The story
“Pedro was the only poet in Pumpkinville. Talent was scarce, and Pedro was always ready to recite some of his many masterpieces. Perhaps this explains why all his friends advised him to go to the Great City and become famous. Anyway, he harkened to their counsel and went to town, intending to set it afire—poetically. Day by day Pedro found his stock of money growing smaller. Finally he was dead broke. Had it not been for his fish line he would have starved, for he was too proud to beg. But he hooked bottles of milk from adjoining window sills, and when his landlady put a dog in his room to keep him out, he sold the dog to an actress in a wild West show. An editor ‘went crazy’ over his poems, so crazy that it looked for a time as if he were headed for an asylum, and a truckman hired him to write a poem to his sweetheart, but the girl threw the truckman down after she read the effusion. All of which explains why Pedro went back to Pumpkinville, and why he is again the star feature at the village entertainments.”
Summary from Reel Life · 18 March 1916
