Читать книгу Now I Remember: Autobiography of an Amateur Naturalist - Thornton Waldo Burgess - Страница 16

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

The printer of this booklet was doing some work for a well-known dog food company. He told me they wanted a booklet in verse and asked if I could do it. Could I? Of course I could. So in time “The Tale of a Dog” appeared. Again it was twenty verses of four lines each. I asked twenty dollars. It was paid promptly and without protest. A dollar a verse! Oh the visions that opened up!

It was at about this time that Shredded Wheat was comparatively new on the market. Headquarters were located in Worcester, Massachusetts. Each package contained a flyer with “The Origin of Shredded Wheat” in verse. At my boardinghouse one of these fell into my hands. I thought I could do a better origin. For my own amusement I tried it. I had a copy of this version in my pocket when visiting the agency. Casually I showed it to the manager. At the time I had no thought of selling it. He said the agency was doing some work for the Shredded Wheat Company. In fact he was going over to Worcester that very afternoon. He would try to sell my verses for me. I appreciated his kindness and said so.

A few days later I again dropped in at the office. The manager told me that the Shredded Wheat people didn’t think too much of my verses. However, they found one or two things in them that they liked and they offered five dollars for the poem. This he had accepted and he handed over to me a five-dollar bill. I was grateful. I said so. I wish that today a five-dollar bill looked as big to me as that one did then. In later years when I had become a bit more sophisticated I looked back and began to wonder just how large a commission, unmentioned, was paid for my version of the discovery of Shredded Wheat. You see, it had been immediately substituted for the original version and for a long time appeared in every package of the tasty cereal.

I had found the golden road to easy money. I was sure of it. Alas, like so many golden roads it was but a short one to a dead end. Those were hard times. The muse was no longer in demand. However, there were other gains. I knew beyond all doubt what I wanted to do in life. I had found myself, even though I had not as yet found a place for myself. At length I found a job of sorts but I was still chained to columns of figures at eight dollars a week and could see small chance of bettering myself. But it was something to know what I wanted to do and the mere knowledge fanned the smoldering coals of ambition.

I still couldn’t work happily, but I could work hopefully, whereas before I had had no objective and did not know what to hope for. Now I had something definite to watch for, an opening, be it ever so small, that would at least give me the smell of printer’s ink, preferably on galley or page proofs. I continued to write verse and now and then a bit of prose in an effort to satisfy my growing desire to find a medium for self-expression. How I longed to discover a new spring or a dog needing a new tale!