He was by nature slothful and unready, as is indeed the sad habit of literary genius; he rose late, slept long, eat heartily, drank deeply, read newspapers, began things he never finished, and wrote the ending of things whose beginnings he never accomplished; in a word, he was in every respect the man of letters. He looked back continually at the stuff he had written quite a short time before, and it always made him hesitate in his opinion of what he was actually engaged in. It was but six months before the events herein set down that he had written-- “The keep of the unconquerable mind”-- only to discover that it was clap-trap and stolen from Wordsworth at that. How, then, could he dare send off the sonnet-- “If all intent of unsubstantial art”-- and perhaps get it printed in the _Nineteenth Century_ or the _North American Review_, when (for all he knew) it might really be very poor verse indeed? These two things, then, his sloth and his hesitation in criticism, prevented Peter from sending out as much as he should have done. But one fine day of last summer, a kind of music passed into him from universal nature, and he sat down and wrote these remarkable lines:-- “He is not dead; the leaders do not die, But rather, lapt in immemorial ease Of merit consummate, they passing, stand; And rapt from rude reality, remain; And in the flux and eddy of time, are still. Therefore I call it consecrated sand Wherein they left their prints, nor overgrieve: An heir of English earth let English earth receive.” He had heard that _Culture_ of Boston, Mass., U.S.A., paid more for verse than any other review, so he sent it off to that address, accompanied by a very earnest little letter, calling the gem “Immortality,” and waiting for the answer. The editor of _Culture_ is a businesslike man, who reads his English mail on the quay at New York, and takes stamped envelopes and rejection forms down with him to the steamers. He looked up Peter’s name in the _Red Book_, _Who’s Who_, _Burke_, the _Court Guide_, and whatnot, and finding it absent from all these, he took it for granted that there was no necessity for any special courtesies; Peter therefore, fifteen days after sending off his poem, received an envelope whose stamp illustrated the conquest of the Philippines by an Armed Liberty, while in the top left-hand corner were printed these simple words: “If not delivered within three days, please return to Box 257, Boston, Mass., U.S.A.”