Solitude
attractiveness, but it is stamped with weakness and dissipation, and the angle at which the broad-brimmed hat is worn betrays the inordinate vanity of the man who wears it.
Mrs. Wilcox, of course, indignantly denied Joyce’s story from the first, but he continued to repeat it on every possible occasion, and her husband wished to start a suit for damages, but his friends very wisely dissuaded him from doing so.
“But,” writes Mrs. Wilcox, “Mr. Joyce proved himself seriously annoying up to the day of his death. He never allowed more than two years to pass without finding some obscure paper in which he could again set forth his claims to my poem. I repeatedly made an offer of $5000 to be given to charity when any one could produce a copy of ‘Solitude’ published prior to February, 1883. I finally offered to present to any charitable institution he might select, in his name, that amount of money, when Mr. Joyce produced his proof. Of course it was never forthcoming; and yet he claimed the poem had been in circulation for twenty years before I wrote it.
“I believe my experience one which nearly every author has known at some time in his or her career,” concludes Mrs. Wilcox. “Though misery may like company, the fact does not prevent one’s own suffering, when made the
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