He had written lovely verses, touching hollyhocks and hearses,
lotus-eaters, ladies, lilies, porcupines and pigs and pies, nothing
human was beyond him, and admiring people conned him, adoration in
their bosoms and a rapture in their eyes. He had sung of figs and
quinces in the tents of Bedouin princes, he'd embalmed the Roman Forum
and the Parthenon of Greece; many of his odes were written in the
shrouding fogs of Britain, while he watched the suffrage ladies mixing
things with the police.
So we met to do him honor; worshipper and eager fawner begged a tassel
of his whiskers, or his autograph in ink; never was there so much
sighin' round a pallid human lion, as he stood his lines explaining,
taking out the hitch and kink!
All were in a joyous flutter, till we heard some fellow mutter: "Here
comes Griggs, the southpaw pitcher, fairly burdened with his fame! He
it was who beat the Phillies--gave the Quaker bugs the willies--he it
was who saved our bacon in that 'leven-inning game!"
Then we crowded round the pitcher, making that great man the richer by
a ton of adulation, in a red-hot fervor flung; and the poet, in a
pickle, mused upon the false and fickle plaudits of the heartless
rabble, till the dinner gong was rung!