ROCK ME TO SLEEP
Much has been written about the sleeping sickness and the dengue fever; a vast organization is grappling with the hookworm; the economic losses occasioned by all three have given rise to the direst forebodings. But they are as nothing beside the mania for scribbling which devastates the land. Few people are aware how much time and money and energy are wasted by it, or to what depths of depravity it sometimes reduces its devotees. To have something published somewhere, to read one’s verses to an admiring circle, to be known as a literary person—that is the supreme ambition of countless thousands. No effort is made to combat this dementia; on the contrary, scores of organizations exist for the sole object of arousing it, fanning it, keeping it going, proclaiming loudly that anybody can write and offering (for a substantial consideration) to teach anybody how.
Since no law has as yet been enacted to put these instigators of crime in jail, and no serum is on the market for the cure of their victims, it may not be amiss to relate a moral tale, after the manner of Dr. Watts or Jane Taylor,
247
