Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/324

316 of one's readers with stern, lugubrious countenance, and ponderous or lamentable voice, you make your appearance with a smile and a joke, punch the reader playfully in the ribs, and say, as it were, "Ha! ha! I've a good thing to tell you!" Although I have many imitators, some of whom have attained an excellence in the art which may be considered classic, yet I may fairly claim to have originated this branch of literature, and, while it retains its present unbounded popularity, my name cannot wholly perish.

Nevertheless, greatness has its drawbacks. I appeal to all distinguished authors, from Tupper to Weenie Willows, to confirm the truth of this assertion. I have sometimes, especially of late, doubted seriously whether it is a good thing to be distinguished. Alas! my dear young gentleman and lady, whose albums would be so dismally incomplete without my autograph ("accompanied with a sentiment"), would that you could taste the bitter with the sweet,—the honey and aloes of an American author's life! At first, it is exceedingly pleasant. You are like a newly-hatched chicken, or a pup at the end of his nine-days' blindness. You are petted, and stroked, and called sweet names, and fed with dainties, and carried in the arms of the gentlemen, and cuddled in the laps of the ladies. But when you get to be a big dog or a full-grown game-cock, take care! If people would but fancy that you still wore your down or silken skin, they might continue to be delighted with every gambol of your fancy. But they suspect pin-feathers and bristles, whether the latter grow or not; and, after doing their best to spoil you, they suddenly demand the utmost propriety of behavior. However, let me not anticipate. I can still call myself, without the charge of self-flattery, a Distinguished Character; at least I am told so, every day, each person who makes the remark supposing that it is an entirely original and most acceptable compliment. While this distinction lasts, (for I find that I lose it in proportion as I gain in sound knowledge and independent common-sense,) I should like to describe, for the contemplation of future ages, some of the penalties attached to popularity at present.

I was weak enough, I admit, to be immensely delighted with the first which I experienced,—not foreseeing whitherward they led. The timid, enthusiastic notes of girls of fifteen, with the words "sweet" and "exquisite," duly underscored, the letters of aspiring boys, enclosing specimens of their composition, and the touching pleas of individuals of both sexes, in reduced circumstances, were so many evidences of success, which I hugged to my bosom. Reducing the matter to statistics, I have since ascertained that about one in ten of these letters is dictated either by honest sympathy, the warm, uncritical recognition of youth (which I don't suppose any author would diminish, if he could), or the craving for encouragement, under unpropitious circumstances of growth. But how was I, in the beginning, to guess at the motives of the writers? They offered sugar-plums, which I swallowed without a suspicion of the drastic ingredients so many of them contained. Good Mrs. Sigourney kept a journal of her experiences in this line. I wish I had done the same.

The young lady correspondent, I find, in most cases replies to your reply, proposing a permanent correspondence. The young gentleman, who desires, above all things, your "candid opinion of the poems enclosed,—be sure and point out the faults, and how they can be improved"—is highly indignant when you take him at his word, and do so. You receive a letter of defence and explanation, showing that what you consider to be faults are not such. Moreover, his friends have assured him that the poem which you advise him to omit is one of his finest things! The distressed aspirant for literary fame, who only requests that you shall read and correct his or her manuscript, procure a publisher, and prefix a commendatory notice, signed