not one unfolded gleam of beauty? In this free air am I to find the poetic pressure of a prison? In this old cheerful home, a poet's garret? With your abundant and hospitable board before me, can I write as famous men of old, when they wanted a dinner? Am I to sit here, as one has said, waiting for inspiration as a rusty conductor for a flash of lightning? My dear sir, I surely can plead exemption. Let me[Pg 49] come here, if we live, next Christmas season or at the early spring or autumnal gathering. I will provide two if you please. If the first should weary, then the circle can hope that I have kept the best for the last."

[Pg 49]

"I do not think that it will answer for one to be a hearer who has no paper of his own. So let me insist on your compliance."

"Well sir, if you insist on it, I must see what I can do. Would you object to my producing a poem already published by me in a New York paper?"

"I am sorry to say that would not be in accordance with our rules. The piece must be composed for our social gathering."

"Well I must then make the attempt. I would weave a short romance out of some story I have heard in my travels. But I am always afraid of the sad being who, searching to the fag-end of memory says, after hearing you, and approving, let me see, I have heard that, or something like it, before! I once learned a lesson and received a nervous shock which easily returns, as I was about to address a meeting, and under a sudden impression asked the most knowing inhabitant of the village, 'Did any of the speakers who have addressed you ever tell such a story?' 'Oh! yes,' said he, with sudden alarm, 'Every one who has been here has told that story.' Yet that was my main stay, argument, illustration, eloquence. I had to do[Pg 50] the best I could without it. Since then I am in a trepidation lest I fall into the pit from which I kept my feet at that time."

[Pg 50]

"Well so much the better. Such caution will insure variety."

"Do not be too sure of that. Excessive care often leads us to the very errors it would avoid."

So our conversation closed. The paper was written and read. I looked some time ago in vain for my piece among the Overlook papers. Strange to say, it was not there. I saw the Judge originally endorse it and tie it up in the collection. Meta told me when I expressed my surprise that the document was missing, that she must confess that when she was younger and more silly, and had her taste 

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