No More Learning

His name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a
widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming into the City
every day to work in a bank. He was twenty years old and suffered from
aspirations. I met him in a public billiard-saloon where the marker
called him by his given name, and he called the marker "Bulls-eyes. "
Charley explained, a little nervously, that he had only come to the
place to look on, and since looking on at games of skill is not a cheap
amusement for the young, I suggested that Charlie should go back to his
mother.

That was our first step toward better acquaintance. He would call on
me sometimes in the evenings instead of running about London with his
fellow-clerks; and before long, speaking of himself as a young man must,
he told me of his aspirations, which were all literary. He desired to
make himself an undying name chiefly through verse, though he was not
above sending stories of love and death to the drop-a-penny-in-the-slot
journals. It was my fate to sit still while Charlie read me poems of
many hundred lines, and bulky fragments of plays that would surely
shake the world. My reward was his unreserved confidence, and the
self-revelations and troubles of a young man are almost as holy as those
of a maiden.

Charlie had never fallen in love, but was anxious to do so on the first
opportunity; he believed in all things good and all things honorable,
but, at the same time, was curiously careful to let me see that he
knew his way about the world as befitted a bank clerk on twenty-five
shillings a week. He rhymed "dove" with "love" and "moon" with "June,"
and devoutly believed that they had never so been rhymed before. The
long lame gaps in his plays he filled up with hasty words of apology and
description and swept on, seeing all that he intended to do so clearly
that he esteemed it already done, and turned to me for applause.

I fancy that his mother did not encourage his aspirations, and I know
that his writing-table at home was the edge of his washstand. This he
told me almost at the outset of our acquaintance; when he was ravaging
my bookshelves, and a little before I was implored to speak the truth
as to his chances of "writing something really great, you know. " Maybe
I encouraged him too much, for, one night, he called on me, his eyes
flaming with excitement, and said breathlessly:

"Do you mind--can you let me stay here and write all this evening?
I
won't interrupt you, I won't really. There's no place for me to write in
at my mother's. "

"What's the trouble? " I said, knowing well what that trouble was.

"I've a notion in my head that would make the most splendid story that
was ever written. Do let me write it out here. It's such a notion! "

There was no resisting the appeal. I set him a table; he hardly
thanked me, but plunged into the work at once. For half an hour the pen
scratched without stopping. Then Charlie sighed and tugged his hair. The
scratching grew slower, there were more erasures, and at last ceased.
The finest story in the world would not come forth.

"It looks such awful rot now" he said, mournfully. "And yet it seemed so
good when I was thinking about it. What's wrong?