Читать книгу Now I Remember: Autobiography of an Amateur Naturalist - Thornton Waldo Burgess - Страница 15

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And in that way you will

save all three. Try my work,

and if not satisfactory, just

return it. Ads in rhyme a

specialty.

T. W. BURGESS,

12 Grand View Ave.,

SOMERVILLE, MASS.

It was preposterous. It was absurd. Of course. It was, and still is, inconceivable that that little investment drawn from my meager capital should pay off in hard cash, but it did. Moreover, it paid a tremendous extra dividend in that it definitely settled for all time the question of what I wanted to do. I wanted to write. From that time on I knew that I must somehow make my living with my pen. There was not even a shadow of doubt.

In looking back over a successful career there is a great degree of satisfaction for one to be able to say it was here, or there, that he made his start. I suspect that more often than not it is impossible to pinpoint this very beginning, the factual planting of the seed of success. In my case it can be done. It was that little advertising rhyme in Brains.

As soon as that issue of Brains was off the press, I received a request to call at once at an advertising agency in Boston. As requested, my response was prompt. In fact, I may say it was in some haste. Those were hungry days. As a stimulant to prompt reaction and endeavor I know of nothing equal to an empty stomach.

The agency was doing some advertising for the Miles Standish Spring Water Company. A booklet was wanted, a booklet in verse. Could I paraphrase Longfellow’s epic of Miles Standish, reduce it to twenty short verses, and incidentally introduce the discovery of a spring, the spring, by Miles Standish? Oh crass temerity of youth! I could and I would. Many times I have blushed at the memory of my audacity.

At that time my boyhood chum was studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He came to my room to spend the evening on the day I wrote the epic. He listened critically while I read it aloud. He nodded approval, then brought me back to earth with a practical question. “How much are you going to ask for it?” he wanted to know.

“I think I ought to get five dollars for it,” said I.

“Man, you’re crazy!” he cried. “Don’t ask a cent less than fifteen.”

“You’re the one who is crazy,” I retorted. “No one would pay fifteen dollars for this. I did it in about three hours. No one will pay any such sum for three hours’ work.”

Ernest was the better businessman. He argued so convincingly that the next morning when I started for the agency I was uncertain. Perhaps he was right and I had underrated myself.

At the office I found the president of the Spring Water Company had come in. My modest emulation of Mr. Longfellow (I blush again) was given him to read. He liked it. It met with his instant approval. The manager of the agency turned to me. “What do we owe you?” he asked.

The dreaded crucial moment had come. “What will you pay me?” I stammered.

“You’re selling; we’re buying; how much?” he replied.

This was business. I hated business. This sounded like bargaining and I never could haggle. I can’t to this day. I thought of Ernest. “Fifteen dollars,” I mumbled and half caught my breath at my brashness. Then I really did catch it at the celerity with which those three five-dollar bills appeared. How right my chum was! And how innocent we both were as to what that agency probably had expected to pay.

That was the first money I ever earned with my pen. It was a heady stimulant. I haven’t a copy of that booklet. Perhaps it is just as well. Still, I would like to know the full degree of my youthful presumption. All I have are a few verses in time-faded ink that prove I did discover the spring for Miles Standish. At the same time I found one for my own lifework. Here are the few verses I have: