SPLORES

OF A

HALLOWEEN,

TWENTY YEARS AGO:

BY ALEXANDER DICK.

WOODSTOCK, C. W.:

WILLIAM WARWICK, PUBLISHER.

1867.

PREFACE.

The following verses were sent to compete for the prize offered in October last, by the Montreal Caledonian Society, for the “best poem on Halloween.” They were not successful; and some may be ready to ask, “Why then publish them?” It may be sufficient to reply, “I choose to do so;” “I choose to appeal from the award of the Judges to the decision of the public.” A single sentence will explain why I make such an appeal. The gentlemen appointed to act as judges based their decision, according to their published statement, as much upon “suitability for recitation at a public festival,” as upon “literary merit.” Had this been stated in the advertisement inviting competition it would have been all right. But it is very evident that all poems which might be judged unsuitable for such recitation, would necessarily be excluded from competition, whatever might be their “literary merits,” and the successful production could only be that which among the “suitable” was regarded as possessing the greatest literary excellence. It is on this ground—and not because I could be so vain as to think that my production ought to have received the prize, while I was altogether unacquainted with not a few others which may have been rejected on the same principle—that I complain of the award of the Judges, and that I now appeal from that award by this publication.

A poem may be very well suited for recitation at a public festival, and possess very slight claims to any literary merit, while another indefinitely superior might not in such circumstances be suitable for recitation at all.

With the public I now leave the decision, and shall cheerfully acquiesce in its award whether favourable or the reverse.

A. D.

Woodstock, C. W., Jan., 1867.

HALLOWEEN.