longer than
the brief lines that accompanied the first contribution--was scrawled
upon a separate piece of paper. This the editor opened first, and read
the following, with an amazement that for the moment dominated all other
sense:--

MR. EDITOR,--I see you have got my poetry in. But I don't see the
spondulix that oughter follow. Perhaps you don't know where to send it.
Then I'll tell you. Send the money to Lock Box 47, Green Springs P.
O., per Wells Fargo's Express, and I'll get it there, on account of my
parents not knowing. We're very high-toned, and they would think it's
low making poetry for papers. Send amount usually paid for poetry in
your papers. Or may be you think I make poetry for nothing? That's where
you slip up!

Yours truly,

WHITE VIOLET.

P. S.--If you don't pay for poetry, send this back. It's as good as what
you did put in, and is just as hard to make. You hear me? that's me--all
the time.

WHITE VIOLET.

The editor turned quickly to the new contribution for some corroboration
of what he felt must be an extraordinary blunder. But no! The few lines
that he hurriedly read breathed the same atmosphere of intellectual
repose, gentleness, and imagination as the first contribution. And yet
they were in the same handwriting as the singular missive, and both were
identical with the previous manuscript.

Had he been the victim of a hoax, and were the verses not original? No;
they were distinctly original, local in color, and even local in the use
of certain old English words that were common in the Southwest. He had
before noticed the apparent incongruity of the handwriting and the text,
and it was possible that for the purposes of disguise the poet might
have employed an amanuensis. But how could he reconcile the incongruity
of the mercenary and slangy purport of the missive itself with the
mental habit of its author? Was it possible that these inconsistent
qualities existed in the one individual? He smiled grimly as he thought
of his visitor Bowers and his friend Jack. He was startled as he
remembered the purely imaginative picture he had himself given to the
seriously interested Bowers of the possible incongruous personality of
the poetess.

Was he quite fair in keeping this from Jack? Was it really honorable, in
view of their wager? It is to be feared that a very human enjoyment of
Jack's possible discomfiture quite as much as any chivalrous friendship
impelled the editor to ring eventual