I confess now that I put the question somewhat in the spirit of the Irishman, who, asking after his friend's health, added, 'Not that I care a damn, but it makes conversation.' Heaven defend me from ever again making so much conversation! A gleam shot up in my author's eye. 'Let us go over and ask Professor ---- ' he cried. 'He wrote _What Poets Cannot Do_. He's just the man to tell us!' And before I could escape, he dragged me through the press of authors, and flung me before the professor, with the tag, 'Unmusical, but aspires to write verse,--is this possible?'
I know now how the beetle feels beneath the microscope. Seeing the little group we made, two young authors 'hurried up, and more, and more, and more.' They surrounded me to listen, to inspect, to comment; they asked one another eager questions about me, they compared notes, they appealed to the author of _What Poets Cannot Do_, and always their dreadful eyes were fixed upon me. Never, never again will I dare the dreadful seriousness of an authors' meeting with an idle question!
I have also learned another lesson. It is how to converse with authors. I shudder now to think of my early and crude attempts in this matter. The remembrance of one particular occasion stands out with dreadful vividness. I had been introduced to a distinguished writer. She raised her eyes to mine for a wan instant, a pale flicker of recognition passed over her face, and then--silence. Readers,--nay, let me call you friends while I make this terrible confession,--_I broke that silence!_ I was young; I did not understand. I do now. I have never been able since to read 'The Ancient Mariner'--I know too well the awfulness of having shot an albatross. 'The lady,' I said to my inexperienced self, 'does not care to converse; she expects you to do so.' Accordingly, I broke into light and cheerful talk, something in conversation corresponding, I fear, to what in dry goods the clerk recommends as 'a nice line of spring styles.' I realize that only a series of illustrations can make the situation clear. Imagine then, if you please, a tinkling cymbal serenading a smouldering volcano; a puppy trying to woo the Sphinx to a game of tag; sunlit waves breaking upon a 'stern and rock-bound coast,' and you may get a faint idea of the situation. I began almost immediately to experience that far-from-home sensation of which Humpty-Dumpty speaks with so much feeling. As I beheld one after another of my little remarks dash itself to nothingness against that stern and rock-bound coast, only the time and the place kept me from bursting into tears. Fortunately it did not last too long. In another minute one or the other of us would have shattered into the maniac's wild laughter. And I have every reason to fear that I should have been that one. Others, however, realizing the awful thing I was doing, rushed up and separated us. Sympathetic hands were stretched to her; low words were murmured, and she was drawn into a secluded corner where her silence might be preserved from any further onslaughts of a like sacrilegious nature. But no one stretched a hand to _me_; no sympathetic words were murmured in _my_ ear!