Mr. Elder’s Fright.

“No words can express the agony of mind I suffered for six hours yesterday,” said Mr. A. P. T. Elder, publisher of “Literary Life.” “I would not for untold millions go through the ordeal again. I had come down to my palatial office, and was sitting in a rosewood rocker, with my patent-leather boots resting gracefully on the cherry desk before me, when my private secretary (who had been setting type, and sweeping out the office) brought me my morning paper. I noticed that his face looked pale; but it did not startle me, for I recollected that he sometimes washed it. But when my eye—in fact, my two eyes—fell upon the paper, my printer’s—no, I mean my secretary’s—pallor was explained. With my blood freezing in my veins, I read that Miss Cleveland’s 132house at Holland Patent had been attacked by flames, and had well-nigh fallen prey to the devouring element. Then I remembered that I had forwarded to Miss Cleveland a large bulk of manuscript,—poems, essays, criticisms, advertisements, and other contributions to our magazine,—and I shrieked with horror when it occurred to me that this treasure might have been destroyed by the fire-fiend. More dead than alive, I hastened to the telegraph-office, and sent a despatch to Miss Cleveland, begging her to advise me at once whether that precious hoard was safe, or had been wrested from immortality by the demon of the flames. For six hours I received no answer, and during that time I suffered the most exquisite tortures.

“‘What will the world say,’ I asked myself, ‘when it learns that it has lost these inestimable intellectual boons? Will not posterity hold me up to eternal scorn for having jeoparded the literary welfare of this country, by consigning to careless hands the product of Western genius? If this wealth of literature, this cream of poesy, and this flower of prose, be destroyed, how will I be able to bear up under the lamentations of a continent that awaits, with feverish expectations and anxious heart-throbbings, the October number of “Literary Life”?’

“Crucifying my soul with these agonizing interrogations, I survived, rather than lived, the six 133hours that elapsed between the sending of my telegram and the receipt of an answer. I tore open the telegram that came at last, and read its welcome tidings as follows:—

“‘To A. P. T. Elder, Chicago Patent, Ill.—Nothing burned except the back-stoop and the rear-eaves.

“‘R. E. C.’

“I have been receiving congratulatory telegrams all day from such literary men as George Sand, George Eliot, Charles Egbert Haddock, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, author of Holmes’s ‘Iliad:’ I also hold in my hand at this moment a kind telegram from Messrs. Laflin & Rand, publishers of the ‘New-York Powder Magazine.’ But nothing has recompensed me for the suffering I endured during those six hours of waiting. It was a narrow escape, and I hope the literary world will appreciate it as well as the torture I experienced in its behalf.”

Professor Elbridge G. Smith, instructor in English literature, and professor of elocution, honored us with a call yesterday for the purpose of pointing out what he called “a remarkable error, or series of errors,” we made yesterday. He referred to that part of our interview with Mr. A. P. T. Elder, the scholarly editor of “Literary Life,” wherein George Sand, George Eliot, and 134Charles Egbert Haddock are spoken of as literary men; and wherein, furthermore, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes is said to be the author of Holmes’s “Iliad.” Professor Smith assures us that Sand, Eliot, and Craddock were not men at all, but women; the first two being now deceased, and the third having taken up her permanent abode in a St. Louis suburb. “As for Holmes,” said the professor, “he may have translated the ‘Iliad,’ but he certainly did not compose it; the author of that majestic epic having lived so many centuries ago, that the exact time is not known.” We referred these corrections to Mr. Elder, and asked him what he meant by filling our valuable space with blundering statements that were likely to hold us up to the scorn and the derision of society. He declared most solemnly that he had never had so base a purpose in view; and he expressed deep regret that he had left the telegrams from George Sand, George Eliot, and Mr. Craddock in the pocket of his other coat at home.

“But how came you,” we asked, “to say that Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote the ‘Iliad’?”

“Well, didn’t he write it?” inquired Mr. Elder.

“No, sir,” we thundered, for we were deeply mortified. “Homer wrote it.”

“Yes, that’s it—that’s the name,” cried Mr. Elder: “I acknowledge the mistake. Homer was the name I meant: he was the feller who sent me the telegram.”

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