The Argosy — page 78: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

68 LATIMER’S NOVEL. WHEN Fred Latimer elected to give up soldiering and take to literature, his father, a country vicar, called him a simpleton for his pains. But the old gentleman was a great deal to blame in the matter himself In past years, when Fred was a boy, had not he been called the genius of the family? Had not those pathetic poems of his, ‘*To the Moon,” ‘Oh, how I long for Death!” “Ode to my Mother mending my Socks,” and “ Lines Written in Dejection in the Spare Bedroom,” been read aloud at the Vicarage tea-table, to the delight of the assembled party? while the boy himself was prevented by the proud throbbing of his heart from making his usual substantial meal of bread-and-butter. After this early taste of fame, is it in human nature to cut the Muse dead and turn to hum-drum employment? Who that has once been attacked by what Voltaire so happily terms “la furcur décrire,* is likely to become a rational member of society until the malady has run its course ? All through the years during which a military education was being imparted to him, Fred studied tactics with an eye on the Muse the while ; and in leisure moments his soul and his fancy overflowed on foolscap in despairing verses and blood-curdling romances. When he became a sub in that band of heroes, the second battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the divine fire still burnt within him, and ever more fiercely. **T have a soul above these fellows and their ways!” murmured Fred to himself of his comrades in his quarters in the Shaft Barracks at Dover. ‘ Their incessant promenading in Granville Gardens, and on the sea-front ; their eternal billiards, and cigars, and gossip ; their everlasting trudging down Snargate Street to look at the pretty girl in the confectioner’s! I, whose story in blank verse, ‘The Druid’s Death-blow,’ caused my aunt to fall into convulsions and tear her cap to pieces! I, who have had a romance in three parts printed m the ‘Weekly Treasury of Horrible Fiction’! Though, it’s true, they refused somewhat rudely to give me any payment for it. Once more, I say, I have a soul above holiday-soldiering in country barracks, and I’m determined to renounce it.” And s0, after a couple of years of it, Fred announced his intention of quitting the army, and entering the ranks of, “the mob of gentlemen who write with ease.” “The pen is mightier than the sword !” said Fred, quoting Lytton. ‘¢ London for me, among the clash of intellects! I'll live on the ECOMICMOOOKS. Conn