CGI python use "under a curse"

[Adrian Smith]

While waiting for my paid-for web-hosting company to get back to me
about my difficulties running python scripts on their servers...
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.python/browse_frm/thread/39b52bcf0dffec4c/4ff805bf283acc15?lnk=gst&q=adrian+smith&rnum=1&hl=en#4ff805bf283acc15
...I went and found a free one as a stopgap. And it worked! I was as
happy as a clam. But then it stopped working. Ah. I stripped the
script down to the same minimalist hello-world effort I used
previously:

#!/usr/local/bin/python
import cgi
print "Content-type: text/html\n"
form = cgi.FieldStorage()
print form["essay"].value

(page here: http://essays.profusehost.net/)

As before, this should print out the contents of a textarea going by
the name of "essay". But it does nothing but throw internal server
errors. The support guy looked at it and gave me this:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "python1.cgi", line 6, in ?
print form["essay"].value
File "/usr/local/lib/python2.4/cgi.py", line 559, in __getitem__
raise KeyError, key
KeyError: 'essay'

(http://www.profusehost.net/forum/support/10894-cgi-blink.html)

He says I have a syntax error, though I'm b*ed if I can see where it
could be. Can anyone here suggest anything?

TIA for your forbearance etc.