How little the public know of the inside workings of these things!

I’m disgusted with this trickery, and am going to shut right down on the whole thing.  Oh! they may howl, but not another line do they get!

I’m going into the song business.  That’s something that isn’t overdone.  I composed a perfect little gem lately.  It is called “Lines on the death of a child.”  I chose this subject because it is comparatively new.  A few have attempted it, but they betray a crudeness and lack of pathos painful to witness.

Whether I have supplied that deficiency or not is for the public, not me, to judge.  But if the public, or any other man, be he male or female, thinks that by ribaldry and derision I can be induced to publish the whole of this work before it’s copyrighted, they’re mistaken.  The salt that’s going on the tail of this particular fowl ain’t ripe yet.

It’s going to be set to music and it’ll probably hatch a song.  I called on a publisher last week about it.

“Don’t you think,” said I, “that it’ll take ’em by storm?”

“Worse than that,” he replied.  “It’s a reg’lar line gale.”

I knew he’d be enthusiastic about it.

He said he hadn’t got any notes in, that would fit it just then, but be expected a lot in the next steamer, and I could have my choice.  He was very polite, and I thanked him kindly.

Jealous as I am of my reputation, I am willing to stake it on this poem.  A man don’t collect the obituary notices of one hundred infants and boil ’em down over a slow fire without something to be proud of, you know.

Here is a sample of it: 

LINES ON THE DEATH OF A CHILD.

“Tell me, dear mother,
Hast the swallows homeward flode
When the clock strikes nine? 
Does our WILLIE’S spirit roam
In that home
Beyond the skies,
Along with LIZE? 
Say, mother
Say—­”

The other verses are, if anything, better than this.  If you are anxious to publish this poem entire, why not leave out the pictures and all the reading matter from PUNCHINELLO for two weeks, and show the public what genius, brains, and ability can accomplish, unaided?  If you publish it in detachments, it weakens it, you see.  If the verses can’t lean against each other, they pine away immediately.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  THE YOUNG DEMOC TRYING TO PUT THE BIG SACHEM’S PIPE OUT.

Big Sachem.  “SAY, YOUNG MAN, AIN’T YOU AFRAID YOU’LL BURN YOUR BREECHES?”]

* * * * *

SARSFIELD YOUNG HAS HIS HEAD EXAMINED.

DEAR PUNCHINELLO:—­The last time I visited a barber’s shop I wanted my hair trimmed.  Being in somewhat of a hurry for the train, I told the proprietor to cut it short.  As a matter of course, I was left.  As for my hair, there was precious little of that left, though.  Science was too much for it.  A hand-glass, brought to bear upon a mirror, opened up a perspective of pretty much all the back country belonging to my skull, that is seldom equalled outside the State Prison or the Prize Ring.