Then my friend showed me how the watchers could tell by the movements of the dark shade whether a poem had been accepted or refused. If the editor walked from his desk to the remote corner of his private office they knew that he did it in order to place a poem in the drawer of an old bureau in which he kept the accepted manuscript; but if, on the other hand, he came directly to the door a horrible feeling of anxiety came into every mind, and each poet uttered a silent prayer--while his heart literally stood still within him--that the blow might fall on some head other than his own. On this occasion my friend received ten dollars for his poem entitled “When the Baby Smiled,” and in the fullness of his heart he invited the author of the rejected verses on “Resignation”--who, by the way, was uttering the most horrible curses as he descended the staircase--to join us in a drink. It was on this occasion, also, as I distinctly remember, that my friend the poet put the whole trade of letters in a nutshell: “There are plenty of people,” he remarked, “who can write good good stuff, but there are not many who can write good bad stuff. Here’s one of those ‘Two Brothers’ poems I told you about, and if that isn’t good bad stuff, I’d like to know what is.” He handed me a printed copy of the poem, and I can still recall the first verses of it: Herbert to the city went, Though as sturdy was his arm As plain Tom’s, who, quite content, Stayed at home upon the farm. Herbert wore a broadcloth coat, Thomas wore the homespun gray; Herbert on display did dote, Thomas labored every day. These lines have clung to my memory during many changing years, and I quote them now with undimmed admiration as almost the best example of “good bad stuff” that our literature possesses. And if the lines compel our regard, what must be our respect for the genius which could extract sixteen ten-dollar poems from the one primitive idea of the two rustic brothers? The bard who penned these deathless stanzas has progressed with the times, and now writes many a poem for the _Century_ and _Scribner’s_, but I never see his name in one of the great monthlies without thinking of the days when he used to sit in the outer office of the _Ledger_, with half a dozen of his contemporaries, wondering whether he would get a ten-dollar bill or his rejected poem when Mr. Bonner came out to separate the chaff from the wheat. Some of my readers may wonder what became of all the poetry that was rejected by Mr. Bonner, and to these I would reply that it was seldom, indeed, that any literary matter--either in prose or in verse--was allowed to go to waste. The market was not as large then as it is now, and a serious poem could “make the rounds” in a very short time. If it failed as a serious effort it was an easy matter for a practical poet to add to it what was called a “comic snapper,” by virtue of which it could be offered to _Puck_ or _Wild Oats_.