We bought the desk before we were married, at a department store in New York. It was almost the last article that store, a famous one in its day, got paid for. Soon after selling it the house failed.
We moved the desk out to a cottage in the country. We sat down in front of it. We didn't know it then, but we are convinced now there was some evil genius in it. It must have been built of slippery elm, full of knots, cut in the dark of the moon while a brindle cat was mewing. The drawers stuck once a week and had to be pared down with a jack-knife. We sat at that desk night after night, with burning visions of literary immortality. We wrote poems that no one would buy. We wrote stories that gradually became soiled and wrinkled around the folds of the manuscript. We wrote pamphlets eulogizing hotels and tried to palm them off on the managers as advertising booklets. The hotels accepted the booklets and went out of business before paying for them. Sitting at that desk we composed sparkling essays for a newspaper in Toledo, and after the paper had printed a bunch of them we wrote to the editor and asked him how about a check. He replied that he did not understand we were writing that stuff for actual money. He was quite grieved to have misunderstood us so. He thought we were merely writing them for the pleasure of uplifting the hearts of Toledo.
There was another odd thing about that desk. There was some drowsy sirup in its veins. Perhaps
