Capitalist--Will you kindly furnish your address once more? You must
either stop moving about so or leave some one at home to represent you.
Nothing is more humiliating to a literary man of keen sensibilities than
to draw at sight and have the draft returned with the memorandum on the
back in pencil "Gone to the White mountains," or "Gone to Lake Elmo on
another bridal tour," or "Gone to Bayfield to be absent several years,"
or "Gone to Minnetonka to wait till the clouds roll by."
"Searcher," Peru, Ill.--Cum grano salis was the motto of the ancients,
and was written in blue letters at the base of the shield on a field
emerald, supported by a cucumber recumbent. The author is unknown.
"S. Q. G.," McGree's Prairie, Iowa, asks: "Do you know of any place
where a young man can get a good living?"
That depends on what you call a good living, S. Q. G. If your stomach
would not revolt at plain fare, such as poor people use, come up and
stop at our house awhile. We don't live high, but we aim to eke out an
existence, as it were. Come and abide with us, S. Q. G. Here is where
the prince of Wales comes when he gets weary of being heir apparently to
the throne. Here is where Bert comes when he has stood a long time,
first on one leg and then on the other, waiting for his mother to
evacuate said throne. He bids dull care begone, and clothing himself in
some of my own gaudy finery he threads a small Limerick hook through the
vitals of a long-waisted worm, as we hie us to the bosky dell where the
plash of the pleasant-voiced brook replies to the turtle dove's moan.
There, where the pale green plush of the moss on the big flat rocks
deadens the footfall of Wales and me, where the tip of the long willow
bough monkeys with the stream forever, where neither powers nor
principalities, nor things present or things to come, can embitter us,
we sit there, young Regina and me, and we live more happy years in
twenty minutes than a man generally lives all his whole life socked up
against a hard throne with the eagle eye of a warning constituency on
him.
It's a good place to come, S. Q. G. Quiet but restful; full of balm for
the wounded spirit and close up to nature's great North American heart.
That's the idea. Perhaps I do not size you up accurately, S. Q. G. You
may be a man who does not pant for the sylvan shade. Very likely you are
a seaside resortist and do not care for pants, but I simply say to you
that if you are a worthy young man weary with life's great
battles--beaten back, perhaps, and wounded--with your neck knocked
crooked like a tom-tit that has run against a telegraph wire in the
night, come up here into northern Wisconsin, where the butternut gleams
in the autumn sunshine and the ax-helve has her home. Come where the sky
is a dark and glorious blue and the town a magnificent red. Come where
the coral cranberry nestles in the green heart of the yielding marsh and
the sand-hill crane stands idly on the sedgy brim of the lonely lake
through all the long, idle day with his hands in the tail pockets of
his tan-colored coat, trying to remember what he did with his
handkerchief.
Come up here, S. Q. G. and be my amanuensis. I want a man to go with me
on a little private excursion from the Dallas of the St. Croix to the
Sault Ste. Marie. I want him to go with me and act as my private
secretary and carry my canoe for me. The salary would be small the first
year, but you would have a good deal of fun. Most any one can have fun
with me. We would go mostly for relaxation and to build up our systems.
My system is pretty well built up, but it would be a pleasure to me to
watch you build yours up. What I need is a private secretary to go with
me and take down little thinklets that I may have thought. You would
have nothing to carry but the canoe, a small tent, my gun and a
type-writer. I would carry the field glass. I always carry the field
glass because something might happen to it. One time an amanuensis who
went with me insisted on carrying the field glass, and the second day he
lost the cork out of it, so we had to come back and make a new
observation before we could start.
You would be welcome, S. Q. G.; welcome here in the fastness of the
forest; welcome where the resinous air of the spruce and the tamarack
would kiss your wan cheek; welcome to the rocky shores of the grand old
fresh water monarch, the champion heavyweight of all the great lakes;
welcome to the hazy, lazy days of our long voluptuous autumn, the
twilight of the closing year; welcome to the shade of the elms, where
the sunshine sneaks in on tiptoe and frolics with the dew and the
daisies; welcome to the sombre depths of the ever regretful and
repentant pines, whose venerable heads are first to greet the day, and
whose heaving bosoms hold the night.
Come over, S. Q. G. Be my stenographer and I will show you where a
friend of mine has concealed a watermelon patch in the very heart of his
corn-field. Come over and we will show him how concealment, like a worm,
may feed upon his damaged fruit. Till then, S. Q. G., ta-ta.