When "The Pactolian" has paid you for a copy of verses,--( I can furnish you a list of alliterative signatures, beginning with Annie Aureole and ending with Zoe Zenith,)--when "The Rag-bag" has stolen your piece, after carefully scratching your name out,--when "The Nut-cracker" has thought you worth shelling, and strung the kernel of your cleverest poem, -- then, and not till then, you may consider the presumption against you, from the fact of your rhyming tendency, as called in question, and let our friends hear from you, if you think it worth while.
You may possibly think me too candid, and even accuse me of incivility; but let me assure you that I am not half so plain-spoken as Nature, nor half so rude as Time.

If you prefer the long jolting of public opinion to the gentle touch of friendship, try it like a man.

Only remember this,--that, if a bushel of potatoes is shaken in a market-cart without springs to it, the small potatoes always get to the bottom.

Believe me, etc., etc.
I always think of verse-writers, when I am in this vein; for these are by far the most exacting, eager, self-weighing, restless, querulous, unreasonable literary persons one is like to meet with.
Is a young man in the habit of writing verses?
Then the presumption is that he is an inferior person.

For, look you, there are at least nine chances in ten that he writes POOR verses.