Читать книгу Reminiscences of a Raconteur, Between the '40s and the '20s - George H. Ham - Страница 16

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I might as well candidly admit two things, and the admission is made with not too much vaunting pride. The first is that I once had great aspirations of being a poet, and while I had not the nerve to imagine I would reach the top-notcher class with Shakespeare, Byron, Tennyson, Bobby Burns, Campbell and other noted writers, I had fond hopes of at least having my effusions printed (at my own expense) in some magazine or other as a starter, until Fame would overtake me, and then—. But Fame couldn’t even catch up to me, let alone overtake me, although some of my effusions were highly spoken of by friends who had borrowed or wanted to borrow money from me. Here is one, which I did not dash off—just like that—but labored several years at it, and forget now whether it is finished or not. It was my intention to make it an epic; as I read it now, it looks most like an epicac. But here it is:

I wonder if in the early dawn,

When upon God’s great creating plan

He builded sky and sea and land

And moulded clay into living man,

Why used He earth in this grand work

Instead of carving hardened stone?

Was it because He knew that man

Could not—would not—live alone?

Then using the very softest dust

He made Man plastic—so his coming mate

Could always mould him as she wished,

Which she has done since Eve He did create.

That reminds me of Bill Smith coming into the Gazette office at Whitby one day a good many years ago, and telling me he was composing an elegy on his little dead brother, and wanted to know if I would print it for him. I told him we were a little short of space, but if it didn’t occupy more than three or four columns I would do my level best. In a couple of weeks, in marched William, and very grandiloquently laid his masterpiece before me. It wasn’t as long as he had been writing it. In fact it read:

“That little brave,

That little slave,

They laid him in the cold, cold grave.”

—William Smith.

One beautiful thing about it was that, like the speech of one of Joe Martin’s Cabinet ministers, out in British Columbia, it was of his own composure. The circulation of the Gazette increased largely that week, for William came in and absent-mindedly took away a couple of dozen copies to send to sympathizing friends and relatives.