THE LITTLE BIRD

    My dear Daddie bought a mansion
      For to bring my Mammie to,
    In a hat with a long feather,
      And a trailing gown of blue;
    And a company of fiddlers
      And a rout of maids and men
    Danced the clock round to the morning,
      In a gay house-warming then. 
    And when all the guests were gone, and
      All was still as still can be,
    In from the dark ivy hopped a
      Wee small bird:  and that was Me.

“Peacock Pie” is immortal diet indeed, as Sir Walter said of his scrip of joy.  Annealed as we are, I think it will discompose the most callous.  It is a sweet feverfew for the heats of the spirit, It is full of outlets of sky.

As for Mr. de la Mare himself, he is a modest man and keeps behind his songs.  Recently he paid his first visit to America, and we may hope that even on Fifth Avenue he saw some fairies.  He lectured at some of our universities and endured the grotesque plaudits of dowagers and professors who doubtless pretended to have read his work.  Although he is forty-four, and has been publishing for nearly sixteen years, he has evaded “Who’s Who.”  He lives in London, is married, and has four children.  For a number of years he worked for the Anglo-American Oil Company.  Truly the Muse sometimes lends to her favourites a merciful hardiness.

THE LITERARY PAWNSHOP

Excellent Parson Adams, in “Joseph Andrews,” is not the only literary man who has lamented the difficulty of ransoming a manuscript for immediate cash.  It will be remembered that Mr. Adams had in his saddlebag nine volumes of sermons in manuscript, “as well worth a hundred pounds as a shilling was worth twelve pence.”  Offering one of these as a pledge, Parson Adams besought Mr. Tow-Wouse, the innkeeper, to lend him three guineas but the latter had so little stomach for a transaction of this sort that “he cried out, ‘Coming, sir,’ though nobody called; and ran downstairs without any fear of breaking his neck.”

As a whimsical essayist (with whom I have talked over these matters) puts it, the business of literature is imperfectly coordinated with life.

Almost any other kind of property is hockable for ready cash.  A watch, a ring, an outworn suit of clothes, a chair, a set of books, all these will find willing purchasers.  But a manuscript which happens not to meet the fancy of the editors must perforce lie idle in your drawer though it sparkle with the brilliants of wit, and five or ten years hence collectors may list it in their catalogues.  No mount of piety along Sixth Avenue will accept it in pawn, no Hartford Lunch will exchange it for corned beef hash and dropped egg.  This is a dismal thing.