To Wesley Miller

They give you the broken mold, and not the first bust. And you sigh (louder than you ought). You want that ingenious plaster-mass—its corners are sharp or seamed, but when it speaks—it speaks with a mouthful of marble!

You bear the wax scraps down a balmy street. Soon the likeness is lost; it has been obtruded upon by the stoop-sitters, and the game of double-dutch. Dejected, you climb to your basement hutch. You boil, and pace, and prance, and steam, and circle over the deposited remnant. Suddenly, a notion! You pour the hunks into a stripped coffee can; you unearth a single-coil heating element, connect it, and wait for some fifteen minutes. You place the can atop the mystic red spiral. You wait as the wax slumps its shoulders (so to speak). You lean to it, poised with a stiff paintbrush to stir. Canful, a bust made of wax!