hers, whose brilliant debut
and equally sudden extinguishment in the field of literary endeavor have
given rise from time to time to no little discussion. He was young, very
young, indeed, at the time of his great literary success, and his
friends and neighbors prophesied great things for him. Yet nothing has
since come from his pen, and many have wondered why.

Thanks to Mr. Smithers himself I am enabled to make public the story of
his sudden withdrawal from the ranks of the immortals when on the very
threshold of the temple of fame.

Ten years have changed his point of view materially, and an experience
that once seemed tragedy to him is now in his eyes sufficiently tinged
with comedy, and his own position among us is so secure that he is
willing that the story of his failure should go forth.

After trying many professions Smithers had become a man of schemes. He
devised plans that should enrich other people. Unfortunately, he sold
these to other people on a royalty basis, and so failed to grow rich
himself. If he had only sold his plans outright and collected on the
spot he might sometime have made something; but this he did not do, and
as a consequence he rarely made anything that was at all considerable,
and finally, to keep the wolf out of his dining-room, he was forced to
take up poetry, that being in his estimation the last as well as the
easiest resource of a well-ordered citizen.

"I always threatened to take up poetry when all else had failed me," he
said to himself; "therefore I will now proceed to take up poetry.
Writing is purely manual labor, anyhow. Given a pad, a pencil, and
perseverance--three very important p's--and I can produce a fourth, a
poem, in short order. Sorry I didn't get to the end of my other ropes
before, now that I think of it."

And so he sat down and took up poetry.

He put it down again, however, very quickly.

"Dear me!" he ejaculated. "Now, who'd have thought that? Here I have the
pencil and the pad and the perseverance, but I'm hanged if the poem is
quite as easy as I had supposed. These little conceits aren't so easy to
write, after all, even when they contain no ideas. Of course, it isn't
hard to say:

"'Sweet month of May, time of the violet wild,
The dandelion golden, and the mild
Ethereal sweetness of the blossoming trees,
The soft suggested calor of the breeze,
The ruby-breasted robin on the lawn,
The thrushes piping sweetly at the dawn,
The gently s