Fame beckoned him upward from her templed steep. The rhymes which rose before him unbidden were as the rounds of Jacob's ladder, on which he would climb to a heaven of-glory.
Master Gridley threw cold water on the young man's too sanguine anticipations of success. "All up with the boy, if he's going to take to rhyming when he ought to be doing up papers of brown sugar and weighing out pounds of tea. Poor-house,--that 's what it'll end in. Poets, to be sure! Sausage-makers ! Empty skins of old phrases,--stuff 'em with odds and ends of old thoughts that never were good for anything,--cut 'em up in lengths and sell'em to fools!
And if they ain't big fools enough to buy 'em, give'em away; and if you can't do that, pay folks to take'em. Bah! what a fine style of genius common-sense is! There's a passage in the book that would fit half these addle-headed rhymesters. What is that saying of mine about I squinting brains?"He took down "Thoughts on the Universe," and read:--"Of Squinting Brains.
"Where there is one man who squints with his eyes, there are a dozen who squint with their brains. It is an infirmity in one of the eyes, making the two unequal in power, that makes men squint. Just so it is an inequality in the two halves of the brain that makes some men idiots and others rascals. I knows a fellow whose right half is a genius, but his other hemisphere belongs to a fool; and I had a friend perfectly honest on one side, but who was sent to jail because the other had an inveterate tendency in the direction of picking pockets and appropriating aes alienum."All this, talking and reading to himself in his usual fashion.
The poetical faculty which was so freely developed in Gifted Hopkins had never manifested itself in Cyprian Eveleth, whose look and voice might, to a stranger, have seemed more likely to imply an imaginative nature. Cyprian was dark, slender, sensitive, contemplative, a lover of lonely walks,--one who listened for the whispers of Nature and watched her shadows, and was alive to the symbolisms she writes over everything. But Cyprian had never shown the talent or the inclination for writing in verse.
He was on the pleasantest terms with the young poet, and being somewhat older, and having had the advantage of academic and college culture, often gave him useful hints as to the cultivation of his powers, such as genius frequently requires at the hands of humbler intelligences. Cyprian was incapable of jealousy; and although the name of Gifted Hopkins was getting to be known beyond the immediate neighborhood, and his autograph had been requested by more than one young lady living in another county, he never thought of envying the young poet's spreading popularity.
That the poet himself was flattered by these marks of public favor may be inferred from the growing confidence with which he expressed himself in his conversations with Cyprian, more especially in one which was held at the "store" where he officiated as "clerk.""I become more and more assured, Cyprian," he said, leaning over the counter, "that I was born to be a poet. I feel it in my marrow. Imust succeed. I must win the laurel of fame. I must taste the sweets of"---" Molasses," said a bareheaded girl of ten who entered at that moment, bearing in her hand a cracked pitcher, "ma wants three gills of molasses."Gifted Hopkins dropped his subject and took up a tin measure. He served the little maid with a benignity quite charming to witness, made an entry on a slate of .08, and resumed the conversation.
"Yes, I am sure of it, Cyprian. The very last piece I wrote was copied in two papers. It was 'Contemplations in Autumn,' and--don't think I am too vain--one young lady has told me that it reminded her of Pollok. You never wrote in verse, did you, Cyprian?""I never wrote at all, Gifted, except school and college exercises, and a letter now and then. Do you find it an easy and pleasant exercise to make rhymes?"Pleasant! Poetry is to me a delight and a passion. I never know what I am going to write when I sit down. And presently the rhymes begin pounding in my brain,--it seems as if there were a hundred couples of them, paired like so many dancers,--and then these rhymes seem to take possession of me, like a surprise party, and bring in all sorts of beautiful thoughts, and I write and write, and the verses run measuring themselves out like"---"Ribbins,--any narrer blue ribbins, Mr. Hopkins? Five eighths of a yard, if you please, Mr. Hopkins. How's your folks?" Then, in a lower tone, "Those last verses of yours in the Bannernoracle were sweet pooty."Gifted Hopkins meted out the five eighths of blue ribbon by the aid of certain brass nails on the counter. He gave good measure, not prodigal, for he was loyal to his employer, but putting a very moderate strain on the ribbon, and letting the thumb-nail slide with a contempt of infinitesimals which betokened a large soul in its genial mood.
The young lady departed, after casting upon him one of those bewitching glances which the young poet--let us rather say the poet, without making odious distinctions--is in the confirmed habit of receiving from dear woman.
