"I'll tell you what's the matter with you," said Sammy, with the
shrewdness that business had taught him. "The magazine has turned
down some of your poetry stunts. That's why you are sore at it."
"That would be a good guess in Wall Street or in a campaign for the
presidency of a woman's club," said Ravenel, quietly. "Now, there
is a poem--if you will allow me to call it that--of my own in this
number of the magazine."
"Read it to me," said Sammy, watching a cloud of pipe-smoke he had
just blown out the window.
Ravenel was no greater than Achilles. No one is. There is bound to be
a spot. The Somebody-or-Other must take hold of us somewhere when she
dips us in the Something-or-Other that makes us invulnerable. He read
aloud this verse in the magazine:
THE FOUR ROSES
"One rose I twined within your hair--
(White rose, that spake of worth);
And one you placed upon your breast--
(Red rose, love's seal of birth).
You plucked another from its stem--
(Tea rose, that means for aye);
And one you gave--that bore for me
The thorns of memory."
"That's a crackerjack," said Sammy, admiringly.
"There are five more verses," said Ravenel, patiently sardonic. "One
naturally pauses at the end of each. Of course--"
"Oh, let's have the rest, old man," shouted Sammy, contritely, "I
didn't mean to cut you off. I'm not much of a poetry expert, you
know. I never saw a poem that didn't look like it ought to have
terminal facilities at the end of every verse.
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