The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor | Page 2

have given utterance to his
magnificent Lamentation? Was he the discoverer of Human Sorrow or
the pioneer of Human Dyspepsia?
It is not altogether radical on my part, then, for me to assert that many
of the stylistic peculiarities found in these Sonnets are attributable to
the locale of their inspiration the rear platform of a Sixth Avenue car.
One can plainly hear the jar and jounce of the elliptical wheels, the cry,
"Step lively!" the six o'clock stampede, the lament of the strap-hanging
multitude in such lines as these:
"Three days with sad skidoo have came and went,
Yet Pansy cometh
nix to ride with me.
I rubber vainly at the throng to see
Her golden
locks - gee! such a discontent!
Perhaps she's beat it with some soapy
gent - "
Where are lines like these to be found in the Italian of Petrarch? Where
has Tasso uttered an impassioned confession to resemble this:
"But when I ogle Pansy in the throng
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 establishment and moved to Italy with her Poet.
Still others maintain that Pansy, Gill the Grip and Maxy the Firebug
never existed in real life - were merely the mind-children of a
Symbolist and a dreamer of dreams.
To the latter theory I incline at a scholarly angle. This Cycle may be
taken, perhaps, not so much as a living record of human experience as a
lofty parable sounding the key-note of all human life. Gill the Grip is
the Iago, the Mefistofele, the symbolism of a malevolent destiny. Maxy
the Firebug may be the Poet's interpretation of the Social Unrest, of
Doubt, of progressive irresponsibility. Would it be going too far, then,
to say that Pansy stands to us as the symbol of Pan-girlism - as an
almost Anacreontic yearning for the type? Or may not these Sonnets be
taken, in a way, as a modern Vita Nuova wherein a Sixth Avenue
Alighieri calls to his Beatrice and mourns within when,
"Pansy-girl refuses to occur?"
So much for the Poet and his Purpose. Should any one of the readers of
this Cycle doubt the enduring greatness of the lines, let him consider
that I, Wolfgang Copernicus Addleburger, have seen fit to introduce
them to immortality.
[1] Since the salary-books of the Metropolitan Street Railways show,
during the year 1906, 182 conductors named Smith in their employ, 38

of whom were named William Smith and 12 William Henry Smith, it is
easy for the reader to conceive my task in establishing the identity of
our Poet. W. C. A.
The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor
Prologue
Did some one ask if I am on the job?
I sure am to the pay-roll with
my lay,
A hot tabasco-poultice which will stay
Close to the ribs and
answer throb-to-throb.
Here have I chewed my Music from the cob

And followed Passion from the get-away
Past the big Grand Stand
where the Pousse-Café
Christens my Muse as Jennie-on-the-Daub.
Hark ye, all marks who break the Pure Fool Law,
How I, the Windy
Wonder of the Age,
Have fought the Tender Passion to a draw
And
got my mug upon the Sporting Page,
Since Love and I collided at the
curve
And left me with a Dislocated Nerve.
I
Am I in bad? upon the tick of nine
Today the Pansy got aboard my
ship
And sprung the Trans-Suburban for a trip.
Say, she's