She must have had a good many
offers, it's my belief, for she has told me a dozen different ways for me
to use in my stories. And whenever I read a story to her, she always
laughs and cries in the right places; and that's such a comfort, for
there are some people that think everything pitiable is so funny, and
will burst out laughing when poor Rip Van Winkle--you've seen Mr.
Jefferson, haven't you?--is breaking your heart for you if you have one.
Sometimes she takes a poem I have written and reads it to me so
beautifully, that I fall in love with it, and sometimes she sets my
verses to music and sings them to me.
--You have a laugh together sometimes, do you?
--Indeed we do. I write for what they call the "Comic Department" of the
paper now and then. If I did not get so tired of story-telling, I
suppose I should be gayer than I am; but as it is, we two get a little
fun out of my comic pieces. I begin them half-crying sometimes, but
after they are done they amuse me. I don't suppose my comic pieces are
very laughable; at any rate the man who makes a business of writing me
down says the last one I wrote is very melancholy reading, and that if it
was only a little better perhaps some bereaved person might pick out a
line or two that would do to put on a gravestone.
--Well, that is hard, I must confess.
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