Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor by Wallace Irwin
page 5 of 24 (20%)
My heart turns over twice and rings a gong"?

Of the human or personal record of William Henry Smith very little has
been discovered. Looking over the books of the Metropolitan Street
Railway I unearthed the following entry:

"Nov. 1, 1907:"

"W. H. Smith, conductor, discharged."

"Remarks: - Car No. 21144, William Smith, conductor, ran into large
brewery truck at So. E. cor. Sixth Ave. It is reported that Smith, to
the neglect of his duty, was reading poetry from a book called 'Sonnets
of de Heredia' at the time of the accident. Three Italians were slightly
injured by the accident, and Ethelbert Pangwyn, an actor starring in
'The Girl and the Idiot,' a musical comedy, was killed."

"Smith was held for manslaughter, but Judge O' Rafferty, who had seen
'The Girl and the Idiot,' discharged the defendant, averring that the
killing of Pangwyn did not constitute a crime."

What, then, has become of this minstrel who sang the Minnelieder of the
Car-barns? Like Homer, like Omar, like Sappho, like Shakespeare, he is a
Voice singing out of the mists. He was but a Name to his employers; and
his friends, if he has friends, remember him not. These Sonnets, written
neatly on twenty-six violet transfer-slips, were discovered, together
with a rejection blank from a leading magazine, in the Dead Letter
office. According to the current folk-lore in Harlem and the Bronx,
Smith is now living in California employed as a brakeman on the Southern
Pacific Railroad. Some aver that Pansy fell heiress to a sausage
DigitalOcean Referral Badge