WHEN an Englishman is not highly imaginative he is apt to be the most
matter-of-fact of mortals. He is rarely imaginative, and seldom has an
alert sense of humor. Yet England has produced the finest of humorists
and the greatest of poets. The humor and imagination which are diffused
through other peoples concentrate themselves from time to time in
individual Englishmen.

THIS is a page of autobiography, though not written in the first
person: Many years ago a noted Boston publisher used to keep a large
memorandum-book on a table in his personal office. The volume always
lay open, and was in no manner a private affair, being the receptacle of
nothing more important than hastily scrawled reminders to attend to
this thing or the other. It chanced one day that a very young, unfledged
author, passing through the city, looked in upon the publisher, who was
also the editor of a famous magazine. The unfledged had a copy of verses
secreted about his person. The publisher was absent, and young Milton,
feeling that "they also serve who only stand and wait," sat down and
waited. Presently his eye fell upon the memorandum-book, lying there
spread out like a morning newspaper, and almost in spite of himself he
read: "Don't forget to see the binder," "Don't forget to mail E----- his
contract," "Don't forget H-----'s proofs," etc. An inspiration seized
upon the youth; he took a pencil, and at the tail of this long list of
"don't forgets" he wrote: "Don't forget to accept A 's poem." He left
his manuscript on the table and disappeared. That afternoon when the
publisher glanced over his memoranda, he was not a little astonished at
the last item; but his sense of humor was so strong that he did accept
the poem (it required a strong sense of humor to do that), and sent the
lad a check for it, though the verses remain to this day unprinted. That
kindly publisher was wise as well as kind.