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There were other difficulties arising from this unexpected wealth of material. There were dozens of poems on the same subject. “The Golden Gate,” “Mount Shasta,” “The Yosemite,” were especially provocative. A beautiful bird known as the “Californian Canary” appeared to have been shot at and winged by every poet from Portland to San Diego. Lines to the “Mariposa” flower were as thick as the lovely blossoms themselves in the Merced valley, and the Madrone tree was as “berhymed” as Rosalind. Again, by a liberal construction of the publisher’s announcement, MANUSCRIPT poems, which had never known print, began to coyly unfold their virgin blossoms in the morning’s mail. They were accompanied by a few lines stating, casually, that their sender had found them lying forgotten in his desk, or, mendaciously, that they were “thrown off” on the spur of the moment a few hours before. Some of the names appended to them astonished me. Grave, practical business men, sage financiers, fierce speculators, and plodding traders, never before suspected of poetry, or even correct prose, were among the contributors. It seemed as if most of the able-bodied inhabitants of the Pacific Coast had been in the habit at some time of expressing themselves in verse. Some sought confidential interviews with the editor. The climax was reached when, in Montgomery Street, one day, I was approached by a well known and venerable judicial magnate. After some serious preliminary conversation, the old gentleman finally alluded to what he was pleased to call a task of “great delicacy and responsibility laid upon my young shoulders.” “In fact,” he went on paternally, adding the weight of his judicial hand to that burden, “I have thought of speaking to you about it. In my leisure moments on the Bench I have, from time to time, polished and perfected a certain college poem begun years ago, but which may now be said to have been finished in California, and thus embraced in the scope of your proposed selection. If a few extracts, selected by myself, to save you all trouble and responsibility, be of any benefit to you, my dear young friend, consider them at your service.”

In this fashion the contributions had increased to three times the bulk of the original collection, and the difficulties of selection were augmented in proportion. The editor and publisher eyed each other aghast. “Never thought there were so many of the blamed things alive,” said the latter with great simplicity, “had you?” The editor had not. “Couldn’t you sorter shake ’em up and condense ’em, you know? keep their ideas–and their names–separate, so that they’d have proper credit. See?” The editor pointed out that this would infringe the rule he had laid down. “I see,” said the publisher thoughtfully; “well, couldn’t you pare ’em down; give the first verse entire and sorter sample the others?” The editor thought not. There was clearly nothing to do but to make a more rigid selection–a difficult performance when the material was uniformly on a certain dead level, which it is not necessary to define here. Among the rejections were, of course, the usual plagiarisms from well-known authors imposed upon an inexperienced country press; several admirable pieces detected as acrostics of patent medicines, and certain veiled libels and indecencies such as mark the “first” publications on blank walls and fences of the average youth. Still the bulk remained too large, and the youthful editor set to work reducing it still more with a sympathizing concern which the good-natured, but unliterary, publisher failed to understand, and which, alas! proved to be equally unappreciated by the rejected contributors.

The book appeared–a pretty little volume typographically, and externally a credit to pioneer book-making. Copies were liberally supplied to the press, and authors and publishers self-complacently awaited the result. To the latter this should have been satisfactory; the book sold readily from his well-known counters to purchasers who seemed to be drawn by a singular curiosity, unaccompanied, however, by any critical comment. People would lounge in to the shop, turn over the leaves of other volumes, say carelessly, “Got a new book of California poetry out, haven’t you?” purchase it, and quietly depart. There were as yet no notices from the press; the big dailies were silent; there was something ominous in this calm.