University of Virginia Library

5. CHAPTER V.
THE POET.

When the lawyer was left alone he snuffed his candle and threw
himself back in his chair with an air of very decided satisfaction.

“I shall make a thousand dollars at the least by this affair,”
he said aloud. “They run all the risk and have the whole trouble,
while I only give my advice. I have the utmost confidence in the
whole plan. Swindle and Pindle are both the right sort of men.
They will carry it through.”

He was interrupted in his meditations by a low, timid knock at
his door.

“Another visitor! It is past nine o'clock. I wonder who it
can be?”

He rose and went to the door, but did not unlock it, but demanded
who was there?

“It is me, Mr. Satchell,” answered a soft voice.

“Who is me?”

“Byron!” simpered the lips without.

“Oh, my poet, hey!” answered Satchell, unlocking the door and
letting him in.

The visitor was a very slender, pale-faced young gentleman, with
very long light hair, very much tangled, very large wandering blue
eyes, and no beard. He was dressed very shabbily in a black coat
out at the elbows, shrunken up trowsers, a vest double-breasted
pinned for want of buttons close up to his throat, which was encircled
by a seedy black handkerchief. He looked altogether like a
young gentleman in distress, and had an air at once meek and proud,
—the pride of conscious genius struggling with conscious poverty.
His hair was brushed back from his high forehead, and a pen behind
the right ear protruded itself through the uncombed locks.

“Good even Sare,” said the poet, bowing very politely, and
looking at the same time very grave, “I have taken the liberty to intrude
upon you, Sir, to solicit the honor of the loan of about half an
inch of candle!”

“What do you want with candle?” asked Mr. Satchell with a
smile of curiosity.

“Why, Sare, I am exceedingly mortified to have to make this request
of you, but I have been penning an ode and had just finished
all but seven lines when as the fates would have it, my candle
expired very suddenly and mysteriously in the socket, and I was
left in Hadean darkness. It is important Sare, that the ode should
be completed to night, as it must be taken to the printers to appear,
without fail in the morning's paper! So you perceive, Sare, the infinite

importance of my request for the loan, temporarily of half an inch
of candle!”

Here Mr. Frederick Byron Rhymewell bowed with great gravity
and courtesy.

“Come in and finish your ode, Mr. Rhymewall at my candle, if
you have a mind to. I am sorry to say that this is my last one!”

“Sare, you are exceedingly polite. I would avail myself of your
very handsome offer, but really Sare, there are certain difficulties
that attend genius, which perhaps, Sare, you may not properly appreciate!
Will you believe it, Mr. Satchell I cannot compose a line
unless I have my own ink-stand before me and papers and the
things I am used to, and then my face must be towards the same
corner of the room!”

“Indeed, well then I will take my candle into your room and
wait until you complete your ode!”

“I am grateful, Sare, for your condescension!”

“Not at all,” answered the lawyer taking his light and following
the poet into his own room. This was an apartment about eight
feet square and wholly destitute of furniture, save a wretched little
table, a chair to match, and a dingy mattrass rolled up in the corner.
The rest was bare floor and bare walls. It was lighted by
day by a single window, which had fewer panes of glass than shingle
and rag panes. Upon the table was a cork ink-stand, a few
sheets of browny-white cap-paper, a pen worn to the stump, and a
rhyming dictionary very much dog-leafed and thumb-worn. A
scrap-book lay, also, upon the table, containing the various printed
poems and odes which Mr. Frederick Byron Rhyme well had written
for the newspapers at the order of shop-keepers, at a penny
a line.

“Be seated, Mr. Satchell,” said the poet, handing him the only
chair.”

“No, I can stand!”

“By no means, Sare! I insist! I can write my poem upon one
knee! I often do!”

Here he placed the chair, broken at the back and half its seat
whittled away with a penknife, for his landlord to sit in, while he
dropped gracefully upon one knee before his table, where he had
placed the light, seized his pen, dipped it in the ink, and then elevated
his chin and eyes to a dimly seen dark spot in the corner of the
ceiling, and seemed all at once to forget that he was not alone. In
an instant he was lost in the world of abstraction. Suddenly he
started as if he had been electrified and dashed the words of inspiration
off upon his paper with the speed of thought. It was like the
race of Pegasus. The ink flew in spatters as gravel might be supposed
to fly from the hoofs of Pegasus. In an instant one line was
penned and up went chin and eyes in “fine phrenzy rolling” in search
of another line in the dingy spot in the corner. At length it was
seized and penned down upon the paper, below the other. Five
more lines followed in rapid succession, and with a tremendous flourish

of the last word, Mr. Rhymewell triumphantly exclaimed,

“It is done! a quarter earned in two hours and a half!”

“You seem to be pursuing quite a profitable business of it,” observed
the lawyer, who had silently awaited the conclusion of the
poem.

“Yes, tolerably, Sare! I have a few good patrons, Sare! But
money I do not think of. It is fame and immortality, Mr. Satchell!”
he very earnestly replied.

“True, that is the main point, I dare say! You said you had
but seven lines to complete your ode, when you come into my room.
Do you always calculate the lengths beforehand?”

“Oh yes! This is a twenty-five line poem, Sare! Twenty-five
cents was all Mr. Cologne said he could give me!”

“You are writing it for a purfumer then?”

“Oh, yes, Sir! Let me read it to you.”

“I am quite satisfied it possesses merit! Don't take the trouble!”

“But the first line Sare! You must know, Mr. Cologne is a very
fashionable retail dealer in cosmetics. His rival, Mr. Lavender
got me last week to write him a poetical advertisement; well, you
see it took amazingly. You have no idea how it brought custom
to the shop. A perfect rush, Sare! 'Saw your sweet poetry, Mr.
Lavender,” says a beautiful lady, `and come to see what you
had!' You have no idea, Sare! Well, Mr. Cologne finding how
things were going, sends to me this morning to write him one that
should out-clipse that I wrote for Mr. Lavender, his rival! So this
is it! He is to give me twenty-five cents, Sare! Allow me to
read it!—”

“That is what I call a climax, Sare!”

“It is very fine!”

“I see you appreciate poetry, Sare!”

“You compliment me! How do these lines compare with those
you wrote for Mr. Lavender?”

“Bless you, Sare! They are not to be named in the same letters
of the alphabet! Mr. Lavender is cut all out. But you havn't heard
the whole!”

“I can guess at the rest, from the specimen!”

“Let me read to you Mr. Lavender's, Sare!”

Here the excited poet rapidly opened his common-place book,
which was made of some twenty leaves of brown-paper on which
were pasted narrow newspaper columnar strips containing his lucubrations.

To one of these he turned and began to read forth with
as if he feared his auditor would not wait.

“What street is Washing' street, sir?”

“Washington street, Sare! The last syllable is omitted by a sort
of poetical license, because it makes the line too long for the ear.
I have a desperate musical ear sure!”

“I understand now!”

“That will do! I see you have in the other surpassed yourself
in this one!”

“Decidedly, Sare! It would give me very great pleasure to read
both of them through to you, Sare!”

“I should be sorry to detain you,” answered the lawyer with
mock gravity. “I think I heard you say, you had to take them to
the printer to night!”

“Yes, sir—but—”

“It is already past nine!”

“Bless me! I did not believe it was so late!” exclaimed Mr.
Rhymewell pulling at his fob, with an air, but coming in contact
with his torn and buttonless waistband. “I shall be back in an
hour, I will then pay you your rent. It is due to night, I believe.
I always like to be punctual! It is a nine-pence a day for the room,
which is for three days (I was to pay my rent every three days,)
three nine-pences, which makes just thirty-seven and a half cents,
Sare!”

“In the morning will answer, as I shall be in bed when you
come in!

“How extremely condescending, Sare! I am delighted to see that
I have so far your confidence that you are not afraid to trust me!
I adore a man of honor like you, Sare! It was a glorious fortune that
sent me here, Sare, to be your guest at a ninepence a day!”

“How much have you made to day, Mr. Rhymewell?” asked
the lawyer, curious to know how such a strange being lived; for he
had seen him only four days before standing near the outer-door in
the alley as he went out, and questioning Handy as to the probability
of hiring a room in the tenement. Handy was just giving him
suitable encouragement touching the matter when seeing Mr. Satchell
he referred him to him, saying, `Here's de Boss, ax him and I
guess he put you somewhar!' So, Mr. Satchell, who to do him jus

landlord over the only tenement he owned
rented him the room he now occupied at the rate of ninepence per
diem, payable, at the end of every three days. Mr. Rhymewell
herefore deposited himself there at once, hiring of Handy a mattrass
or two cents a night, payable in advance, and negotiating with him
or his meals at four cents each. Thus inducted into his new abode
and provided for in his household matters Mr. Rhymewell had nothing
to do but to devote his pen to the coining of the twenty-seven
cents, per diem, aggregate, a very heavy sum for a penny a line poet
to make up daily. But, thus far Mr. Rhymewell seemed to be doing
a very prosperous business.

“How much have I made, Sare?” repeated the poet. “Let me
see! There is the poem for Mr Rowland Hill, Jr., the hair oil gentleman,
that is a shilling! Then there is another for the Fur-store, that
is eleven lines, eleven cents! How much is that, Sare?

“Twenty-eight cents!”

“Egzactly, Sare! Then here is this for Mister Cologne, this is
twenty-five cents?”

“That makes fifty-three cents!”

“So it does! I had no idea it come to so much?”

“How much did you make yesterday?”

“I made my fourteen cents! I dont make so much every day,
as to-day, Sare! This is one of my lucky days. Fridays are always
lucky days to me!”

“People generally call them unlucky.”

“People! I don't level myself with the people, Sare! Genius has
nothing in common with other men, Sare. I would walk on my
head if I could!”

“Are you now going out? It is a chilly night. Have you no
over-coat?”

“Over-coat! I scorn an over-coat! Sare,” responded Mr. Rhymewell,
buttoning closely to his breast by its only button his short-waisted
coat, and swelling out with his legs astride so that his short
pants came above the tops of his dirty cotton socks. “Sare, a man
who has true genius in his soul, never knows cold! He can't feel it,
Sare. I don't feel it, Sare!”

Mr. Rhymewell then took a very suspicious looking nap-worn
white-hat with a very narrow brim from a nail, and thrust it upon
his head, inclining it a little back. He folded his “ode” in his hand
and strode to the door with an air as if he scorned using even legs
to walk with. The lawyer took up his candle, which was nearly
burned down into the ink-stand which served it as a candle-stick,
and followed him out, for the poet seemed all at once to forget that
he was there, or that his door had to be shut after him. Without a
word he passed down the stairs three at a time, and the lawyer
could hear him going through the entry below, muttering in a half-tragic
tone,

“What dat you say Massa Byrum 'bout bracking?” asked Handy,
who was in his door polishing boots. “You want your shoe
bracked I do 'em for half price! But if you wants de sole ob em
bracked too, I axes two cent more!”

“Out upon thee, son of Afric, out!” Thy speech smacks of thy
grovellin' trade where all thy thoughts are! I scorn thy brush and
thee!”

Here the poet took one enormous stride and vanished into the
alley.

“Bress us! what am got inter Massa Byrum wid his poeticks to
night? He am a berry odd man any how. He tell me git out for
son of Africky! Bell it am a berry perlite way ob callin' a colored
gemman a nigger!”

Satchell who had heard all this, re-entered his office laughing
like one who, with all his evil, could appreciate oddities of life and
character in individuals. Handy began to sing “coal-brack Rose,”
again, and Kaleb struck in with the “Cobbler's Song,” to the same
tune; and thus their rival songs mingled harmoniously with each
other.

When the lawyer re-entered his room he carefully locked the
door, and then going to his turn-up bedstead he let it down, discovering
a door behind it. It was fastened by a pad-lock, which he
removed, and taking in one hand a pistol from a shelf over the door
and his candle, he opened the door and entered the room, the outer
entrance to which was nailed up.