In a few
Days there came a tear-stained Acceptance and a Check. The Author said
it was just like Finding $22.50, and he thought that was the End of it.
[Illustration: LANTERN SLIDE]
But when the Verses came out in the Monthly he began to get Letters from
all parts of the United States telling him how much Suffering and
Opening of Old Wounds had been caused by his little Poem about Willie
and how Proud he ought to be. Many who wrote expressed Sympathy for him,
and begged him to Bear Up. These Letters dazed the Author. He never had
owned any Boy named Willie. He did not so much as Know a Boy named
Willie. He lived in an Office Building with a lot of Stenographers and
Bill Clerks. If he had been the Father of a Boy named Willie, and Willie
had ever come to tell him "Good Night" when he was busy at Something
Else, probably he would have jumped at Willie and snapped a piece out of
his Arm. Just the Same, the Correspondents wrote to him from All Over,
and said they could read Grief in every Line of his Grand Composition.
That was only the Get-Away. The next thing he knew, some Composer in
Philadelphia had set the Verses to Music and they were sung on the Stage
with colored Lantern-Slide Pictures of little Willie telling Papa "Good
Night" in a Blue Flat with Lace Curtains on the Windows and a Souvenir
Cabinet of Chauncey Olcott on the What-Not.
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