the sober, industrious poet,
and how he fared at easter-time.
“alas, mary!” exclaimed william sonnet, as he entered his neat but humble tenement apartment a few days before the close of lent, “i fear that our pfingst holiday this year will be anything but a merry one. my employers have notified me that if they receive any more complaints of the goods from my department they will give me the sack.”
william sonnet was certainly playing in hard luck, although it would be difficult to find in the whole of jersey city a more industrious, sober young poet, or a more devoted husband and father. for nine years he had been employed in the[pg 200] empire prose and verse foundry, the largest literary establishment on the banks of the hackensack, where by sheer force of sobriety and industry he had risen from the humble position of cash-boy at the hexameter counter to that of foreman of the dialect floor, where forty-five hands were kept constantly employed on prose and verse. during these years his relations with his employers, messrs. rime & reeson, had been of the pleasantest nature until about six months previous to the opening of this story, when they began—unjustly, as it seemed to him—to find fault with the goods turned out by his department. there were complaints received at the office every day, they said, of both the dialect stories and verses that bore the empire brand.
the century magazine had returned a large invoice of hand-sewed negro dialect verses of the “befoh de wah” variety, and a syndicate which supplied the western[pg 201] market had canceled all its spring orders on the ground that the dialect goods had for some reason or other fallen far below the standard maintained in the other departments of the empire foundry. william was utterly unable to account for this change in the quality of the manuscript prepared on his floor, and as he sat with his bowed head resting on his toil-hardened hand, and the sweat and grime of honest labor on his brow, he looked, indeed, the very picture of dejection.
“william,” said his wife, as she placed a caressing hand on his forehead, “you have enemies in the foundry whom you do not suspect. you must know that when you wooed and won me a year ago i had been courted by no less than four different poets who at that time were employed at the eagle verse works in newark, but have since found positions with messrs. rime & reeson. i will not[pg 202] deny, william, that i toyed with the affections of those poets, but it was because i deemed them as frivolous as myself, and when they went from my presence with angry threats on their lips i laughed in merry glee. but when i saw them standing together on street corners, with their heads together in earnest conversation, i grew sick at heart, for i knew it boded us no good. be warned, william, by my words.”
the next day, when the whistle blew at noon, william sonnet ate his dinner from his tin pail as usual; but then, instead of going out into the street to play baseball with the poets from the adjacent factories, as the empire foundry employees generally did, he took a quiet stroll through the whole establishment, under the pretense of looking for an envoy that had been knocked off the end of a ballade.
in the packing-department was a large[pg 203] consignment of goods from his floor ready for shipment, and he stopped to examine the burr of a scotch magazine story to make sure that it had not been rubbed off by carelessness. what was his surprise to find that the dialect, which he himself had gone over with a cross-cut file that very morning, was now worn completely smooth by contact with an emery-wheel! he replaced the story carefully in the fine sawdust in which it was packed, and then examined the other goods. they had not yet been touched, but it was evident to him that the miscreants fully intended to finish the destructive work which they had only had time to begin. returning to his own bench, he passed two or three poets who were talking earnestly together, and by straining his ears he heard one of them whisper:
“we’ll finish the job to-night. meet me at ten.”
that was enough for william sonnet.[pg 204] he determined, without delay, what course to pursue.
at half-past nine that evening, three mysterious figures draped in black cloaks entered the empire prose and verse foundry by a side door. william sonnet was one of the three, and the others were his employers, messrs. rime & reeson. he led them to a place of concealment which commanded a full view of the packing-room. before long stealthy footsteps were heard, and the four conspirators entered.
“listen,” said the eldest of the quartet, as he threw the light from his dark lantern on the sullen faces of his companions; “you all know why we are here. this night we will complete william sonnet’s ruin, and easter monday will find him hunting for work in paterson and newark, and hunting in vain. why is he foreman of the dialect department, while we toil at the bench for a mere crust?[pg 205] mary birdseye is now his bride; but when we wooed her we were rejected like our own poems.”
“and that, too, although we inclosed no postage,” retorted the second poet, bitterly.
“now to work,” continued the first speaker, as he stooped to examine some goods on the floor. “what have we here? a serial for the atlantic monthly? well, we’ll soon fix that,” and in another moment he had injected a quantity of ginger into the story, ruining it completely. then the work of destruction went on, while messrs. rime & reeson watched the vandals with horror depicted on their faces. a pan of sweepings from the humorous department, designed for harper’s “editor’s drawer” and the bazar, was thrown away, and real funny jokes substituted for them. a page article for the sunday supplement of a new york daily, entitled “millionaires who have[pg 206] gold filling in their teeth,” embellished with cuts of twenty different jaws, was thrown out, and an article on “jerusalem the golden,” ordered by the whited sepulchre, substituted.
messrs. rime & reeson could control themselves no longer. stacked against the wall like a woodpile were the twelve instalments of a century serial by amelia e. barr, which had been sawed into the proper lengths that afternoon. seizing one of these apiece, the three men made a sudden onslaught on the miscreants and beat them into insensibility. then they bound them securely and delivered them over to the tormentors.
as for honest william sonnet, he was made foreman of the whole foundry; and his wife, who was a fashion-writer, and therefore never fit to be seen, received a present of two beautiful new tailor-made dresses, which fitted her so well that no one recognized her, and she opened a new[pg 207] line of credit at all the stores in the neighborhood.
it was a happy family that sat down to the easter dinner in william sonnet’s modest home; and to make their joy complete, before the repast was ended an envelope arrived from william’s grateful employers containing an appointment for his bedridden mother-in-law as reader for a large publishing house.
