An Epistle to the Rt. Hon’ Maurice Winter Moe, Esq. of Zythopolis, in the Northwest Territory of HIS MAJESTY’S American Dominions

Thanks for the gift, nor blame me if I Teter

And slip into mine antient vice of metre,

For sure, your kindness piles Temptation on

With this new Handy Guide to Helicon!

Tho’ brief, ‘tis clear, with no false precepts strown,

Nor fashion’d for the pedant’s mind alone;

Each turn of stile, and each mechanick art,

The cogent author can with skill impart:

Bright beyond rivals, peerless three or four ways—

A fitting pair of steps to reach your Doorways!

Yet such a tome must take its proper place,

Nor vie with your own volume in the race!

Lud, Sir, but what new marvels daily come

Full-arm’d from the Mocratick cerebrum!

Tests, outlines, drills—and now your genius adds

New leaves of wonder in your sep’rate pads!

Macmillan sure would prove a brainless dolt

Did he not vie in eagerness with Holt—

But be their sense of judgment more or less,

You need not care—for you’ve the Kenyon Press,

Nurse of the arts—hail, Mater Gloriosa!

The press that carry’d fame to Wauwatosa!

And now in meekness let my fancy glance

At these sly tests which prov’d my ignorance

Those tricky snares which ev’n Mortonian mind

Could scarcely meet and scatheless leave behind!

The prose I view with less disorder’d pride,

And by my pristine verdicts still abide:

D may be Tark’s—but still I vow it groans

With needless weight, and talks in cumbrous tones;

Labours for pow’r, forgetting to be neat,

And trades its birthright for a cheap conceit.

As for trite F, I censur’d not its stream

Of thought, nor held it faithless to its theme;

My wildest wish was for less verbal pelf,

And for more freshness from the scribe himself!

But E—oh priceless pearl! how quick mine eye

Caught the bright vision from an age gone by!

Past my pleas’d mind in long procession ran

The assembl’d genius of the a. j. clan:

Lynch, Naughton, Fritter, roving Hennessy;

Hasemann—don’t choke!—and deathless David V.—

Lehmkuhl and Crowley, and—young imps of hell—

Porter and Moitoret and Kid Dowdell—

Woodbee and Warrenite the foreground take,

Whilst over all immortal soars Our Jake!

Dropping to poesy—my head drops, too,

As my illit’rate score I dumbly view!

(So dumb, eheu, my mental equipage,

I think Iambus was a Grecian sage!)

What can I say when here I stand confest

I can’t pick Shelley in a blindfold test?

How can I face the world—a crawling midge

Who puts a Wordsworth tag on Coleridge?

I say no more! May all the Muses chide me .

But, damn it, Morton’s in the soup beside me!

I now with pleasure hear, whilst you relate

Your recent deeds, and how you aestivate.

Pox on’t, but how you crown the flying hours

With new-made proofs of your scholastic pow’rs!

Your leisure’s like my toil—and when you labour,

You rise to heights that leave you not a neighbour!

I still await my cherisht chance to quaff

The nectar of your class-day MOE-KNOW-GRAPH.

Ah, me! can ‘t be that twenty years and more

Have pass’d since that blest Golden Age—’04?

A quarter century! And old and grey,

We see it still as if it ‘twere yesterday!

Old Nineteen-hundreds! What would we not give

Once more amid your artless hours to live?

Puff ties and cake-walks, cloak-and-sword romance,

And Teddy fighting back the trusts’ advance;

Queer horseless carriages on cobbled streets,

And new-found radium in the science sheets:

Wireless—the latest—(never’ll be much use!)

Japan—not yet a mark for our abuse—

“Bedelia” light on ev’ry whistler’s lip,

And rearward seating still the smartest quip:

St. Louis’ glory—crowds in fairward push

To rest beneath the broad Anheuser Busch.

Edwardus Rex on Britain’s antient throne,

And “Hiawatha” on the graphophone:

Hope still triumphant, and the cold grey morn

Of Mencken, Krutch, and Einstein yet unborn:

Harper’s chaste leaves with polisht mildness rife,

And prim McClure’s a stranger still to life.

Gilder still gilding with decorous mien,

And Winter freezing o’er the painted scene;

Van Dyke and Aldrich saying in fresh rhymes

The borrow’d thoughts and saws of other times—

Vague pleasing dreams of futures ever young;

“The Simple Life” on ev’ry trusting tongue;

Graft and muckraking in their genial fights,

And prophets soon to set the world to rights;

Dowie, Lyme Abbott, Parkhurst, and the rest

With various plans to put us ‘midst the blest;

Bryan and Hanna, nigger-minstrel shows,

Elb Hubbard posing o’er his Windsor bows,

Corbett, Fitzsimmons, Sharkey, and Old Jeff,

Pete Dailey Weber-Fields, and Fritzi Scheff,

Young Buster nosing out the Yellow Kid,

And ev’ry newsboy in an “Old Coon” lid;

“Extry—Port Arthur Falls”—we stand aghast—

But „Russia’s Czar has got a son at last”—

Santos-Dumont displays a fresh balloon,

And Langley vows his gliders will fly soon.

Bill Pick’ring vainly tells a sceptick nation

Of finding signs of lunar vegetation,

Nor can Park Lowell gather many pals

To hear about his precious Mars-canals!

Dear bygone days! Could modern genius hatch

A Mrs. Wiggs from any Cabbage Patch?

Could modern talent make us gape and marvel

At Zenda, Haddon Hall, or Richard Carvel?

‘04 produced what modern throats but whine—

The Flower of My Heart—Sweet Adeline!

Then Pilen’s Prince in tuneful splendour reign’d,

And “Woodland” bloom’d, by jazz yet unprofan’d:

Boston was still a sep’rate realm from Cork,

Whilst English yet was spoken in New York!

Shades of the past! And have I liv’d to view

A scene so diff’rent, and a world so new?

Have five and twenty years in truth gone by,

While still the old days seem so clear and nigh?

‘Zounds! ‘Tis a dream—this is not I at all—

This greybeard in the mirror on the wall!

What nonsense—when but lately I dar’d don

A derby hat, and put long trousers on!

Of course ‘tis dreaming—merely look about

And see how all reality’s in rout!

Autos in droves, men flying o’er the mist,

And talk of things that simply can’t exist! . . .

Shucks! There’s the proof! Sure, we need fret no more,

Because it must be still our old ‘04!

We’re merely dizzy—say, from overeating,

Or from some thought of Time’s relentless fleeting:

Sing, boys, in chorus—put the nightmare down

With “Bluebell”, “Creole Belles”, or “Nancy Brown”.

All—one—twohree—nor let your voices fail ye—

“Won’t you come home”—here, mind the pitch!—”Bill Bailey?”

No—that won’t do—try this: “O Karama,”

(Too high, I fancy) “be my guiding star!”

What’s this? No rhyme? O damn such close precision!

I hold these Western rrrrrrh’s in deep derision!

Not on your life—I vow you’re off your trolley

To think I’d listen to such upstart folly!

A fight! A fight! Here, knock his block off, Joe!

Eat him up, Jack; dump him at Buffalo!

But in his coc’nut! Lam him on the bean!

Go bite his head off! Puncture his canteen!

Bats in your belfry—you’re another, Jack!

Bum—bughouse—looney—go sit on a tack!

Thus down the years the virile echoes pour,

Fresh with the vigour of the days of yore:

While such survive, is it not still ‘04?

Oh, yes, those magazines which presently

Will saunter westward to 2303:

In one vast packet safely I’ll return all—

Mags, Doorways, and that pleasing English Journal.

The latter—thanks—sheds an informing blaze

On your young charges’ editorial ways:

I see—I know—and with new zeal extend

Congrats on what each hopeful chick hath penn’d.

So gifted Franklin turns the other Cheek

In fistick fashion, vigilant to seek

Ways to knock guys to the middle of next week!

Attaboy, Frank! An’ don’tcha let no bimbo

Knock ya down hill into de has-been’s limbo!

Keep right and left glov’d, dauntless and on edge,

Till ev’ry knuckle grows to be a sledge:

Punch ‘em to pulp, and let Manila’s shoar

Grow vocal in one tributary roar;

But keep art’s cunning in the mitt that slugs—

Pug among painters, painter among pugs!

I thrill with joy if Rems devoid of sound

Will bring Mocratick lines more frequent round!

For my part, nothing like a damn’d machine

Will give my thought a free and fair demesne.

‘Tis too unnatural for an old man still

A dweller in the realm of script and quill—

Words pause embarrassed, images depart

At sight of such an enemy to art:

When thoughts pile up, a pen must set ‘em free—

My grandsire’s ways are good enough for me!!

Well, Sir, my days in wonted fashion run

Beneath Rhode Island’s classick Georgian sun.

Last week a guest adorn’d the local strand—

Victor E. Bacon, of the a. j. band;

Fresh from convention, he declar’d his fellows

Had nurs’d the dying flame with frantick bellows:

An happier twelvemonth he discerns ahead,

The National still declining to be dead.

Six years had pass’d since I the youth had seen

In visual form, and I recall’d him lean;

Fancy my thoughts to find him deck’d today

In all the poundage I have cast away!

His stay was brief, yet fill’d with lib’ral cheer

And season’d with our Georgian atmosphere.

To Newport’s antient shoar I bade him rove,

And old Pawtuxet, dreaming by its cove.

Of much we spoke, the past more than the present—

So that the passing hours to both were pleasant.

And so it goes. But Lud! you must be yawning

At these misshapen lines my quill is spawning!

Pardon, Sir—pardon—yet pray don’t omit

To mind that Teter set me doing it!

A brief recess—now back to art’s dim last row,

To doctor that curst junk by old De Castro!

Hail and farewell—and may my trembling hand

Clasp yours some morning in a better land—

Some Delian isle or mild Ionian shoar

Where ‘twill be ever summer—and ‘04!