Verses

A New York Poet

The "American Ptyalism" was written on November 22nd, 1832, and is dated from Communipaw. It was never before published. That ptyalism is a chief characteristic of our own day, as well as of seventy-five years ago, is witnessed by the millions of signs displayed, not only in all our public buildings, on streets, in parks and in places of amusement, but also in places where the necessity to remind us that it would be bad behavior to expectorate, seems to be, but evidently is not, superficial, as in restaurants, in eating-places and lunch rooms.

The little town in southern Louisiana had lost all its former attraction to me- Returning to it after an absence of years, the scenery failed to fascinate me as it did of yore, there seemed to be no person I cared to associate with, besides I was tired of loafing and in need of some serious occupation. So I boarded at the hotel, if such it could be called, rented an old tumble-down plantation house at the crossroads for a studio, and tried to forget the past.

Many hundred stories, brief and lengthy accounts, arrive every week at the desk of our Contest Editor. Most of them testify that marriage, even in our commonplace age, preserves its old romance and that to relate a story of how Grandfather took Grandmother urges the pen into hands not otherwise ambitious of literary achievement. A handful of these stories will be chosen every week for the perusal of our readers.

The Romance of One Night