Part 3 (1/2)
Mrs. Larrabee's first attempt, with the sketch of Letty at the window on Christmas Eve, her hearth-fire aglow, her heart and her door open that Love might enter in if the Christ Child came down the snowy street,--this went to the Excelsior Card Company in a large Western city, and the following correspondence ensued:
MRS. LUTHER LARRABEE, _Beulah, N.H._
DEAR MADAM:--
Your letter bears a well-known postmark, for my father and my grandfather were born and lived in New Hamps.h.i.+re, ”up Beulah way.” I accept your verses because of the beauty of the picture that accompanied them, and because Christmas means more than holly and plum pudding and gift-laden trees to me, for I am a religious man,--a ministerial father and three family deacons saw to that, though it doesn't always work that way!--Frankly, I do not expect your card to have a wide appeal, so I offer you only five dollars.
A Christmas card, my dear madam, must have a greeting, and yours has none. If the pictured room were a real room, and some one who had seen or lived in it should recognize it, it would attract his eye, but we cannot manufacture cards to meet such romantic improbabilities. I am emboldened to ask you (because you live in Beulah) if you will not paint the outside of some lonely, little New Hamps.h.i.+re cottage, as humble as you like, and make me some more verses; something, say, about ”the folks back home.”
Sincerely yours, REUBEN SMALL.
BEULAH, N.H.
DEAR MR. SMALL:--
I accept your offer of five dollars for my maiden effort in Christmas cards with thanks, and will try my hand at something more popular. I am not above liking to make a ”wide appeal,” but the subject you propose is rather a staggering one, because you accompany it with a phrase lacking rhythm, and difficult to rhyme. You will at once see, by running through the alphabet, that ”roam” is the only serviceable rhyme for ”_home_,” but the union of the two suggests jingle or doggerel. I defy any minor poet when furnished with such a phrase, to refrain from bursting at once into:--
No matter where you travel, no matter where you roam, You'll never dum-di-dum-di-dee The folks back home.
Sincerely yours, REBA LARRABEE.
P.S. On second thought I believe James Whitcomb Riley could do it and overcome the difficulties, but alas! I have not his touch!
DEAR MRS. LARRABEE:--
We never refuse verses because they are too good for the public. Nothing is too good for the public, but the public must be the judge of what pleases it.
”The folks back home” is a phrase that will strike the eye and ear of thousands of wandering sons and daughters. They will choose that card from the heaped-up ma.s.ses on the counters and send it to every State in the Union. If you will glance at your first card you will see that though people may read it they will always leave it on the counter.
I want my cards on counters, by the thousand, but I don't intend that they should be left there!
Make an effort, dear Mrs. Larrabee! I could get ”the folks back home” done here in the office in half an hour, but I'm giving you the chance because you live in Beulah, New Hamps.h.i.+re, and because you make beautiful pictures.
Sincerely yours, REUBEN SMALL.
DEAR MR. SMALL:--
I enclose a colored sketch of the outside of the cottage whose living-room I used in my first card. I chose it because I love the person who lives in it; because it always looks beautiful in the snow, and because the tree is so picturesque. The fact that it is gray for lack of paint may remind a casual wanderer that there is something to do, now and then, for the ”folks back home.” The verse is just as bad as I thought it would be. It seems incredible that any one should buy it, but ours is a big country and there are many kinds of people living in it, so who knows? Why don't you accept my picture and then you write the card? I could not put my initials on this! They are unknown, to be sure, and I should want them to be, if you use it!
Sincerely yours, REBA LARRABEE.
Now here's a Christmas greeting To the ”folks back home.”
It comes to you across the s.p.a.ce, Dear folks back home!
I've searched the wide world over, But no matter where I roam, No friends are like the old friends, No folks like those back home!
DEAR MRS. LARRABEE:--
I gave you five dollars for the first picture and verses, which you, as a writer, regard more highly than I, who am merely a manufacturer. Please accept twenty dollars for ”The Folks Back Home,” on which I hope to make up my loss on the first card! I insist on signing the despised verse with your initials. In case R. L. should later come to mean something, you will be glad that a few thousand people have seen it.