It appears that my friend had been reading Maurice Maeterlinck’s “The Blind” and “The Seven Princesses,” and he had come to the conclusion that a painful poverty of ideas was palpably wrapped up in a barren iteration of half meaningless and half ludicrous phrases. He then turned to Stephen Crane’s recently published “Black Riders,” thinking that symbolism might be a little more coherent and comprehensible in the alembic of the colder and clearer Anglo-Saxon intellect and imagination. He had heard Crane’s impressionistic book of rhythms spoken of in the inner circles of the New York and Boston literary world as a collection of startling psychological pictures--the Heaven and Hell of the human soul by flashlight. The Boozy Prophet, Crane has been called by a certain eminent critic--and there’s invitation to human nature in such a piquant characterization. But, for a long while, he labored in Crane’s pages, without discovering the secret flame of spiritual insight that others had spoken of so confidently, and he began to suspect that the profundity which had allured so many minds was simply the fatal lure of the weirdly incomprehensible, which is the inspiration of a good many schools of art and new religions. He had looked for a burst of spiritual light that should spur his tired imagination to renewed efforts in setting forth the superior qualities of a certain brand of coal tar soap which was the inspiration of his Muse for so much a week. He sank into the rocker by the fire, and fell into a mood of despondent reminiscence, weaving all the sad strands of his life into haunting fancies. Then, as he says in his letter, a change suddenly came over him, and he sprang up feeling oppressed and dizzy with a flood of crimson thoughts that inspired his brain.--Ed. Here is his account of what happened. There is something irresistible about this new mysticism in poetry, which those who have not pondered over its potent fascinations cannot understand. It seizes upon the mind suddenly and without warning. For years all my dreams of literary achievement and fame had lain buried, and as I thought, a little sadly, dead--strangled by cruel circumstance and devoured by an ever increasing family. I had become completely reconciled to writing on tar soap and other commodities. But all of a sudden my thoughts seemed to plunge into an abyss of mystical yearnings after the impossible and infinite, and then I recalled some of Crane’s verses with a new and vivid realization of their photographic fidelity to perplexity of mind. Then, to my amazement, I felt the divine afflatus rise overpoweringly within me, and for the first time in my life I produced two lines which rhymed. They ran as follows: A goblin hung on to the horn of the moon A-singing a love song composed by a coon.