Title:  The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor

Author:  Wallace Irwin

Release Date:  March, 2004 [EBook #5332] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on July 1, 2002]

Edition:  10

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

*** Start of the project gutenberg EBOOK, the love sonnets of A car conductor ***

This eBook was produced by David Schwan davidsch@earthlink.net.

The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor

By Wallace Irwin

Author of
The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum
The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, Junior
Etc.

With a harmless and instructive Introduction by Wolfgang Copernicus Addleburger

Professor of Literary Bi-Products
University of Monte Carlo

Muse of my native land, am I inspir’d? - Keats.

Paul Elder & Company San Francisco and New York

Mark what I say! 
Attend me where I wheel!
- Troilus and Cressida.

Copyright, 1908 by Paul Elder and Company

Introduction

Science may conquer the stars, but it does nothing by jumps.  As a Scientist, as well as a philosopher, I am accustomed to reaching the Transcendental by winding paths.  It is characteristic of me that I should have consented to preface this remarkable Sonnet Cycle only after supreme deliberation, and that I should at last have determined to speak in behalf of the Car Conductor for the following reasons: 

1.  As a Botanist I am fascinated by the phenomenon of Genius flourishing from bud to flower, from flower to seed.

2.  As a Psychologist I am anxious to establish once and for all, both by plano-inductive and precoordinate systems of logic, the Status of Slang.

What position does Slang occupy in the thought of the world?  Let us turn to Zoology for an answer.

No traces of Slang may be found among mollusks, crustaceans or the lower invertebrates.  Slang is not common to vertebrate fishes or to whales, seals, reptiles or anthropoid apes — in a word, slang-speaking is nowhere prevalent among lower animals.  It may, then, be definitely and clearly asserted that Slang is the natural, logical expression of the Human Race.  If Man, then, is the highest of created mammals, is not his natural speech (Slang) the highest of created languages?  It is generally conceded that Literature is the most exalted expression of Language.  Would not the Literature, then, which employs the highest of created languages (Slang) be the supreme Literature of the world?

By such logical, irrefutable, inductive steps have I proven not only the Status of Slang, but the literary importance of these Sonnets which it is at once my scientific duty and my esthetic pleasure to introduce.