WHEN an Englishman is not highly imaginative he is apt to be the most
matter-of-fact of mortals. He is rarely imaginative, and seldom has an
alert sense of humor. Yet England has produced the finest of humorists
and the greatest of poets. The humor and imagination which are diffused
through other peoples concentrate themselves from time to time in
individual Englishmen.
THIS is a page of autobiography, though not written in the first
person: Many years ago a noted Boston publisher used to keep a large
memorandum-book on a table in his personal office. The volume always
lay open, and was in no manner a private affair, being the receptacle of
nothing more important than hastily scrawled reminders to attend to
this thing or the other. It chanced one day that a very young, unfledged
author, passing through the city, looked in upon the publisher, who was
also the editor of a famous magazine. The unfledged had a copy of verses
secreted about his person. The publisher was absent, and young Milton,
feeling that "they also serve who only stand and wait," sat down and
waited.
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