[Sam P. Davis, The Verse Carpenters, from Short Stories (1886)]

 

The Verse Carpenters.

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            When the Morning Ledger was started, Dan O'Connell, Jessop and myself were employed on the local staff. Harry George was manager of the concern, and had an idea that poetry (original poetry) was the main thing to catch the Sunday readers. In this we all concurred and somebody suggested that the poems should be illustrated. I agreed to furnish the engravings, and the next day called on Alex. Badlam, whom I knew had the facilities, and he loaned me about a bushel of old wood-cuts which had seen service in Sacramento on some illustrated newspaper venture of his own years ago. The drawings were, by Nahl, and the engraving very good. When the basket was brought in, Mr. George sat down and began to paw over the blocks, distributing them among the staff, remarking, as he handed O'Connell a square foot of boxwood, " Here, Dan, is a woman watching for a ship at sea. Dish up half a column of poetry on it, entitled 'waiting.'" Dan took the block and surveyed it carefully, as he observed, " It strikes me this is meant for a washerwoman, and she's waiting to see if the little nigger on the wharf is going to make a raid on the clothes-basket." "In that case," replied Mr. George, "we can saw off the nigger and the wharf ; that will leave the sea and

THE VERSE CARPENTERS.                        125

beach on the right, and it's just the thing." A hand-saw was brought into requisition and the block was sawed in two. " Now, Dan, start that right up, the printers are waiting for copy. And, Sam, tack a few verses on the nigger, and then we'll have two first-class cuts and two pieces of original poetry." The next cut he picked up was a woman sitting on a rock watching some mules, but by sawing off the mules and gouging a club out of the woman's hand with a chizel, Jessop was enabled to build up a poem entitled "Deserted," and calculated to bring tears to the eyes of a Mills-Seminary girl by the time the sixth verse was reached. Sometimes Mr. George would saw up a big engraving into three pieces, and divide it between us. In addition to our regular salaries, we got $6 a column for these verses, and the carpentering work at the head was sometimes counted into the measurement as a special tribute to meritorious endeavor. Whenever the saloon-keeper next door saw the Sunday issue pretty well filled with original poetry, he would contemplate a heavy run of custom on pay-day, and view the scores on the slate with more cheerfulness than doubt. One day a temperance poem, penned by Jessop, got mixed up with a picture intended to represent a widow weeping over her lover's grave, by Dan, and the poem O'Connell wrote got under the picture that had been carefully sawed and trimmed for Jessop. The change looked peculiar, but no one ever noticed it. On one occasion, after an elaborate poem had been written by a combination effort of all three of us, the cut was mislaid just as the paper was going to press. An old Vinegar Bitters' cut was put in, however, and then a bill for advertising sent the agent of the bitters.

            He paid it cheerfully.

126      SHORT STORIES.

            The paper died.

            After the unfortunate demise of the Ledger the stanza-brokers had a hard time of it. The Sunday edition had a wide circulation and was a sort of refuge for verse-makers of high and low degree. Poetry was paid for by the yard, and Harry George, with his foot-rule, would measure up our verses each week and mark down the amounts amid the laughter of the Pegasus-jockies who stood round and rained down their merry jests upon the bald pate of the editor. Dan O'Connell always insisted that his Spenserian stanzas, with ten syllables to the line, should command a higher price than the octosyllable triplets of Jessop, but the cashier never recognized the distinction, and it was frequently charged that some cunning rhymester invariably selected the largest wood-cuts to write under, because it helped to annihilate space. Whether the paper subsided from too much originality or because Mr. George sawed off the end of his thumb in dividing up some box-wood cuts, has never been definitely determined, but it was a noticeable fact that after the Ledger went up, "us poets " found our financial lines falling in less pleasant places. The paper, in addition to being one of the sprightliest dailies in the city, was but little less than a literary scavenger-cart on Sunday, and as the lines of poetry are shorter than prose, it paid better to write it at a given sum per column. The next-door saloon-keeper wept like a child when he heard the news of its death, and several respectable wash-women went into bankruptcy.