Choked Utterances

The Contributor takes his well-gnawed pencil and his scribbling pad in hand with some degree of insecurity. For many years he has admired the wit and ease with which various members of the Club seize and hit off as literary material the things that all of us have always known, but that none of us have ever noticed. He has more than once, on turning over the new Atlantic to those ever alluring pages at the back, found the familiar subjects which he discussed that morning with his wife while dressing for breakfast, clothed in language, dignified by print, accepted and inserted in the coveted spaces of the magazine. It was like discovering a picture of one’s own kitchengarden or blackberry patch illustrating an article on “Beautiful America:” a homely, accustomed thing brought into the public eye. It had been within a stone’s throw of him his entire lifetime, a helpless prey to his kodak; but some one else had seen the possibilities and done the photographing.

Once the Contributor thought of a familiar, but as yet unexploited, topic of his own; he tried to treat it lightly, to lend to its commonplaceness a certain touch and go, and to have it printed. The subject was something like “Borrowed Umbrellas” or “My Neighbor’s Faults. ” Whatever it was he sent it off. That same day another Contributor discovered the chances for development that lay in that same homely topic, wrote it up, sent it to the Club — and had his version published. The blow was temporarily crushing; the Contributor gave his new foolscap pad and his providently whittled pencils to his youngest child, and went humbly back to his pursuit of the Law.

And now again a topic has come to mind; hurriedly, feverishly, the Contributor begins to write; distractedly he is conscious of a score of other Club members all over this land inspired with the same idea, and putting it into better and more acceptable English than his own. Into his throbbing head comes Matthew Arnold’s “Consolation,” but the inward chaos of hurry and hope and fear changes the lines: —

The lines shout themselves, but through the din, clear and lucid, the Contributor comes to his point, begins to gild the homely subject, and to cheat fate.

Even as he writes, the new issue of the Atlantic comes to hand; it has happened again; some one else has taken his theme and done it ample justice; too many cooks have spoiled his broth; and, this time permanently, the Contributor returns to the Law. Vale, vale, — “ there is no new thing under the sun,” — the game is to say the old thing first.