of yours is rejected because you are unknown to fame.  Nothing pleases an editor more than to get anything worth having from a new hand.  There is always a dearth of really fine articles for a first-rate journal; for, of a hundred pieces received, ninety are at or below the sea-level; some have water enough, but no head; some head enough, but no water; only two or three are from full reservoirs, high up that hill which is so hard to climb.

You may have genius.  The contrary is of course probable, but it is not demonstrated.  If you have, the world wants you more than you want it.  It not only a desire, but a passion, for every spark of genius that shows itself among us; there is not a bull-calf in our national pasture that can bleat a rhyme but it is ten to one, among his friends and no takers, that he is the real, genuine, no-mistake Osiris.

Qu’est ce qu’il a fait? What has he done?  That was Napoleon’s test.  What have you done?  Turn up the faces of your picture-cards, my boy!  You need not make mouths at the public because it has not accepted you at your own fancy-valuation.  Do the prettiest thing you can and wait your time.

For the verses you send me, I will not say they are hopeless, and I dare not affirm that they show promise.  I am not an editor, but I know the standard of a some editors.  You must not expect to “leap with a single bound” into the society of those whom it is not flattery to call your betters.  When “The Paetolian” has paid you for a copy of verses,—­(I can furnish you a list of alliterative signatures, beginning with Annie Aureole and ending with Zoe Zenith,)—­when “The Ragbag” has stolen your piece, after carefully scratching your name out,—­when “The Nut-cracker” has thought you worth shelling, and strung the kernel of your cleverest poem,—­then, and not till then, you may consider the presumption against you, from the fact of your rhyming tendency, as called in question, and let our friends hear from you, if you think it worth while.  You may possibly think me too candid, and even accuse me of incivility; but let me assure you that I am not half so plain-spoken as Nature, nor half so rude as Time.  If you prefer the long jolting of public opinion to the gentle touch of friendship, try it like a man.  Only remember this,—­that, if a bushel of potatoes is shaken in a market-cart without springs to it, the small potatoes always get to the bottom.

Believe me, etc., etc.

* * * * *

I always think of verse-writers, when I am in this vein; for these are by far the most exacting, eager, self-weighing, restless, querulous, unreasonable literary persons one is like to meet with.  Is a young man in the habit of writing verses?  Then the presumption is that he is an inferior person.  For, look you, there are at least nine chances in ten that he writes poor verses.  Now the habit of chewing on rhymes without sense and soul to match them is, like that of using any other narcotic, at once a proof of feebleness and a debilitating agent.  A young man can get rid of the presumption against him afforded by his writing verses only by convincing us that they are verses worth writing.