Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (168 page)

"He
may
be
all
you
say,
but
I'm
not
going
to
trust
him
to
your gods
and
devils."

"It
will
not
hurt
him.
He
will
only
feel
a
little
stupid
and
dull when
he
wakes
up.
You
have
seen
boys
look
into
the
ink-pool
before."

"That
is
the
reason
why
I
am
not
going
to
see
it
any
more.
You'd better
go,
Grish
Chunder."

He
went,
declaring
far
down
the
staircase
that
it
was
throwing away
my
only
chance
of
looking
into
the
future.

This
left
me
unmoved,
for
I
was
concerned
for
the
past,
and
no peering
of
hypnotized
boys
into
mirrors
and
ink-pools
would
help me
to
that.
But
I
recognized
Grish
Chunder's
point
of
view
and sympathized
with
it.

"What
a
big
black
brute
that
was!"
said
Charlie,
when
I
returned to
him.
"Well,
look
here,
I've
just
done
a
poem;
did
it
instead
of playing
dominoes
after
lunch.
May
I
read
it?"

"Let
me
read
it
to
myself."

"Then
you
miss
the
proper
expression.
Besides,
you
always
make my
things
sound
as
if
the
rhymes
were
all
wrong."

"Read
it
aloud,
then.
You're
like
the
rest
of
'em."

Charlie
mouthed
me
his
poem,
and
it
was
not
much
worse
than
the average
of
his
verses.
He
had
been
reading
his
books
faithfully,
but he
was
not
pleased
when
I
told
him
that
I
preferred
my
Longfellow undiluted
with
Charlie.

Then
we
began
to
go
through
the
MS.
line
by
line;
Charlie parrying
every
objection
and
correction
with:

"Yes,
that
may
be
better,
but
you
don't
catch
what
I'm
driving
at."

Charles
was,
in
one
way
at
least,
very
like
one
kind
of
poet.

There
was
a
pencil
scrawl
at
the
back
of
the
paper
and
"What's that?"
I
said.

"Oh
that's
not
poetry
at
all.
It's
some
rot
I
wrote
last
night
before I
went
to
bed
and
it
was
too
much
bother
to
hunt
for
rhymes;
so
I made
it
a
sort
of
blank
verse
instead."

Here
is
Charlie's
"blank
verse":

"We
pulled
for
you
when
the
wind
was
against
us
and
the
sails
were
low.

Will
you
never
let
us
go? We
ate
bread
and
onions
when
you
took
towns
or
ran
aboard
quickly when
you
were
beaten
back
by
the
foe,

The
captains
walked
up
and
down
the
deck
in
fair
weather
singing
songs, but
we
were
below,

We
fainted
with
our
chins
on
the
oars
and
you
did
not
see
that
we
were idle
for
we
still
swung
to
and
fro.

Will
you
never
let
us
go?

The
salt
made
the
oar
handles
like
sharkskin;
our
knees
were
cut
to
the bone
with
salt
cracks;
our
hair
was
stuck
to
our
foreheads;
and
our
lips
were cut
to
our
gums
and
you
whipped
us
because
we
could
not
row. Will
you
never
let
us
go?