I have just been thinking, since receiving yours of the 6th, how fortunate it is to have a man, whom one has never seen, trying to discover one! I have conceived such a feeling of gratitude toward you that is my intention to keep hammering away at you, that you may be the man who finds me, if I ever find myself.
Sometimes, this every day endeavoring to force a trumpet— cry out of the throat of a gnat seems humorous to me. I have long walks in which I laugh at myself— then I come back and go at it again.
Today I had a walk, and the result of it is recorded here:
All of which proves that all the good poems were not written by Alfred Austin. You will notice with what consummate mastery I have used repetition in the final lines of each stanza, producing a sort of battering ram effect, and fairly beating it into the head of the awed reader that I really do wish to be found out. I confess that the morals of the thing are a little askew, but at least they are as good as Baudelaire's, and the whole thing is a great deal more intelligible than the Frenchman's output. I have therefore proven that the thing is, on the whole, as good as some things in French and English.
But, candidly, Mr. Davis, I rather think I can do something in the line of the dramatic poem! Have been trying it. Do you think I am wasting my time? I practiced verse long before I ever thought of prose; began it when I was twelve years old. I have quite a good deal of stuff, begun in the past three years, that I think has something in it — maybe not.
Thanking you for your interest in me, I am,
Jno. G. Neihardt
