Cup of Fancy,

finding therein neither Lees nor Dregs, which

bite the tongue, stifle the song, of lesser Men; he had

reverently kissed the coy hand of Fame, when she had

crowned his Worthy Brow, with her Wreath Immortal!

His Poems, homely, simple, sweet—springing from the lap of

Nature—had spread, like wild-fire of the Forest,

into the Four Quarters of the Globe.

He came from the Land, across the River, where, in

these latter days, the People quit the planting of the Potato,

to pen a Poem: pause in the cultivation of the Corn, to

compose a Novel. Some of it is good, very good; Some

of it is bad, very bad: but all of it produces

a princely Revenue far in excess of any return

from either the Potato or the Corn.

Long before the avalanche-like advent of this State-

wide Literary Madness, the Star of this Poet had risen—

risen before, and still shines beyond, and above them all.

The hand which wrote "Goodbye, Jim"—not classical

in either Greek or Roman sense, yet a great

American Classic—with its pungent odor of Blue Jeans, with

its clean, sweet, clear-cut, fine smell, of its native soil—

that hand may never again hold the Pen; the man

himself, may crumble—God forbid!—back into the Dust—

that "Little Dust of Harm"—out of which he came;

but his Poems will not, cannot die.

When those other Writers will have been forgotten;

when even the gifted Maker of "Ben Hur" will be, but

as an empty name; even then, this Poet,

and his Poems, will cleave to the Mind, cling to the

Heart, of countless Generations, not yet born!

Whatever Is—Is Best

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