work that way!--Frankly, I do not expect your card to have a
wide appeal, so I offer you only five dollars.

A Christmas card, my dear madam, must have a greeting, and
yours has none. If the pictured room were a real room, and
some one who had seen or lived in it should recognize it, it
would attract his eye, but we cannot manufacture cards to
meet such romantic improbabilities. I am emboldened to ask
you (because you live in Beulah) if you will not paint the
outside of some lonely, little New Hampshire cottage, as
humble as you like, and make me some more verses; something,
say, about "the folks back home."

Sincerely yours,
REUBEN SMALL.

BEULAH, N.H.

DEAR MR. SMALL:--

I accept your offer of five dollars for my maiden effort in
Christmas cards with thanks, and will try my hand at
something more popular. I am not above liking to make a
"wide appeal," but the subject you propose is rather a
staggering one, because you accompany it with a phrase
lacking rhythm, and difficult to rhyme. You will at once
see, by running through the alphabet, that "roam" is the
only serviceable rhyme for "_home_," but the union of the
two suggests jingle or doggerel. I defy any minor poet when
furnished with such a phrase, to refrain from bursting at