Famous Single Poems
upon it in a Broadway bookstore, and he never received a cent for it.
But it is when he relates his experiences with the various claimants of the honor of having written this masterpiece that he is most interesting.
“There have been so many authors of ‘Snow,’” says Mr. Watson, “that I only admit myself to myself as one of them. The first who came prominently to the front was one McMasters, a portrait painter, who wrote a letter to the Sunday Times modestly admitting that he was the long-sought author. Accompanied by a friend, I went around to see him, and he repeated his assertion to me, declaring that he could produce proofs of it in two weeks. I gave him two months, and I guess he is looking for them yet. That was twenty years ago, and I have never heard of him since.
“Then Elizabeth Akers and Dora Shaw and Hen Faxon took spells at it through the newspapers, not exactly claiming it, but letting it be known that the author was not a great distance off. I believe the poem has never yet been openly claimed by any one possessing any real literary talent,” Mr. Watson added, thoughtfully, though of course without any suspicion of why this was so!
“But the most wonderful of all these claimants,” Mr. Watson pursued, “and the one who
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