as an editor. Wanting to join the cause, he asked for an appointment to the command of a New Hampshire regiment, but missed a letter of acceptance; the role was given to another (who was later shot and killed in battle). Aldrich decided to take up his pen for the war effort as a correspondent in the field. Seeing war first-hand was too much for him, and he returned to his editorial offices.

Still, Aldrich was affected by the war — and was disappointed in himself for not playing a greater role. After the Battle of Fredericksburg, the 26-year old wrote a poem to commemorate the event (much like his friend William Dean Howells would do after the Battle of Lookout Mountain):

The increasing moonlight drifts across my bed,
And on the churchyard by the road, I know
It falls as white and noiselessly as snow...
'T was such a night two weary summers fled;
The stars, as now, were waning overhead.
Listen! Again the shrill-lipped bugles blow
Where the swift currents of the river flow
Past Fredericksburg; far off in the heavens are red
With sudden conflagration; on yon height,
Linstock in hand, the gunners hold their breath;
A signal rocket pierces the dense night,
Flings its spent stars upon the town beneath:
Hark! — the artillery massing on the right,
Hark! — the black squadrons wheeling down to Death!

The classic sonnet structure gives the poem a sort of timelessness but the poem loses its adherence to tradition in most other ways. The poem does not focus specifically on the battle, for example, and ends jarringly with the word "Death!" just before any deaths actually occur. The reader feels a certain inevitability, even as the poem does not provide the expected conclusion.

Dickinson: I'm nobody! Who are you?

Emily Dickinson was born in the family homestead in Amherst, Massachusetts on December 10, 1830. Though not as reclusive as some would suggest (including Mabel Loomis Todd, who later claimed the poet spent decades without stepping past the threshold), she would spend most of her life in the family home — now open as the Emily Dickinson Museum. She went to school outside the home, for example, and later attended Amherst Academy. Even so, she became known as a ghost-like figure in Amherst, one which was rarely seen. She once wrote, "Some keep the Sabbath going to church / I keep it staying at home."

Dickinson wrote her poetry in her home. However, her poems would not make her famous until after her death as only a few were published in her lifetime. Nevertheless, she was encouraged by Thomas Wentworth Higginson to keep writing and, though she asked that her letters be destroyed after her death, she said nothing about her poems.

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

The Emily Dickinson Museum holds an annual birthday open house. I highly recommend a visit!

Birth of Joel Chandler Harris

Joel Chandler Harris was born on December 9, 1848 in Eatonton, Georgia. His father, whose identity remains unknown, was never married to Harris's mother and abandoned them both shortly after. A prominent local doctor took pity on the young mother and offered a small cottage for her and her son on his own estate. She supported her son by sewing and gardening — and by encouraging him to read.

Harris joined the world of publishing at age 16 as a printing compositor for a plantation-based newspaper named The Countryman. He soon began writing book reviews, poetry, and humorous prose, the latter under the name "The Countryman's Devil." It was here, working at a plantation, that Harris began listening to the stories told by  African slaves. Those stories were the basis of his own works of fiction, folk tales featuring the character "Uncle Remus." The stories were widely republished, making Harris a household name (or, at least, his characters — including Brer Rabbit).

Later in his life, in 1892, he published a mostly-fictionalized autobiographical novel, On the Plantation: A Story of a Georgia Boy's Adventures during the War. In his introductory note, he warns "that which is fiction pure and simple in these pages bears to me the stamp of truth, and that which is true reads like a clumsy invention." Harris then asks his readers to "sift the fact from the fiction" as it suits him. True or not, the protagonist of the book, Joe Maxwell, finds himself working for The Countryman on a plantation in Georgia, just like Harris (and soon shares a positive interaction with a slave). Here's how he describes his office:

The printing-office... was a very small affair; the type was old and worn, and the hand-press... had seen considerable service. But it was all new to Joe, and the fact that he was to become a part of the machinery aroused in his mind the most delightful sensations...

The one queer feature about The Countryman was the fact that it was the only plantation newspaper that has ever been published... It might be supposed that such a newspaper would be a failure; but The Countryman was a success from the start, and at one time it reached a circulation of nearly two thousand copies.

*Recommended reading: The Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit as well as Joel Chandler Harris: A Biography and Critical Study (2008) by R. Bruce Bickley, Jr.

Birth of Henry Timrod

The only son of William and Thyrza Timrod was born on December 8, 1828. They named him Henry Timrod. He would spend most of his life in the state of his birth, South Carolina. One day as toddler, young Henry stared stared out the window at a lightning storm. The boy said the thunder was like God's voice. His father (himself a binder and amateur poet) predicted, "That boy will, if he lives, be a poet." His father was right.

Henry Timrod was later nicknamed the Poet Laureate of the Confederacy, though he died in poverty in 1867. In 1901, he was memorialized with a public monument in the city of his birth. Ten years later, his poem about his home state was adapted to become the official song of South Carolina. Yet, today, he remains relatively forgotten — which, perhaps, he predicted in his poem "A Vision of Poesy." The poem refers to a boy of humble parentage: "The stars that shone upon his lonely birth / Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame— / Yet no tradition hath preserved his name."

His poem "The Past":

To-day's most trivial act may hold the seed
   Of future fruitfulness, or future dearth;
Oh, cherish always every word and deed!
   The simplest record of thyself hath worth.

If thou hast ever slighted one old thought,
   Beware lest Grief enforce the truth at last;
The time must come wherein thou shalt be taught
   The value and the beauty of the Past.

Not merely as a warner and a guide,
   "A voice behind thee," sounding to the strife;
But something never to be put aside,
   A part and parcel of thy present life.

Not as a distant and a darkened sky,
   Through which the stars peep, and the moonbeams glow;
But a surrounding atmosphere, whereby
   We live and breathe, sustained in pain and woe.

A shadowy land, where joy and sorrow kiss,
   Each still to each corrective and relief,
Where dim delights are brightened into bliss,
   And nothing wholly perishes but Grief.

Ah, me!—not dies—no more than spirit dies;
   But in a change like death is clothed with wings;
A serious angel, with entranced eyes,
   Looking to far-off and celestial things.

A Foregone Conclusion: best of all your books

On December 7, 1874, Edmund Clarence Stedman (pictured left) wrote to William Dean Howells (below) that he had just read the latter's A Foregone Conclusion. Stedman, himself a poet and advocate for copyright law, admitted, "I... like it the best of all your books."

A Foregone Conclusion (the name borrows from a line in Othello) features a Catholic Priest, Don Ippolito, who admits his love for a woman named Florida. The story, told through the eyes of Mr. Ferris, drew some criticism from Catholics (including poet John Boyle O'Reilly) but scholar Susan M. Griffin suggests the story really undercuts the realism vs. idealism debate in literature.

In the eyes of Stedman, however, the story was flawless. Having read it in installments in The Atlantic Monthly (which Howells edited), he refers to the "gradual but steady progress in construction" of the story. He also praises Howells for his ability to manage several separate characters, noting: "This is a faculty which every schoolgirl seems to have, and which men of brains have to train themselves in by sheer force of intellect and practice."

In the same letter, Stedman also offered Howells a poem, "The Skull in the Gold Drift," for him to consider for publication. That, and his tendency for over-the-top praise of his friends (which was repaid in kind), can leave us skeptical of his assessment of A Foregone Conclusion.

Holmes: Pay thee with a grateful rhyme

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was interested in many things. In addition to being a poet, novelist, and essayist, he was a physician, a professor, and an inventor. It should be no surprise that he was particularly fascinated by the transit of Venus, an occurrence where the planet Venus is visible in front of the sun, appearing as a small black circle. Holmes observed this astronomical event from Boston Common on December 6, 1882 (it was not seen again until 2004) and wrote a poem about it, "The Flâneur" (a French word, meaning "idler" or "loafer"):

I love all sights of earth and skies,
From flowers that glow to stars that shine;
The comet and the penny show,
All curious things, above, below,
Hold each in turn my wandering eyes:
I claim the Christian Pagan's line,
Humani nihil, — even so, —
And is not human life divine?

Holmes admits his favorite human innovation is "the tube that spies / The orbs celestial in their march" (a telescope). He heads to Boston Common, to join a crowd preparing to observe the transit of Venus. After paying "the scanty fee":

...I go the patient crowd to join
That round the tube my eyes discern,
The last new-comer of the file,
And wait, and wait, a weary while,
And gape, and stretch, and shrug, and smile,
(For each his place must fairly earn,
Hindmost and foremost, in his turn,)
Till hitching onward, pace by pace,
I gain at last the envied place,
And pay the white exiguous coin:
The sun and I are face to face;
He glares at me, I stare at him;
And lo! my straining eye has found
A little spot that, black and round,
Lies near the crimsoned fire-orb's rim...

A black, round spot, — and that is all;
And such a speck our earth would be
If he who looks upon the stars
Through the red atmosphere of Mars
Could see our little creeping ball
Across the disk of crimson crawl
As I our sister planet see.

Holmes then imagines that Venus is "a world like ours," wondering if there are flowers or even cities on its surface, "and life and love... and death." He is "lost in a dream" until:

A mortal's voice dissolves my dream:
My patient neighbor, next in line,
Hints gently there are those who wait.
O guardian of the starry gate,
What coin shall pay this debt of mine?
Too slight thy claim, too small the fee
That bids thee turn the potent key
The Tuscan's hand has placed in thine.
Forgive my own the small affront,
The insult of the proffered dime;
Take it, O friend, since this thy wont,
But still shall faithful memory be
A bankrupt debtor unto thee,
And pay thee with a grateful rhyme.

Alcott: Foolish over her first-born

"Mothers are always foolish over their first-born," wrote Louisa May Alcott, referring to her first book. Flower Fables, as it was titled, was published on December 4, 1854. "An edition of sixteen hundred," she recorded in her journal a month later. "It has sold very well, and people seem to like it."

Flower Fables was based on fairy tales (including poetry) Alcott wrote as a teenager for Ellen, the daughter of her father's friend Ralph Waldo Emerson. The book was dedicated to young Ellen, much to Ellen's delight. It was published just in time for the Christmas market and, appropriately, Alcott made a gift of the first copy: she gave it to her mother, Abby May Alcott. "Whatever beauty is to be found in my little book is owing to your interest in and encouragement of my efforts from the first to last," she wrote to the elder Alcott. "I hope to pass in time from fairies and fables to men and realities." Alcott, later known as a novelist, was 21 years old when it was published. The book earned her $32.

From "The Flower's Lesson":

"Heed," said the mother rose," daughter mine,
Why shouldst thou seek for beauty not thine?
The Father hath made thee what thou now art;
And what he most loveth is a sweet, pure heart.
Then why dost thou take with such discontent
The loving gift which he to thee hath sent?
For the cool fresh dew will render thee far
More lovely and sweet than the brightest star;
They were made for Heaven, and can never come to shine
Like the fire-fly thou hast in that foolish breast of thine.
0 my foolish little bud, do listen to thy mother;
Care only for true beauty, and seek for no other.
There will be grief and trouble in that wilful little heart;
Unfold thy leaves, my daughter, and let the fly depart."
But the proud little bud would have her own will,
And folded the fire-fly more closely still;
Till the struggling insect tore open the vest
Of purple and green, that covered her breast.
When the sun came up, she saw with grief
The blooming of her sister bud leaf by leaf.
While she, once as fair and bright as the rest,
Hung her weary head down on her wounded breast.
Bright grew the sunshine, and the soft summer air
Was filled with the music of flowers singing there;
But faint grew the little bud with thirst and pain,
And longed for the cool dew; but now't was in vain.
Then bitterly she wept for her folly and pride,
As drooping she stood by her fair sister's side.
Then the rose mother leaned the weary little head
On her bosom to rest, and tenderly she said:
"Thou hast learned, my little bud, that, whatever may betide,
Thou canst win thyself no joy by passion or by pride.
The loving Father sends the sunshine and the shower,
That thou mayst become a perfect little flower..."

*Information for this post is largely from Harriet Reisen's Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, newly available in paperback.

By perfecting herself, she perfects mankind

Born in Columbia, South Carolina on December 3, 1810, Louisa Susannah (Cheves) McCord was a poet and dramatist. She also published translations and several essays on economy and social reform. Because those topics were often considered inappropriate for women, her essays were left unsigned or using only her initials.

McCord's essay, "Woman's Duty," was published in 1852. Like Margaret Fuller, whose book Woman in the Nineteenth Century was published only seven years earlier, she demanded women be allowed opportunities to exercise their minds and their talents. McCord herself had taken over the day-to-day operations of her family's plantation, for example. "She has no right to bury her talent beneath silks or ribands, frippery or flowers." Unlike Fuller, however, McCord notes that women should stay within their stereotypical roles, their "separate sphere." Both men and women, she says, "can labour, each can strive, lovingly and earnestly, in her own sphere... Not less for her than for man."

Some women, she says, "throw themselves away upon follies," possibly referring to women's rights activitists like those that organized the convention at Seneca Falls in 1848. "Woman has allowed herself to be, alternately, made the toy and the slave of man; but this rather through her folly than her nature. Not wholly her folly, either. Her folly and man's folly have made the vices and the punishment of both." But McCord emphasizes women should not be part of the political system and instead focus on their role in the home:

Woman has certainly not her true place, and this place she as certainly should seek to gain. We have said that every error has its shadow of truth, and, so far, the [Woman's Rights], conventionists are right. But, alas! how wide astray are they groping from their goal! Woman has not her true place, because she—because man—has not yet learned the full extent and importance of her mission. These innovators would seek to restore, by driving her entirely from that mission; as though some unlucky pedestrian, shoved from the security of the side-walk, should in his consternation seek to remedy matters, by rushing into the thickest thoroughfare of hoofs and wheels. Woman will reach the greatest height of which she is capable— the greatest, perhaps, of which humanity is capable—not by becoming man, but by becoming, more than ever, woman. By perfecting herself, she perfects mankind.

Melville and statues of Rome

By 1857, Herman Melville was already old news. His 1851 book, Moby-Dick, had attracted little attention and any remaining fame from his earlier books, Typee and Omoo, was fizzling. To earn money, he took the same tactic Mark Twain later took when in financial need: Herman Melville became a lecturer.

His first was in Concord, Massachusetts at the end of November. But, on December 2, 1857, he had a larger audience in Boston. His pay was $40.00. Melville's lecture tour took him from Massachusetts to Montreal, Connecticut, New York, and Ohio. He earned nearly $600 in about three months but, after his traveling expenses, was left with only $373.70. In the next couple years, he continued lecturing in cities like Baltimore, Milwaukee, and Chicago.

Melville's lecture topics included "South Seas" and "Statues of Rome." In Boston, before the Mercantile Library Association, he presented the latter — a topic which had no relation to the books which brought him fame. The lecture was not met with high praise. "[The] lecture was quite interesting to those of artistic tastes," according to one newspaper review, but "the larger part of the audience would have preferred something more modern and personal." Melville told his audience that science ranked below art, which "caused some little discussion." Some audience members were confused by Melville's words.

A relative had predicted only days earlier that when Melville tried to put forth philosophy, "he seeks to ascend by waxen wings from his proper sphere only to find his mind dazzled his wings melted and his fall mortifying." A cousin in attendance reported that the lecture was well-planned but lacking in force; he would have done better if he talked about the South Seas, he said.

*For this post, I am indebted to the work of Hershel Parker in the second volume of his Melville biography: Herman Melville: A Biography (Volume 2, 1851-1891).

Moore: Come all you friends and critics

Later nicknamed the "Sweet Singer of Michigan," Julia Ann Davis was born on December 1, 1847 in Plainfield, Michigan. In the 1870s, a decade at least one historian refers to as the "Dreadful Decade" in the United States, she married and became Julia Moore.

In her years throughout Michigan, she dabbled at writing poems and songs. She collected some of them into a book, The Sentimental Song Book, published as part of the country's centennial in 1876. After its first publication, a Cleveland-based publisher reissued it and sent copies to reviewers, noting that "it may divert the despondent from suicide." Some reviewers called it a masterpiece of American writing — with intended irony — while others ridiculed it. "Shakespeare, could he read it," wrote one, "would be glad that he was dead." Mark Twain was inspired to use the "Sweet Singer of Michigan" as the basis for his character Emmeline Grangerford (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). More recently, a "bad poetry contest" was named in her honor.

Mrs. Moore herself was apparently unaware that she was being mocked, making her bad poetry that much funnier. In an 1878 edition of her poems, she included 74 pages of praise for her previous book. Or, perhaps, the joke was on the reader. In her preface to that edition, she wrote, "although some of the newspapers speak against it, its sale has steadily progressed." One story, possibly apocryphal, is that she led a public reading, and a large audience turned out solely to mock her. Amid jeers, she said to them, "You have come here and paid twenty-five cents to see a fool; I receive seventy-five dollars, and see a whole houseful of fools."

From her poem, "To My Friends and Critics":

Come all you friends and critics,
     And listen to my song,
A word I will say to you,
     It will not take me long,
The people talks about me,
     They've nothing else to do
But to criticise their neighbors,
     And they have me now in view...

Perhaps you've read the papers
     Containing my interview;
I hope you kind good people
     Will not believe it true.
Some Editors of the papers
     They thought it would be wise
To write a column about me,
     So they filled it up with lies.

The papers have ridiculed me
     A year and a half or more.
Such slander as the interview
     I never read before.
Some reporters and editors
     Are versed in telling lies.
Others it seems are willing
     To let industry rise...

Dear Friends, I write for money,
     With a kind heart and hand,
I wish to make no Enemies
     Throughout my native land.
Kind friends, now I close my rhyme,
     And lay my pen aside,
Between me and my critics
     I leave you to decide.

*Some information from this post is from Essays On American Humor: Blair Through The Ages (1993), edited by Walter Blair and Hamlin Hill. You'll also find Julia Moore's poetry in the anthology The Stuffed Owl: An Anthology of Bad Verse, edited by D. B. Wyndham Lewis and Charles Lee.