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The Green Bag But when, upon the morrow, staid Greenville read its Blade, Each subscriber's lukewarm interest leaped to ninety in the shade. Watching Lucius' daily fireworks, readers gasped, "Jerusalem! This screed on 'Greater Greenville' is a white-hot, flashing, gem; And this on 'Broad Street Paving,' with a half ironic squint, Is the finest editorial I have ever seen in print. One might think old Horace Greeley of the Tribune had come back Though this young man has Horace beaten twice around the track!" And the Blade's complacent owner swore his rustic oath, "By gum, That cherubic little genius is worth his weight in radium!" As when a mighty gong is struck a blow with naked steel, Its bellowing detonations make the startled senses reel, So Lucius' soul responded to the words and deeds of men With instantaneous clamor — but only through his pen. He seemed incapable of speech, and yet for far around Appeared to fill the atmosphere with deafening bursts of sound. By owning such a vocal pen and keeping it in hand Our Lucius soon was locally a power in the land; He Likewise, soon surpassed since littleallGreenville rivals as the a rustic town's peace mostenjoys, strident . noise, And enterprising newsboys that had the Blade to sell Learned to advertise the paper by one long, piercing yell. The over-modest Lucius had one small vanity, Signing 'neath all his effusions his intials, L. T. P., And these some wag expanded into a telling phrase Descriptive of their owners' editorially clamorous ways; And so it was that Lucius Tiberius Penselgore Received as odd a nickname as ever mortal bore. Thenceforth, when any stranger on a visit to the town Cross-trailed a full-blown genius in a business suit of brown, He was urged by pointing loungers, in eager tones of pride, "There, stranger! See that fellow upon the other side? You now have had your optics on Greenville's greatest man, Our illustrious fellow-citizen, Little Tin Pan." Some people play the jewsharp, and others love to draw, Still other individuals prefer to study law, And numbered with the ardent among this latter clan Was the printer's ink Napoleon, Little Tin Pan. For while the circulation of his paper rose and soared, He hurried through his labors with an air extremely bored, And spent his leisure dreaming how very high and far A certain editor might go as a member of the bar. It is absurd and curious, outre, bizarre, and queer How few men are contented in their predestined sphere,
