,,straws and ,,prayer-,,books ,,books by ,,mr4 ,,cabell ,biography3 ,beyond ,life ,figures of ,earth ,domnei ,chivalry ,jurgen ,the ,line of ,love ,the ,high ,place ,gallantry ,the ,certain ,hour ,the ,cords of ,vanity ,from the ,hidden ,way ,the ,rivet in ,grandfather's ,neck ,the ,eagle's ,shadow ,the ,cream of the ,jest ,straws and ,prayer-,books ,scholia3 ,the ,lineage of ,lichfield ,taboo ,the ,jewel ,merchants ,jurgen and the ,law 7,edited by ,guy ,holt7 ,,straws ,,and ,,prayer-,,books ,dizain des ,diversions ,by ,,james ,,branch ,,cabell ,behold the child1 by ,nature's kindly law1 ,pleased with a rattle1 tickled with a straw4444 ,scarfs1 garters1 gold1 amuse his riper stage1 ,and beads and prayer-books are the toys of age4 ,,robert ,m4 ,mc,b,r,i,d,e ,,company ,,new ,,york 3 3 3 3 3 3 #aibd ,copyright1 #aibd1 by ,james ,branch ,cabell ,printed in the ,united ,states of ,america ,third ,edition ,published1 #aibd ,to ,,ballard ,,hartwell ,,cabell is dedicated whatever may be of worth in this volume1 or elsewhere in the ,biography4 ,contents ,,page ,the ,author of ,jurgen #c ,i ,a ,note on ,alcoves #be ,,ii ,the ,way of ,wizardry #di ,,iii ,minions of the ,moon #gi ,,iv ,the ,thin ,queen of ,elfhame #abc ,v ,celestial ,architecture #aci ,,vi ,romantics ,about ,them #aga ,,vii ,diversions of the ,anchorite #aic ,,viii ,the ,delta of ,radegonde #bbe ,,ix ,a ,theme ,with ,variations #bci ,x ,flaws in the ,spur #bfg ,the ,author of ,the ,eagle's ,shadow #bhe ,,the ,,author ,,of ,,jurgen ,as to the book of the ,laws composed by him1 what good have they done us8 ,and yet he ought 7as ,lycurgus did the ,lacedmonians1 and as ,solon did the ,athenians1 and ,zaleucus the ,thurians71 if they were excellent1 to have persuaded some to adopt them4 ,how1 then1 can we consider ,plato's conduct anything but ridiculous8--since he appears to have written his laws1 not for men who have any real existence1 but rather for a set of persons invented by him4 ,the ,author of ,jurgen #a ,but this is grossly unfair6 ,john ,charteris complained4 ,all these long years you have been promising to write a book about me4 ,and now1 it seems1 ,i am to remain forever a minor character4 ,well--6 ,i admitted4 ,and why1 pray8 ,well--6 ,i explained3 and ,i went on1 ,i mean1 of course1 that is1 after ,i had given the matter real consideration-- ,then ,i summed it all up even more completely4 ,but1 come now1 ,charteris6 you1 as a writer yourself1 know how these submitted notions by and by come back from the cellar of what we--well1 as one might say1 fraudulently--term the subconscious2 and come back either transmuted into something quite different or else marked ,not ,available for ,our ,present ,needs4 ,he shook his head4 ,in the fidgeting face of such tergiversation ,i can but observe that1 really1 of all things6 ,for1 when one considers the persons whom you have elected to give a whole book to1 civility must seek refuge in aposiopesis4 ,me1 look you1 me1 you have passed over in favor of a moonstruck ,kennaston and of that fat little ,woods widow6 ,the ,author1 ,i pleaded1 does not customarily explain why he elects to do anything4 ,none the less1 ,i am sure ,i would have made a most remunerative protagonist4 ,my inconsistencies are amusing3 my whimsies1 although decorous1 are flavorsome3 my morals are1 if not exactly beyond reproach-- ,beyond hope1 anyway1 ,i suggested4 --,and1 in short1 ,i am inclined to think that1 here again1 the ,author does not quite understand just what he is about4 ,upon my word1 said ,i1 you touch a truth-- ,each has his mtier1 the little man admitted1 modestly4 ,the flea leaps well1 most senators carry their liquor well1 whereas the clergy1 one deduces from the numerousness of their children-- #b ,i mean1 ,i interrupted1 that once you talked to me all through one fine spring night4 ,it was about ,romance you talked-- ,i remember1 ,charteris stated1 with a grin4 ,i can well remember how1 in that terrible dawn1 after all my lovely rhetoric1 you thought ,i had been explaining how books ought to be written4 ,well1 ,i do not think that now4 ,i incline1 rather1 to think you were talking about man's attitude toward life and the universe4 ,i am sure1 though1 that in all your speaking of books you left unsettled the question you raised a moment since1 as to what the ,author is about8 ,for what reason1 in fine1 and with what reward in view1 does any author write his books8 ,i voiced for you most plainly and mellifluously the principles of his economy-- ,yes3 ,i remember your high observations as to ,villon and ,marlowe4 ,the artist1 you argued1 is unwilling to be wasted2 and he alone manages--sometimes--to perpetuate himself where everybody else perishes4 ,you were quite eloquent about the artist's immortality4 ,only1 ,i remember too that1 toward the end1 you admitted a considerable distinction4 ,in art1 you cried1 it may so happen that the thing which a man makes may endure to be misunderstood and gabbled over1 but it is not the man himself4 ,we retain--,i am still paying you the handsome tribute of exact quotation1--we retain the ,iliad1 but oblivion has swallowed ,homer so deep that many question if he ever existed at all4 ,charteris replied with something of the hasty affability appropriate to dealings with the insane4 ,now1 my dear man6 the whole point was that the artist strives to make something which endures-- ,i know6 ,you explained what he attempts to do3 but you did not explain why he should want to do it4 ,you did not explain what he gets out of it1--beyond suggesting1 and then retracting the suggestion1 that he aspires to a sort of terrestrial immortality4 ,no1 ,charteris1 you explained1 in fine1 nearly everything connected with books except why an author writes them4 ,he deliberated this4 ,he said3 ,oh1 but ,i must have made that plain4 ,i can most vividly remember elucidating every bit of the universe1 and that rather important detail could not well have been ignored4 ,ignored or not1 you left it unexplained4 ,and promptly ,charteris settled back in his chair1 intent to remedy this omission4 ,the author1 then1 very much as ,i did1 will under provocation become magniloquent1 and will say this1 that and the other4 ,but every author's real reason for writing is that1 if he did not write1 he would be bored to death4 ,he writes because-- ,here ,i stopped him4 ,no1 ,charteris6 ,you are too fond of juggling phrases with no better end in view than to get pleasure from your own dexterity4 ,and ,i happen to be in earnest4 ,some twenty years and more1 you conceive1 ,i have given over1 together with health and eyesight1 to the writing of the ,biography3 and ,i am nowadays1 however late in the game1 quite honestly and not unnaturally concerned to find out why4 ,so1 then6 at last1 you sympathize with your reviewers6 ,it was well enough1 in the beginning1 ,i went on1 to listen to your ,economist theories3 and while you talked ,i could believe in them1 almost4 ,your verbal jugglery1 ,i do not question1 would still have that effect4 ,but the moment you have done talking1 ,i can but come back to the blunt truth1 unwillingly3 the artist cannot ever by making a statue or a painting or a book--no matter how long the thing made may last1--immortalize himself4 ,he would come a great deal nearer to perpetuating himself by begetting as many children as his natural forces and the frailty of his friends permitted-- ,ah1 the lewd ,jurgen touch6 said ,charteris1 regretfully4 --,and it can in no way concern the artist1 either for good or ill1 ,i continued1 that something which he happened to make1 endures after he has perished4 ,no doubt1 you could explain the contradiction in your argument3 you slightly married men have learned how to explain everything4 ,but1 after all1 this is an affair in which ,i want my own notions1 not yours4 #c ,let me have just one other book to live and talk in1 ,charteris said1 and ,i will explain the scope and aim of novel writing with such a grace and loveliness as never was6 ,my notions have a freer wing than yours3 and if you are obstinate about this1 you will be encountering by and by that statement in the public prints4 ',the author has here vainly endeavored to recapture the charm of his earlier ,beyond ,life1 and when he speaks in his own person is by no means so amusing4' ,that1 ,i forewarn you1 will be the unanimous verdict4 ,i do not altogether aim at being amusing4 ,i want1 rather1 to wind up affairs by contriving an epilogue for the ,biography4 ,he regarded me for some while3 and ,i do not know how to indicate his kindly and rather commiserating pensiveness4 ,presently he said3 ,but ,i forewarn you1 too1 that nobody is ever going to recognise the ,biography as an actual fact4 ,you may pretend to yourself1 if you like1 that all your writing is of this one human life reincarnated over and over again1 in the flesh of ,manuel's various descendants1 and endlessly performing the same rle in what is1 at bottom1 always the same comedy4 ,the nearest anyone will ever come to agreement with you is to admit that you have wasted time and pains in patching up a sort of genealogy2 and that your books1 in fact1 are--if you think it a merit1--rather monotonously the same1 because you are unable to draw any figure other than yourself in a more or less transparent masquerade4 ,the charge of monotony--in that word's primal sense1 which you might with profit look up in the dictionary1--,i acknowledge1 and even glory in4 ,for1 as you say1 it is perhaps the main point of the ,biography that it--and human life--present for all practical purposes the same comedy over and over again with each new generation4 ,ecclesiastes1 ,i believe1 commented on the same phenomenon4 ,still1 if you want people to read more than one of your books-- ,not my books1 ,i amended1 but my one book1 which is the ,biography1 and of which my various publications are chapters4 ,charteris shrugged4 ,my dear fellow6 ,i1 in common with the remainder of mankind1 refuse to admit the possibility of anybody's writing a book in nineteen volumes4 ,it simply is not done4 ,but1 he was told1 with stubborn modesty1 but ,i have done it4 ,anyhow1 fifteen volumes-- ,oh1 no3 you have merely written fifteen books4 ,that is a quite different affair1 which anyone could manage1 given pen and ink and time and a sufficient lack of consideration for one's fellows4 ,the connection of these various books1 ,i can assure you1 is either forced or imagined3 otherwise1 they would be an affront to the rest of us4 ,of course1 ,i conceded1 a bit mollified1 of course1 if you are putting the ,biography upon a basis with ,sir ,thomas ,browne's ,relations ,whose ,truth ,we ,fear-- ,i am putting1 to the contrary1 the author of the ,biography1 said ,charteris1 into a phrase4 ,and that phrase is--8 ,charteris grinned4 ,the author of ,jurgen4 ,i begin already1 ,i commented1 to dislike that phrase-- ,nevertheless1 you need never look to find yourself regarded as anything save the author of ,jurgen and1 just incidentally1 of some other books4 ,there1 after all1 my friend1 the ,tumble-bug has scored3 and nobody1 for the rest of your lifetime1 will you ever hear speak of those other books except1 more or less politely1 to find fault with their likeness or their unlikeness to ,jurgen4 ,either quality1 as you perhaps have learned already1 is equally to be deplored and shrugged over4 ,as the subscriber to a clipping bureau1 ,i admitted1 ,i have noticed the fact rather unavoidably4 ,any likeness to ,jurgen is the tiresome reworking of an exhausted vein3 but any difference from ,jurgen proves my exhausted abilities4 ,again beneath his moustache his teeth showed4 ,so you remain1 you see1 the author of ,jurgen4 ,scott1 ,i replied1 wrote ,the ,antiquary2 and ,thackeray wrote ,henry ,esmond2 and ,dickens wrote ,our ,mutual ,friend3 yet people even to-day continue to think of them as the authors1 severally1 of ,ivanhoe and ,vanity ,fair and ,pickwick ,papers4 ,so ,i suppose that nothing can be done about it4 ,charteris regarded me for a lengthened while4 ,i see3 you have become stoically reconciled to having posterity go on thinking of you1 for century after century1 as merely the author of ,jurgen4 ,it may be that ,i flushed4 ,but1 ,charteris1 ,i never said-- ,and now his shoulders went up4 ,my dear man6 as if you had to6 #d ,yet1 in this epilogue at least1 ,john ,charteris went on1 you may1 as it happens by rare good luck1 hope to avoid the ephemeral-- ,not utterly1 ,i dissented4 ,in literary fields there are always so many ,may-flies about--,but then1 ,charteris1 ,i had thought to add footnotes which would explain all such allusions-- ,as may be incomprehensible to your readers of a few hundred years hence8 ,i see4 ,such carefulness must be granted to display a kindly heart1 in an illuminating blaze of self-complacency4 ,but ,i was in train to suggest1 my friend1 that you might avoid the ephemeral by rather different methods4 ,as how8 ,i asked4 ,by listening1 replied ,charteris1 to me1 while ,i discourse of eternal verities4 ,this happens to be one of my loquacious afternoons-- ,and here ,i raised my hand1 in utterly unheeded protest4 --,for you inform me that you need for this debatable ,biography1 ,john ,charteris continued1 an epilogue1--which of course ought to be spoken by the same person who afforded the prologue4 ,well1 ,i shall overlook your crass misrepresentation of me in that prologue1 which you so ill-advisedly called ,beyond ,life4 ,you will remember how many 'spiritualists' turned to it with fervor1 and away from it with disgust8 ,i1 none the less1 forgive3 and off-hand1 ,i would say-- ,no1 ,charteris6 ,no1 for ,i must myself contrive this epilogue-- ,but1 dear man1 ,i have it already complete1 to the last paradox4 ,it is in my mind now1 hastening to the tip of my tongue-- ,no1 ,charteris1 ,i will not hear you6 --,art1 just as ,schiller long ago perceived1 is an outcome of the human impulse to play1 and to avoid tedium by using up such vigor as stays unemployed by the necessities of earning a living4 ,the artist is life's playboy4 ,the artist1 to avert the threats of boredom1 rather desperately makes sport with the universe-- ,it is a universe you are quitting-- --,for1 as you of course perceive1 the literary artist plays3 he does nothing else1 except with haste and grudgingly3 and the sole end of his endeavor is to divert himself-- ,but ,i had shaped the ,parting ,sign of ,ageus1 which is interpreted variously1 but whose efficacy does not vary4444 #e ,i hated thus to despatch the little fellow1 after we had played together for all of twenty-two years4 ,besides1 his going was not alone4 ,a great many others1 ,i suspected1 departed with him3 and ,i fancied that if1 rising1 ,i now looked out of the library window as far as the ,mill ,road1 ,i might see yonder1--passing now away from me1 now that our commerce was over1 and travelling in motley companionship through the gray spring weather1--all the various men and women whose lives ,i had fashioned for me to play with in my books4 ,heaven only knew1 if ,heaven imprudently concerned itself with such matters1 how many hundreds of them there must be4444 ,and now they were all gone1 ,i turned to the task of getting down upon paper my notions as to the aims of my writing1 and some explanation as to what ,i had been about during the years which ,i had given over to the compiling of the ,biography of ,dom ,manuel's life4 ,for the task approached completion3 or1 rather1 the game drew toward its end2 and that ending might well be the appropriate season for me to sit out1 irrevocably1 while the others played on4 ,however6 once the ,biography was really done1 and once the volumes as yet accessible nowhere save in1 as went my resources1 that almost prohibitively priced ,intended ,edition1 when these had been issued uniformly with the rest1--with the ,kalki binding1 and the usual number of misprints1--then ,i might or might not want to write something else4 ,or perhaps before that time came would come death4 ,time1 either way1 would settle the upshot without my aid4 ,meanwhile ,i most certainly wanted my epilogue1 in the shape of a summing up which would explain1 if only to me1 just why ,i had been at pains to write this exceedingly long book1--which all other persons1 whether obtusely or whether in self-protection1 insisted upon regarding as ,jurgen and several other books4 #f ,and somehow1 now that1 comfortably replete with luncheon1 ,i approach my epilogue1 now it is in my mind to make verses rather than to discourse in sober and reasonable prose4 ,but ,i lack any matter1 too1 that plainly prompts to versifying4 ,so ,i somewhat vacantly consider the trees which stand about my library window4 ,at this season they have put off their nakedness1 but the green of their leaves has not yet come to its full volume4 ,the leaves are sallow and infrequent4 ,they dapple a luminous gray sky with much the effect of germs seen under a microscope4 ,the grass in the long field beyond is pale and sodden3 for ,i regard all this in a gray shining pause between the heavy spring rains4 ,the world1 in preparing to be very beautiful1 is for the while disheveled looking3 and it suggests to me1 without any stepping stones of exact analogy1 a handsome woman defamatorily clad in a shabby green dressing-gown1 poised before her mirror1 with her hair already partially loosened in order that she may prepare for a festival4 ,it is a fine festival for which the world makes ready4 ,it is a pageant and a banqueting that will feed all the senses1 and will last for months1 until the white winds of ,november come1 like gaunt janitors1 to remove the furniture and decorations4 ,life everywhere will burgeon and exult1 and bear fruit1 and wane peacefully4 ,i mean not only grasses and bushes and trees4 ,there will be a great barking of dogs1 and cats also will make the warm night vocal4 ,and birds too will cry out in the night1 as if amazed and wistful1 and that crying will be very piercingly sweet and1 for no reason at all1 pathetic4 ,there will be lambs1 and foals1 and calves1 with amateurishly constructed legs4 ,and of course the young people--,but ,i wonder about those young people6 ,there is upon them a bland hard innocence1 like the gloss of white china4 ,it is slippery1 and it ever so lightly chills4 ,yet it does seem1 essentially1 innocence4 ,i recall1 with a wealth of ancient instances1 that my own generation1 where it went unchaperoned1 was remarkably unhampered by innocence3 and ,i wonder if my own generation was like this in the presence of our elders8 ,i do not remember2 ,i feel that nobody could hope to remember a thing so far away3 and it is in my mind to make verses4 ,for ,i remember many other matters that have to do with moonlight and with the touch of young flesh and with a lost consciousness of being fearless and eternal4 ,music too seems to be woven through the background of my memories1 not as a thing quite noticed1 but as not ever wholly absent4 ,i remember1 in fine1 youth3 and ,i know that the glad magic of youth was always a promise of whose fulfillment one lived1 then1 utterly assured3 and ,i suspect that to be old means merely coming to comprehend that this promise has not been1 and never will be1 kept4 ,meanwhile ,i observe it is still the nature of young persons to seek out quiet places in couples1 and to evince no distaste for twilight3 and ,i surmise that even those inexplicable automobiles which stand to the side of our country roads at evening and after nightfall have at least two persons inside them4 ,these phenomena also are a portion of the premeditated festival1 of that sublimely irrational festival whose ducdam 7as ,jaques in the play1 you will remember1 calls that invocation which draws fools into a circle7 is still the promise which all1 by and by1 perceive to stay eternally unfulfilled4 ,now it is in my mind to make verses about this festival1 but ,i lack any matter1 here again1 that plainly prompts to versifying4 ,we older persons must sit out1 sit out forever from this especial form of recreation1 while others play on4 ,we dare at most to attend as chaperons1 and with a smile to observe these junketings3 for ,time1 that stern old ,roman1 states outright 7in of course his native tongue71 ,lusisti satis6 ,i do not say that we have not equally important things to do1 in our traffic with affairs of the mind3 ,i would not assert our utter readiness1 as yet1 for the scrap-heap and the graven tributes of the stone-mason4 ,i merely note that we are but1 at best1 the chaperons at this festival for which the ,april world is preparing4 ,so we must look on benevolently1 and must preserve decorum1 and also must not ever concede what urge it is that prompts this festival4444 ,still1 it is in my mind to make verses4444 #g ,there is1 though1 ,i reflect1 than this knack of sitting out at the right moment1 and without sulkiness1 from avocations for which the unfriendly years disqualify you1 no finer1 no more beneficent1 and no more difficult art4 ,to some1 indeed1 mere sitting out does not appear quite adequate3 and there is much to be said for the contention that the key to real success in living is to die soon enough4 ,yet this is an un-,american accomplishment3 even our leaders rarely show the masterly tact of ,lincoln2 and the result is that most depressing list which begins with ,benedict ,arnold1 continues with ,william ,jennings ,bryan and ,aaron ,burr1 and so passes calamitously through the alphabet to ,woodrow ,wilson4 ,there is no one of these transient inheritors of glory but has1 through a mere faux-pas in longevity1 impaired his chance of retaining eternal admiration and applause4 ,the writer1 though1 ,i think1 is over-precipitate in dying at a day less than eighty4 ,by that time he1 with steadily failing faculties1 will have published a deal of insufferable twaddle3 but by that time1 too1 his name may well have become familiar to a fair number of ponderable and unliterary persons2 and the excellence of his writing may be everywhere conceded as the obvious polite alternative to reading it4 ,he has become in the cultural vista a known1 not necessarily majestic1 feature3 he has won1 in fine1 to that certain undeniable assured position which no ,american artist anywhere can hope to secure except by prolonged survival of his talents4 ,longevity1 indeed1 is with us the one auctorial accomplishment which intelligent people can honestly esteem3 we tend to share a generous national pride in all gifted persons who have painstakingly attained to our common level through the discomforts of senile decay4 ,time thus induces us to cherish our ,longfellows and ,bryants1 and even to tolerate our ,whitmans3 it enables our ,joseph ,jeffersons to earn a competence upon the stage as soon as they have grown too feeble to act3 and it has also persuaded us1 through just this self-same sympathetic desire to gladden the last years of every striking case of mental indigence1 to establish and stock our ,american ,academy of ,arts and ,letters4 ,so ,i must certainly endeavor to live as long as may prove possible4 ,even if ,i may not hope ever to be anything more than--in the phrase not utterly peculiar to ,john ,charteris1--the author of ,jurgen1 there may be compensations by and by4 ,and in fact1 ,i turn here to thinking1 with a pleasant warm thrill1 about ,mencken's prediction that1 if ,i live to be eighty1 ,i too may be elected to the ,american ,academy4444 #h ,none the less1 now that ,i approach completion of the ,biography1 this may well be the time to sit out from the most high and joyous game of writing4 ,the young are not merely at the door1 they are in all the advertising columns devoted to the season's literary masterpieces1 and behind most of the editorial desks4 ,i1 who was but four years ago a dangerous revolutionary upstart1 begin1 even among editors and publishers1 to be treated with something of the gingerly respect with which one handles antique glassware or a veteran of the ,war ,between the ,states4 ,among the really vital writers1 still in strenuous practise of their lack of art1 the old fellow who wrote ,jurgen is relegated at best to the ,middle or1 as they playfully call it1 the ,muddle generation in ,american ,letters2 and ,i am become a relic vaguely associable with bicycles and hansom-cabs and cigar-store ,indians and cast-iron deer1 and other coeval items of extinct ,americana4 ,so it may well be time1 once the ,biography is quite complete1 for me to sit out from the game of writing1 and to make sport with words no more4 ,and ,lusisti satis has a dreary sound1 at the first hearing3 yet ,i do not know but that it is1 in reality1 the aptly worded praise of attested wisdom4 ,you have played enough6 ,i shall take it to mean that ,i have not stinted myself at playing1 that ,i have got out of the writing all the diversion which is allowable4 ,for ,i begin to see fine implications in ,john ,charteris' parting statement that the artist labors primarily1 even solely1 to divert himself4 ,whatever ,schiller may have said remains to me unknown3 but ,i find this theory1 of art as play1 in notoriously good standing elsewhere1 among many2 and ,i find1 too1 by the light of experience1 a great deal in this notion that the artist--or1 at least1 the artist who happens to be a novelist1--is life's half-frightened playboy4444 ,i ,a ,,note ,,on ,,alcoves ,such is the present state of the world3 and the nature of the animated beings which exist upon it1 is hardly in any degree less worthy of our contemplation than its other features4 ,yet our first attention is justly due to ,man1 for whose sake all other things appear to have been produced by ,nature2 though with so great and severe penalties for the enjoyment of her bounteous gifts1 that it is far from easy to determine whether she has proved to him a kind parent or a merciless step-mother4 ,i4 ,a ,note on ,alcoves #i ,the literary artist plays3 and the sole end of his endeavor is to divert himself4444 ,seated now at my desk1 ,i weighed the phrase4 ,all valid artists in letters might or might not with justice be describable as life's half-frightened playboys4 ,i1 in any event1 knew that1 whatever other motives might now and then have prompted me1 the ,biography had been written in chief for my own diversion4 ,whenever people had unfavorably criticised my writing--,i now perceived1--my first emotion had been1 always1 surprise at their imagining ,i had especially tried to give pleasure to them4 ,i had1 instead1 for nearly a quarter of a century1 been trying with the ,biography to divert myself4 ,that might or might not be the correct principle upon which to write novels3 it was most certainly a principle to which ,i was committed in any justifying of the form and scope of the ,biography4 ,so ,i tapped out upon my typewriter1 first of all1 as a self-obvious axiom1 ,the literary artist labors primarily to divert himself4444 #aj ,it is surprising1 though1 what protean gifts a theme develops once you attempt to grapple with it4 ,when ,i was just now moved to set down on paper my personal notions as to the form and scope and aim of the novel1 as these notions are illustrated in the ,biography1 the affair seemed simple4 ,with the task actually begun1 the typewriter-bell may hardly tinkle thrice 7for my machine is of a venerable model7 before one sees that the guide to further composition must be that once celebrated chapter1 in ,i forget whose ,natural ,history1 upon ,the ,snakes of ,iceland4 ,it read1 as you recall1 ,there are no snakes in ,iceland4 ,for one perceives that the form and scope of the novel1 if not similarly non-existent1 at least stay indeterminable in lands wherein the form and the scope of prose fiction stay limitless4 ,the aim1 however1 of the written1 printed and formally labeled novel is1 ,i take it1 to divert4 ,such is 7one may assume with in any event quite reputable backing7 the only aim of creative writing1 and of all the arts4 ,but much the same sort of diversion seems to be the purpose of a staggering number of human endeavors3 and it is when one considers the novels which are not formally labeled1 that the theme evasively assumes all manner of shapes1 and the field of prose fiction is revealed as limitless4 ,i do not hunt paradox4 ,i wish in real sincerity to acknowledge that our trade of novel writing and publishing is an ineffably minor evincement of the vast and pride-evoking truth1 that human beings are wiser than reason4 ,pure reason--,i mean1 as pure as human reason assays1--reveals out of hand that the main course of daily living is part boredom1 part active discomfort and fret1 and1 for the not inconsiderable rest1 a blundering adherence to some standard derived from this or that hearsay4 ,but human beings1 in this one abnegation infinitely wise1 here all discard the use of their reasoning powers1 which are perhaps felt here to be at least as gullible as usual3 and brave men cheerily deny their immersion in the futile muddle through which they toil lip-deep4444 ,pinned to the wall1 the more truthful of flesh and blood may grant that this current afternoon does1 by the merest coincidence1 prove answerable to some such morbid and over-colored description by people bent on being queer3 but in the admitter's mind forgetfulness is already about its charitable censorship of the events of the morning1 to the intent that this amended account be placed on file with many expurgated editions of yesterday and the most brilliant romances about to-morrow4444 ,for human memory and human optimism are adepts at the prevarications which everybody grasps1 retails and tirelessly reiterates3 these two it is who coin the fictions which every person weaves into the interminable extravaganza that he recites to himself as an accurate summing-up of his own past and future3 and everywhere about this earth's revolving surface moves a circulating library of unwritten novels bound in cloth and haberdashery4 ,the wholesome effect of these novels is patent4 ,it is thanks to this brace of indefatigable romancers1 it is due to the lax grasp of memory and to the perennation of optimism1 that nobody really needs to notice how the most of us1 in unimportant fact1 approach toward death through gray and monotonous corridors4 ,besides1 one finds a number of colorful alcoves here and there1 to be opened by intoxication or venery1 by surrender to the invigorating lunacy of herd action1 or even by mental concentration upon new dance-steps and the problems of chess and auction bridge4 ,one blunders1 indeed1 into a rather handsome number of such alcoves which1 when entered1 temporarily shut out the rigidity and the only exit of the inescapable corridor4 ,life thus becomes for humankind a far different matter from what it would seem to any merely reasonable creature1 since life's monotonous main tenor is thus diversified by an endless series of slight distracting interests and of small but very often positive pleasures in the way of time-wasting and misdemeanor4 ,and in addition1 as we go1 all sorts of merry tales are being interchanged1 about what lies beyond the nearing door and the undertaker's little black bag4 #aa ,these are not1 though1 the only ansthetics4 ,the human maker of fiction furnishes yet other alcoves1 whether with beautiful or shocking ideas1 with many fancy-clutching toys that may divert the traveller's mind from dwelling on the prevalent tedium of his journey and the ambiguity of its end4 ,i have not yet1 of course1 come to consideration of the formally labeled novel1 for this much is true of every form of man-made fiction1 whether it be concocted by poets or statesmen1 by bishops in conclave or by advertisers in the back of magazines4 ,and since memory and optimism1 as has been said1 are the archetypal ,homer and ,st4 ,john1 the supreme and most altruistic of all deceivers1 the omnipotent and undying masters of omnipresent fictive creation1 their methods are in the main pursued by the great pair's epigoni2 who likewise tend to deal with the large deeds of superhuman persons seen through a glow of amber lucency1 not wholly unakin to that of maple syrup4 ,of the romances which make for business prosperity and religious revivals and wars to end war forever1 here is no call to speak4 ,nor need ,i here point out that well-nigh everyone who anywhere writes prose to-day1 whether it take form as a tax return or a magazine story or a letter beginning ,my dear ,so-and-so1 is consciously composing fiction3 and in the spoken prose of schoolrooms and courts of law and social converse1 ,i think1 no candid person will deny that expediency and invention collaborate4 ,it may be true that lies have short legs1 but civilization advances upon them4 #ab ,i1 in any event1 get daily bewilderment from considering how deep-rooted seem all life's serious and practical endeavors in implausible fictions4 ,the most long-headed of us1 for instance1 may reasonably confess to some faith in money and in mathematics3 these things at least are stable realities1 these are the pillars1 the very ,bohas and ,jakin in the ,temple of ,common-,sense4 ,and yet1 here also1 is disclosed by two minutes' consideration another side4 ,money ,i regard1 ,i hope1 with all appropriate gravity4 ,i know that ,i now and then accept without derisory outcry1 even thankfully1 small metal disks disfigured with a remarkably unaquiline eagle and the fat-jowled head of a female criminal very neatly guillotined4 ,nor am ,i here deceived by appearances4 ,these things suggest extremely rococo poker-chips1 they look like counters to be used in playing some sort of game1 for the sound reason that this is precisely what they are4 ,and we play4 ,we all play quite gravely1 at every hour in our lives1 at the game wherein these disks1 which in themselves no mortal could regard with sthetic pleasure or employ for any imaginable practical purpose1 are supposed to be worth something4 ,in time we get quite used to these horary excursions of fancy3 and indeed we so enter into the spirit of the game as very often to buy things with a feeling that the clerk is swindling us1 rather than we him4 ,but1 as an even more remarkable fiction1 ,i consider the new five-dollar bill which ,i chance this morning to possess4 ,in itself1 like the metal disks1 it is worth nothing3 and its glazed surface chills the thought of devoting it to the one use suggested by its general dimensions4 ,it bears1 though1 ,i find1 an engraved assurance that to the bearer of this paper the ,people's ,national ,bank of ,strasburg1 ,virginia1 will pay five dollars4 ,since1 as it happens1 the president and the cashier of that institution have not signed in the spaces reserved for them1 the assurance comes unsupported3 for it nobody1 so far as ,i can see1 assumes any least responsibility4 ,yet1 in any event1 if the unsponsored statement be true1 such is the sole value of this paper rectangle3 its only virtue is that in ,strasburg1 ,virginia1 you can exchange it for five dollars4 ,i have no intention of going to ,strasburg1 ,virginia3 ,i shall instead buy something with this note1 under the romantic pretence that the shopkeeper is going to exchange it1 in ,strasburg1 ,virginia1 for five dollars4 ,and he will part with it to somebody else on the same imaginative terms4 ,and that make-believe will continue until this note is worn out4 ,meanwhile this bit of paper will gravely be exchanged1 in varied surroundings1 for every sort of commodity4444 ,it will be transmuted into dinners1 it will tread the pavements of remote outlandish cities in the form of a pair of shoes1 and as pajamas it will pass beyond the proper scope of my meditations4 ,it will flower into orchids1 it will blaze as coal4 ,not without ostentation will it fall into the collection plate1 nor toward ,christmas flutter into the kettle of the ,salvation ,army3 more furtively will it1 thrice-folded1 slip into the top of the feminine stocking4 ,darkness will sometimes engulf it like a pocket4 ,very deep will it descend1 as fares the sewer rat1 into grim social underworlds2 as most inferior whiskey it will be swallowed up2 and in the manner of the dead that are laid away1 will it go down into the steel catacombs beneath banking houses4 ,thence presently it will arise4 ,it will arise unchanged1 a trifle deteriorate in crispness perhaps1 yet very potent to aid in lifting mortgages1 in raising children1 and in elevating many households1 ,i would like to think1 in the avatar of two of my books4444 ,but never on any forenoon in ,strasburg1 ,virginia1 will it be exchanged for five dollars3 and the one purpose for which this paper is so precisely designed is precisely the one to which it will not ever be put4 ,what will in point of fact become of it1 ,i learn after serious inquiry into this mystery--in financial circles1 wherein ,i was humored as a harmless lunatic1--is that1 when the note gets sufficiently dirty and decrepit1 some bank will turn it in1 at ,washington1 in exchange for a fresh paper rectangle2 and the senior note will then be destroyed by ,treasury employees4 ,but nobody will ever convey to ,strasburg1 ,virginia1 this representation of ,benjamin ,harrison looking like a dishonest ,santa ,claus1 and of the ,pilgrims putting ashore at ,plymouth ,rock to investigate the phenomena of a wind that blows two ways and of a tree growing from the ocean4 ,nobody will ever deal logically with all this intricate engraving3 and if anybody ever did1 he would1 as the very cream of this monetary fiction1 be thought queer4 ,at worst1 his sanity would become a matter of medical investigation3 at best1 he would be given for this paper rectangle another banknote1 and the romancing would now gild a different ,carcassonne4 ,and similarly outrageous seem to any calm considering the fictions of mathematics4 ,this fact1 indeed1 was recently pointed out to me by my small son1 in whom his governess was endeavoring to implant the conviction that two and two make four4 ,but the child stayed sceptical4 ,he was reservedly polite about a rational ,suppose you had two apples1 and ,i gave you two more apples1 how many apples would you have then8 ,he conceded with readiness1 not unflavored with resignation to the obtuseness of grown-up persons1 that in such circumstances he would have four apples1 but could not eat that many without being real sick4 ,yet that two and two1 in consequence1 make four1 he excluded as a logical inference3 and he depreciated that inference by stating it did not mean anything4 ,he was1 of course1 quite right4 ,for that two and two make four becomes1 the very instant that you play this familiar axiom the childish trick of thinking about it1 at best an unprovable hypothesis4 ,that two apples and two more apples compose four apples is1 as my son admitted1 plain enough4 ,or1 you may change your unit to a penny1 a match1 a pencil1 or to a bungalow1 and still produce convincing evidence to prove your arithmetic4 ,but the mathematician requests us to consider an abstract two1 to believe in two apples with the pomaceousness removed3 his incorporal and incorporeal two has never existed and never can exist4 ,his two is not merely a fiction1 but an inconceivable fiction which the human mind can no more1 really1 imagine than it can his four4 ,you need only for one moment attempt to form some rational and clear-cut idea of this two to perceive that the governess in fact was 7with all respect to her7 talking about incredible fictions1 just as my son affirmed4444 ,and when the mathematician goes on from two and four into the higher branches of his romance weaving1 and postulates as yet other realities his lines that have length but no breadth or thickness1 or his points that have not even length1 you face the choice between fleeing from his self-evident lunacy and accepting his insane but very useful fictions4 #ac ,so do we all exist as if in a warm grateful bath1 submerged and soothed by fiction4 ,in contrast to the inhabitants of the ,scilly ,islands1 who are reputed to have lived by taking in one another's washing1 so do we live by interchanging tales that will not wash4 ,there seems to be no bound1 no frontier trading-post appointed anywhere to this barter of current fiction1 not in the future nor in the years behind4444 ,men have been1 almost cynically1 shown with what ease the romance which we call history may be recast throughout1 now that ,america rejoices in an amended past which has all been painstakingly rewritten with more care of the ,king's ,english1 and wherein the ,war of the ,revolution takes its proper place as the latest addition to the list of ,german outrages4 ,state legislatures dispose of man's arboreal ancestry by passing a law against it3 and ,congress1 by bestowing upon non-intoxicating beverages an illegal alcoholic content1 at once repeats and repudiates the miracle of ,cana4 ,our newspapers continue the war-time economizing of intelligence1 and still serve patriotic substitutes in serials1 wherein ,black and ,yellow and ,red perils keep colorful the outlook1 and fiends oppose broad-minded seraphim in every political difference4 ,our clergy are no less prolific in their more futuristic school of art1 and on every ,sabbath morning discourse engagingly of paradise and of that millennium of which the arrival is at present being furthered by the more modern of our prelates bringing fearlessly to bear upon the mystery of the ,incarnation the intellect of a midwife4444 ,the past1 the present and the future are thus everywhere presented in the terms of generally diverting prose fictions3 and life is rendered passable by our believing in those which are most to our especial liking4 #ad ,man is1 they say1 the only animal that has reason2 and so he must have also1 if he is to stay sane1 diversions to prevent his using it4 ,man1 always nearing and always conscious of approaching death with its unpredictable sequel1 and yet bored beyond sufferance by the routine of his daily living1 must in this predicament have playthings to divert him from bringing pitiless reason to bear upon his dilemma3 and he must have too the false values which he ascribes to these playthings4 ,the lines of ,pope that ,i have quoted elsewhere dwell truthfully enough upon life's endless playing1--upon the playing of the child with straws and rattles1 of the young man with his mistresses1 of the mature with wealth and worldly honors1 and of the aged with rosaries and prayer-books4 ,but the solace1 the true virtue1 of these playthings arises from the fiction that the player tells to himself about them4 ,no child plays with a straw3 he brandishes a sword that has just chopped off a dragon's head4 ,the young man1 exultant1 terrified1 touches and uncovers1 not an expanse of epidermis and small hairs and sweat glands1 but the body of a goddess4 ,the banker is reveling in that romance about ,strasburg1 ,virginia3 and the aged clasp not a prayer-book but the key to eternal bliss4 ,everywhere1 in fine1 the creating romantic who lives in every human being is either composing or else borrowing the kind of romance which most potently diverts him1 and prevents his going mad4 #ae ,well1 it is the privilege of the novelist--,i mean1 at last1 the novelist who is frankly listed as such in ,who's ,who--to aid according to his abilities in this old world-wide effort1 so to delude mankind that nobody from birth to death need ever really bother about his1 upon the whole1 unpromising situation in the flesh4 ,it is the privilege of the novelist who happens also to be an artist1 to blaze a trail upon which his readers may follow1 and be delighted by the by-products of his hedonism4 ,for it is his higher privilege to divert his own thoughts from unprofitable and rational worrying2 and to lead such as may choose to follow him in one more desperate sortie from that ordered living and from the selves of which all men are tired4 ,so ,i suspect there must always be1 to the last digit1 precisely as many methods as there are novelists4 ,for the endeavor of the novelist1 even by the lowest and most altruistic motives1 is to tell untruths that will be diverting3 and of their divertingness he needs1 and in fact can have 7prior to the receipt of royalty statements71 no touchstone save only the response which these untruths evoke from him4 ,his primary endeavor must therefore1 upon merely rational and sordid grounds1 be to divert1 not any possible reader1 but himself4 ,by the novelist who is more tradesman than artist1 and who is guided by ideals rather than selfishness1 this truth is not recognised3 and he often commits the deadly error of succumbing to praiseworthy motives4 ,he1 as a rule1 indeed1 wrong-headedly begins by considering his public's real virtues and aspirations2 he endeavors to strengthen these by finding for them vicarious exercise3 and he thus allows himself to be misled into evanescence through philanthropy4 ,now it is the privilege of the public 7which1 to be sure1 has an alternative7 to consider the artist3 but the artist who for one half second during his hours of play with ink and paper considers anybody except himself is contriving a suicide without dignity4 ,for the one really ponderable sort of writer--the writer who communicates to us something of his own delight and interest in his playing1 and who thus in the end contributes to our general human happiness1--has been influenced while about this playing by none save selfish considerations4 ,he has written wholly to divert himself3 he has for that moment been inclavated to pleasure-seeking with somewhat the ruthlessness of a ,nero and all the tenacity of a dbutante3 and if ,i seem unduly to emphasise this obvious fact1 it is merely because the man afterward so often lies about it4 ,some tale-tellers find themselves most readily bedrugged by yearning toward loveliness unknown and unobtainable3 these are1 we say1 our romanticists4 ,to them are1 technically1 opposed such ,pollyannas among fiction writers as ,mr4 ,theodore ,dreiser and ,mr4 ,sinclair ,lewis1 who can derive a species of obscure sthetic comfort from considering persons even less pleasantly situated than themselves1--somewhat as a cabin passenger on a sinking ship might consider the poor devils in the steerage1--and so turn rhyparographer1 and write realism4 ,the process is not unnatural1 and has been more or less profitable since at least the time of ,piricus4 ,but1 either way1 the inspiring principle remains unchanged3 you think of that which is above or below you in order to avoid thinking of what is about you4 ,so it really does not greatly matter whether you travel with ,marco ,polo to ,cathay or with the ,kennicotts to ,gopher ,prairie4 ,the excursion may be for the purpose of looking at beautiful things wistfully or at ugly things contemptuously3 the point is that it is an excursion from the place where you regard over-familiar things with a yawn4 ,when one considers these truisms1--and fails to see why they need be disputed by anybody not actually engaged in the physical labor of teaching or of contributing to the more successful periodicals1--then the form and scope of even the formally labeled novel seems1 plainly1 fluctuating and indeterminable4 ,the novelist1 it is apparent1 will write in the form--with such dramatic1 epic or lyric leanings as his taste dictates1--which he personally finds alluring3 his rhythms will be such as caress his personal pair of ears3 and the scope of his writing will be settled by what he personally does or does not find interesting4 ,for the serious prose craftsman will write primarily to divert himself1--with a part thrifty but in the main a philanthropic underthought of handing on1 at a fair price1 the playthings and the games which he contrives1 for the diversion of those with a like taste in anodynes4 ,and to do this will content him4 ,for he will believe that he may win to fame by brewing oblivion1 he will hope to invent1 if he prove thrice lucky1 some quite new form of let's pretend4 ,but he will not believe that anybody with a valid claim to be considered a post-graduate child can gravely talk about affixing limits to the form and scope of that especial pastime4 #af ,and so his creed1 to my experience1 stays troublingly nebulous4 ,at most he will admit but general tenets to himself1 conceding very secretly3 ,imprimis1 ,i play1 when all is said1 with common-sense and piety1 as my fellows appraise these matters1 and with death also4 ,i have embarked in a gaming in which to win is not possible3 and every sensible person of course thinks this extremely foolish4 ,yet ,i know that1 for my purpose1 the opinions of all other persons are negligible4 ,my own opinions1 if indeed ,i have the patience and the temerity to unearth them1 are1 as ,i know also1 erroneous2 they are unstable3 but they remain1 none the less1 the only reliable guides to my intended goal1 diversion4444 ,and my rational standards can be adhered to1 ,i consider1 with more safety if they are kept concealed4 ,item1 ,i must find out what are1 in reality1 my real beliefs3 and ,i must set these forth to the best possible advantage2 and ,i must be zealous1 above all1 not ever to regard my beliefs quite seriously4 ,human ideas are of positive worth in that they make fine playthings for the less obtuse of mankind4 ,that seems to be the ultimate lean value of all human ideas1 even of my ideas4 ,i must carefully conceal my knowledge of this humiliating fact4 ,item1 ,i must cherish my ideas as ,i do my children1 with a great love commingled with admitted inability to foresee what they may be like to-morrow4 ,for my ideas and my impressions1 in the moment that these visit and pass away from the consciousness which is ,i1 from the fragment of consciousness which insecurely lurks inside this skull1 are the only realities known to me in the brief while wherein ,i am1 as yet1 permitted to play with common-sense and piety and death4 ,i will to enjoy and play with and1 it may be1 to perpetuate after my flickering from this skull1 these true realities3 if ,i succeed in perpetuating them1 that is well2 if ,i fail1 ,i shall not at all worry about this failure once ,i am dead1 and ,i am fairly certain to be dead by and by4 ,at worst1 the ability and the body and the life which transiently were at my disposal will have been really used1 both to make something and to divert me4444 ,and at best1 it would be foolhardy not to keep such intentions concealed4 ,item1 with human life as a whole ,i have no grave concern1 and ,i am beguiled by no notion of depicting it4 ,my concern is solely with myself4 ,i have no theory of what we call life's cause or object2 nor can ,i detect in material existence any general trend4 ,the stars and the continents1 the mountains and these flustering hordes of men1 every mole-hill and the diligent dancing of gnat swarms1--all appears to blend in a vagrant and very prettily tinted and generally amusing stream by which ,i too am swept onward4 ,if but for my dignity's sake1 ,i prefer to conceal my knowledge of this fact4 ,item1 there is upon me a resistless hunger to escape from use and wont3 ,i seem more utterly resolved than are my fellows1 not to be bored3 and it is in my endeavor to evade the tediousness of familiar things that ,i am playing--playing1 as ,i know1 quite futilely1--with common-sense and piety and death4 ,such levity tends1 it well may be1 to no applaudable outcome3 meanwhile this playing diverts me4444 ,and meanwhile1 my fellows being what they are1 my amusement is a matter very profitably concealed4 ,item1 ,i really must1 in the teeth of all solicitation1 refuse to plagiarize anything from what people call nature and real life4 ,my playing1 which ,i term my art1 has no concern with things which1 in any case1 are too ill-managed to merit imitation4 ,for1 still adhering to that simile of the prettily tinted stream1 ,i am persuaded my art need not pretend to be a treatise upon hydrodynamics3 my art is well content to be the autobiography of an unvalued straw adrift in this sparkling and babbling stream that hastens toward an unguessable ocean4 ,let us avoid guesswork1 since it is profitless4 ,let us avoid1 too1 no reasonable pains to conceal this fact4 ,item1 let us avoid1 also1 the narcotizing perils of reverence1--even for our juniors1 who are in all sthetic matters invariably in the right1--or of being quite as serious about ourselves and our doings in collusion with printers and publishers as if mankind and the books of men were of grave and demonstrable importance4 ,and let us1 above all1 avoid disastrous candors1 and say boldly none of these things4 ,let us who write protest that we have no concealments1 that we expose ourselves entire1 and that our unselfish aim is to benefit and entertain other persons1 the while that we play ceaselessly with common-sense and piety and death4 ,,ii ,,the ,,way ,,of ,,wizardry ,such star-gazings show you indeed a bluer heaven and bigger stars and a sun rising out of the night3 yet neither ,athos will reveal to those who climb up to it1 nor ,olympos1 so much extolled by the poets1 in what way ,god cares for the human race1 nor make plain the nature of virtue and of justice and temperance1 unless the soul scans these matters narrowly2 and the soul1 if it engages on the task1 pure and undefiled1 will soar much higher than this summit of ,caucasus4 #b4 ,the ,way of ,wizardry #ag ,the literary artist plays1 ,i had said1 with common-sense4444 ,but here ,i harked back1 compunctious4 ,for only a moment since ,i had admitted that travel with ,marco ,polo to ,cathay was1 after all1 not the sole end of our art3 such romanticizing was merely one of the two avenues which1 equally1 afforded escape from the tediousness of familiar material surroundings4 ,yet it was the only avenue ,i was in train to recommend4 ,and so ,i paused here to reflect that in the ,biography ,i had always ignored the very real and solid claims of realism4 ,well1 of that other method of escape1 just indicated by my concession of the possibilities of travel with the ,kennicotts to ,gopher ,prairie--of the type of diversion which is furnished by the realist1--,i could but admit the existence and the potency1 restricted1 to be sure1 to an unenvied class of minds2 and must so pass on1 with no too obvious shuddering4 ,realism simply did not divert me1 that was all3 and thus in my mind ranked with dancing and ,the ,literary ,digest#a and golf1 as aberrancies of dullness that ,i could profitably avoid without reprehending4444 ,indeed1 it had been my droll luck to have some pre-compository insight into the shaping of1 if not the most notable1 certainly the wideliest talked about1 of this century's realistic novels2 so that ,i still cherish a peculiar leniency for these ,kennicotts whom ,i first met in manuscript2 and ,i read their family history with a double sense of guilt4 ,here is the marriage ,i suggested between the school-teacher and ,ramie ,wutherspoon3 and ,i recall1 with qualms describable as second cousins to remorse1 that in a realistic novel no marriage can ever turn out really happily4 ,here1 murdered by me1 ,i am afraid1 in the middle of another man's book1 is the unoffending ,scandinavian girl1 ,bea ,sorgenson1 who1 but for my lethal intervention1 might perhaps have thrived and have utilized the resources1 and have educed the covert virtues and nobilities of ,gopher ,prairie1 overlooked by the less practical heroine in chief2 for this was to have been coincidently the story of ,bea's success and of ,carol's failure as an exponent of general social uplift3 and would so have converted the whole affair into a feminized and unreadable down-to-date version of the ,idle and ,industrious ,apprentices4 ,i might1 ,i reflect with a troubled spirit1 ,i might perhaps have here struck realism a shrewd blow by heartening ,lewis in his first suicidal plan4444 ,to the other side1 here is ,carol's technical virtue preserved unmarred1 in the teeth of my lewd urgings3 for ,i was resolute to have her fall from grace1 duly escorted by ,eric ,valborg1 and then to find that nothing whatever came of it4 ,and here is not one of the suggested remedies for the ,middle ,west's regrettable provincialism1 of which1 but for my protestations and scoffings upon bended knees1 the reader might have had full benefit4 ,i recall rather vaguely the nature1 but vividly the great number1 of these possible remedies which ,lewis1 once1 planned to suggest3 and ,i guiltily speculate if it would not have been the part of true kindliness1 as well as of sthetic morality1 to have encouraged the launching of that avalanche of constructive criticism upon the unsuspecting reader of ,main ,street4 ,he1 paralyzed1 engulfed1 demolished1 would probably not ever again1 my conscience whispers1 have opened another realistic novel4444 ,at all events1 ,i too had been in this matter of realism at least once1 tinily1 a particeps criminis4 ,i confessed it1 and resumed my epilogue4 ,for all this seemed remarkably remote from my introductory remark about ,marco ,polo4 ,i had in mind1 then1 not ,the ,travels of ,marco ,polo the ,venetian1 but the small novel called ,messer ,marco ,polo which ,donn ,byrne published now some years ago4 ,and it is of this fiction that ,i wish here to speak more specifically1 because of my personal involvement in its fortunes4 #ah ,not often does one sustain the sense of having long awaited the book which time and chance and a kindred desire in another's being have combined to produce at last1 and to make at last a vended commodity1 as easy now to come by as blotting-paper or bad whiskey4 ,i had this sense about ,messer ,marco ,polo4 ,it was1 to me1 the most delightful of surprises1 a bit of unanticipatable flotsam washed up from the wide sunless sea of realism4 ,for we were1 at just that time1 being edified rather remorselessly4 ,sinclair ,lewis had1 via the book to which ,i have but now referred1 detected several flaws in the cultural life of the ,middle ,west2 ,john ,dos ,passos had discovered that the ,wilson ,war had been conducted not altogether as a pleasure trip for the private soldier2 and ,upton ,sinclair was in his customary low spirits4 ,nobody1 ,i think1 could have looked for the coming of a ,messer ,marco ,polo through the auctorial welter1--whose susurrus was after all but a more literate1 vast ,ain't it awful1 ,mabel8--among those fretful waves of indignation over the dreariness of small-town life and the loneliness of the artist in this unappreciative country1 and over how terribly our army swore in ,flanders1 and over the venality of our press and pulpit and every other institution1 and 7lone lisper of good yet to come7 over the imminence of several more stupendous wars that would wipe out us and all our sordid existence4 ,and yet1 through these gray floods of portentous information 7here neatly to round off my simile7 floated this carved spar of loveliness1 with absolutely startling irrelevance4 ,that ,messer ,marco ,polo should have happened at this precise moment seemed a small miracle so pleasure-giving that ,i hastily waived all consideration as to the book's ultimate value4 ,i only knew ,i had joyed in the reading of it1 somewhat as the partially starved might rejoice in an unexpected windfall of savory food1 without any need to deliberate the viands' durability4 ,none the less does the tale1 some years after that first keen greedy gulping of its delights1 and after a more leisured third reading1 remain a very fine and beautiful strange book4 ,i sincerely hope you are familiar with it3 even if you are not1 here is no need for me to summarize this tale of how young ,marco ,polo1 loitering through youth's amiable adulteries in thirteenth century ,venice1 became enamored1 through report1 of the ,khan of ,tartary's daughter1 and of his adventuring as he crossed ,asia to win to her4 ,it suffices to report that here1 in brief1 we have a variant of the old high tale of ,geoffrey ,rudel and his ,far ,princess1 adorned with very vivid1 curious ornament1 and brought to a dnouement no less sad but more soul-contenting4 ,yet the essential thing about this book1 ,i thought at my first reading1 was its prodigality in the transforming magic which--heaven knows1 in how few books6--quite incommunicably lends romantic beauty to this or that not necessarily unusual or fertile theme1 somewhat as sunset tinges the wooded and the barren mountain with equal glamour4 ,to me this book at once exposed ,donn ,byrne as a practitioner of that rare and unteachable wizardry without which one writes only words1 and without which the most carefully made sentences tend but to bury one another like neat undertakers4 ,technically1 though1 the construction of ,messer ,marco ,polo must remain always to any novelist peculiarly interesting4 ,to ,mr4 ,byrne1 in ,westchester1 ,n4,y41 at the second check of the hunt1 came the message that a countryman and a clansman needed me1 in the person of ,malachi ,campbell of the ,long ,glen3 and it is the old ,celt who tells of what1 in a far-off golden yesterday1 ,marco ,polo the ,venetian saw and encountered in ,cataia4 ,so then does ,mr4 ,byrne set about his magicking1 to lure you from the prosaic to the wonderful1 at last to leave you contentedly cuddled in the lap of the incredible4 ,he raises for you1 to begin1 the milieu of his ,westchester1--the late winter grass1 sparse1 scrofulous1 the jerry-built bungalows1 the lines of uncomely linen1 the blatant advertising boards4 ,it is in1 seen through1 and continuously colored by1 this almost ,gopher ,prairean atmosphere that ,malachi evokes the old time and the great plenty of ,ireland in the days of her championship1 and the gleaming world of tall ,dermot and ,granye of the ,bright ,breasts and amorous fierce ,maeve and ,cuchulain in whose heroic looks were love and fire2 and evokes too1 seen as if beyond and colored by the glow of this ,celtic wonderland1 not merely the opulent sleek life of the heyday and prime of ,venice1 that for riches and treasures was the wonder of the world2 since past even that1 illuminate and tinged by all1 is evoked also the ,venetian's notion of the inscrutable1 good-tempered1 shining1 evil ,east4 ,the tale1 thus1 seems a fantastic and gracious pageant1 saddened somehow by the known evanescence of its beauty1 regarded through three opalescent veils3 or1 rather1 all that happens--just as we upon reflection prefer to have had it happen1--in the ,chinese jasmine garden by the ,lake of ,cranes1 is viewed through a rose-tinted gauze of medival fancies seen through thin aureate ,celtic mists observed through the unhued but glazing window-panes of a ,westchester1 ,n4,y41 drawing-room4 ,i am by no means sure this curious tour de force was worth performing2 but ,i am unshakably convinced that ,mr4 ,byrne brings it off to a nicety4 ,well1 such was the romance which appeared some years ago without much heralding1 and which1 when ,i first read it1 had existed as a book for a month or two without attracting any particular attention4 ,and1 reading1 ,i wondered4 ,for this tale1 in itself delightful--for a reason to which ,i shall recur1--seemed to me to be told in words so warm and colored1 and so adroitly marshalled as to drive any honest-minded reader to the confessional4 ,i confessed1 then1 to being uncritically seduced by the fact that ,mr4 ,byrne1 without apparent effort or shame1 wrote perfectly of beautiful happenings and seemed no whit afraid of elaborated diction4 ,i confessed to thinking that many of the episodes1 perhaps most notably the efforts of ,marco ,polo to convert to ,christianity the pagan girl who while he talks is merely conscious of the fact that she loves the talker1 have a queer and heart-wringing loveliness that is well-nigh intolerable4 ,and ,i confessed to finding the brief chapter which bridges seventeen years1 and winds up the story to the true rhythm of life1 a small masterpiece of art and wisdom4 ,above all1 ,i now confess this is the only contemporary book that ever ,i actually sought the privilege of reviewing4 ,and when this task was entrusted to me1 by ,the ,nation1 ,i indited every word of ,messer ,marco ,polo's encomium with a teasing faint suspicion that ,i was almost certainly writing high-pitched nonsense which ,i would some day re-read with embarrassment4 ,at all events1 while the first rapture lasts1 said ,i1 let me profess that ,i most cordially admire this story1 and seem to find no praise too exquisite4 ,you1 ,i advised potential readers1 may derive from it a more temperate pleasure1 you may not even enjoy what my more sophisticated juniors1 ,i confess1 are deprecating as this pseudo-,celtic stuff3 and1 in fact1 the tale can hardly appeal to any considerable audience1 just now1 since it exposes and arraigns nothing whatever4 ,with that ,i had no concern4 ,it was merely my affair to tell everybody who would listen that1 to my finding1 ,messer ,marco ,polo was a very magically beautiful book4 #ai ,so ,i said all this in a review which ,i have here more or less exactly iterated4 ,i count myself to-day fortunate that this review achieved a brief bewildering sort of fame4 ,virtuosi thought well of it1 it was quoted with approval by the literary editors of the leading papers of ,des ,moines and ,walla ,walla and ,mobile4 ,it seemed1 indeed1 to be reprinted illimitably in papers everywhere throughout the country1 so that ,the ,nation's honorarium but visited me in transit to the bank account of my clipping bureau4 ,and the publishers reproduced this review at full length in their advertisements1 and reproduced it1 again virtually at full length1 upon the novel's dust jacket4444 ,i could open no periodical wherein reading-matter was advertised without encountering the proclamation1 ,james ,branch ,cabell says ,messer ,marco ,polo is a very magically beautiful book4 ,at first the phrase read like a ukase1 it had the full and final ring of an imperial decree3 later1 with so constant repetition1 it began to take on somehow the flavor of a taunt1 and ,i would read on a bit further1 in the next advertisement1 hurriedly4444 ,and people wrote to me about my pans1 some to thank me for1 as they put it1 discovering the novel for them1 and some of course to rebuke me as the member of a petty clique of assassins1 atheists and tomb-defilers who combined thus shamelessly to puff one another's books4 ,and in fine there was rarely seen so much bombilation over any one brief and not especially remarkable criticism1 whose only striking characteristics were the dubious ones of enthusiasm and sincerity4 ,but this to-do had the merit of drawing people's attention to ,messer ,marco ,polo and of provoking people to read this small novel4 ,and many thousands joyed in the reading of it1 very much as ,i had done4 ,for here again was the true formula and the hero with whom mankind peculiarly delights in imagination to identify itself1--the hero who wanders footloose and at adventure through lands which are to him and to the reader in nothing familiar4 ,it is the formula of the ,odyssey1 the formula of picaresque romance1 and of all fairy stories properly equipped with quests and an indomitable third prince4 ,it is of course precisely the one formula which cannot ever lose its charm so long as men retain that frame of mind which seems coeval with recorded history1 of being bored by the routine of their daily living4444 ,and people also found in ,messer ,marco ,polo just the quality ,i had ascribed to this book1 the quality which ,i have vaguely indicated as wizardry4 #bj ,wizardry is1 we know1 one of the very oldest of human avocations4444 ,yet ,i recall how my friend ,richard ,harrowby1 of ,montevideo1 once told me that1 to his mind1 the most strange feature of wizardry was the adroit consistency with which truth here has always been distorted or concealed4 ,for it stays an indisputable fact1 as ,harrowby pointed out1 that many persons still believe wizardry1 in common with its sister branch of witchcraft1 to have been a delusion2 and that the majority of those who are wiser remain at considerable pains not actively to dispute this quite common belief4 ,the art of censorship had1 in fact1 here achieved its oldest and capital triumph4 ,well1 you1 ,i admitted1 know more about such matters than ,i even pretend to4 ,so far as ,i can judge1 your friends the wizards have just emulated the family doctor and all business men1 in their usual endeavors1 to prolong life and to change less rare materials into gold4 ,their sagas1 from the history of ,geber to that of ,cagliostro1 present--in so far1 anyhow1 as the tale is formally told1--mighty dull and sordid reading3 and each of these ancient fakirs would seem to have got little enough out of the powers and privileges of the mage who1 in that jolly old sonorous phrase1 holds in his left hand the branch of the blossoming almond1 and in his right hand the clavicles of ,solomon4 ,to which ,harrowby replied quite gravely3 ,cabell1 you tempt me4 ,you really should distinguish between wizards and sorcerers-- ,but1 no6 ,i shall not voice any indiscretions4 ,the day is not yet come1 ,i too concede1 for wise persons to speak candidly about magic1 though already1 ,i believe1 the day dawns4 ,his faith in that day is perennial1 and at times rather pathetic4444 ,for one thing1 though1 ,i urged him on1 ,i am ready to argue that1 just on material grounds1 much of the fabulous wonder-working which our long-headed fathers used to dismiss with a shrug1 to-day is taking on a different aspect2 and that it becomes increasingly difficult to reject as a popular delusion performances which our own senses note to the right and left of us every day4 ,and what1 asked ,harrowby1 imply these rolling periods8 ,well1 ,i mean that1 when ,i was younger1 no intelligent person for one instant saw more than nonsense in the legend that ,simon ,magus had ridden visibly through the air in a winged car or that ,apollonius of ,tyana could be acquainted with remote events within a minute or two after they happened4 ,such old wives' tales were outgrown superstitions1 and that was all there was to it4 ,but to-day-- ,in this enlightened age1 he suggested1 with a small smile4 --,to-day1 with the manufacture of aeroplanes ranking as a standardized business1 and with radios in every third home1 these miracles1 as you see for yourself1 do not sound a bit remarkable4 ,to-day1 with one precaution1 nobody need question that ,pietro d',apone actually did hold imprisoned1 each in his separate metal vase1 seven spirits to instruct him audibly in astronomy1 alchemy and philosophy1 in painting1 physic1 poetry and music4 ,the needful precaution is1 of course1 merely to call these vases phonographs4 ,i see1 ,i see1 said ,harrowby1 quietly4 ,he was still smiling1 for some reason or another4 ,they were crystal vases1 by the way4 ,and they were not phonographs4 ,anyhow1 ,i answered1 in the dismissory large manner of ,mrs4 ,nickleby1 the principle is the same4 ,and beyond just such material suggestions ,i1 for one1 would not venture-- ,i think1 ,harrowby stated1 that you will very soon hear others going farther4 ,men begin to perceive1 in a great many other ways1 that for some two thousand years has existed covertly a vast fund of knowledge and philosophy and religious teaching1 not necessarily at odds with the more popular tenets of ,christendom1 but not sharing anything with these tenets nor at all reverencing them4 ,to me this sounded interestingly insane4 ,so ,i began1 ,but1 why--8 ,it is1 obviously1 a fund which its inheritors have been compelled to keep occult1 through ,christendom's set habit of arraigning and murdering out of hand all caught adherents to such irritating standards1 as sorcerers4 ,indeed8 said ,i1 with a pleasant consciousness of now having him nicely started4 ,men are beginning1 ,harrowby continued1 to discover piecemeal by 'scientific' methods something of that knowledge which sorcerers1 as ignoramuses call them1 have since time's youth attained through rather different avenues4 ,and more and more widely is the fact becoming recognized that sorcery and witchcraft and magic were as far from being popular delusions as they were remote from being implicated with ,christian mythology1 to the imputed extent of siding with the devil against ,heaven4 ,you don't tell me6 ,i observed4 ,but he did4 ,he went on to tell me1 in fact1 a great deal more4 ,for here1 he told me1 is a religion really old3 and to its adherents that faith which came out of ,nazareth seems still1 they say1 an upstart affair which may yet prove ephemeral4 ,so the devotees of that elder faith have not ever really concerned themselves with ,christianity1 not even those of them who have1 for one reason or another1 become bishops and cardinals and popes4 ,there had been1 in the outcome of this indifference1 ,dick ,harrowby considered1 something of irony3 and it was droll enough to reflect that the supreme head of the ,christian church--as when ,gerbert of ,aurillac1 ,hildebrand1 ,felice ,peretti1 ,benedict ,cajetan or ,jacques d',euse was pope1--had so often been the devout practitioner of an unspeakably more ancient religion4 ,so ,harrowby talked on1 with that rapt gravity which the old fellow reserves for discussion of the occult3 and ,i listened1 in part almost believing him1 who knew so much more about such matters than did ,i1 and in part reflecting that sanity and insanity are1 at best1 elastic terms4444 #ba ,but now ,i listened more attentively3 for ,harrowby had gone on to suggest that theories now endemic among the miscellaneous gentry whom we inclose in the term scientists--these new theories as to a fourth dimension1--begin to-day to enable us to see much more than nonsense in that reiterated ageless whispering as to men who had sought and through the aid of magic had found their diversion in lands not formally set down on any map4 ,you mean--8 ,i prompted him4 ,well1 it developed1 he meant that certain travellers1 this whispering has always reported1 had been to very queer places4 ,and returning1 they had told discreetly of realms wherein living was much more satisfactorily conducted than in our workaday existence4 ,yes1 but1 ,i commented1 even so-- ,i spoke just as a conversational spur1 just as a dubious provocative3 and ,harrowby went on4 ,one traveller had been down into a twilit country where the people were small and flaxen-haired1 and ate neither fish nor flesh of any kind4 ,these people1 he reported1 wore brown caps to which were fastened little silver bells4 ,their country knew no sunlight1 but was radiant with the shining of what1 to the eye1 seemed diamonds and carbuncles3 and nothing noxious nor hurtful was to be found anywhere in this covert lovely land4 ,still--6 ,i observed4 ,another spoke of a hollow mountain1 wherein you entered to unending delights4 ,and he spoke1 spoke as if he were troubled1 of the queen of this place4 ,yes1 she was different from other women4 ,and he talked too of the great ,emperor ,karl1 and of giants and dwarfs1 and of the ,wildefrauen1 who were more beautiful than the wives and daughters of men4 ,nevertheless-- ,i stated4 ,but ,harrowby was in full cry4 ,so he went on to tell me how yet another spoke of a palace which was builded1 so far as human sense might judge1 of pink seashells and of crystal4 ,a woman was to be encountered there also1 very lovely in a robe of green3 her eyes were intent and changeless3 her black hair was interwoven with red coral4 ,to her postulants she served1 in a hall hung with pearls1 eight kinds of wine in as many goblets of chased silver3 and then with a gold frying-pan she prepared the velladen of fish1 which was the marriage feast4 ,a fourth told of a quite different palace that was designed by the apostle ,thomas2 and was builded of ,sethym wood and sardius and imperishable ebony and ivory and onyx2 and was enwrought with the horns of reptiles4 ,before this palace stood a mirror to which you ascended upon a stairway of porphyry and serpentine3 armed warriors guarded it night and day1 for in this mirror you beheld all that was taking place in every province and region subject to the master of this palace3 and within this palace you lived among all manner of pleasures and delights4 ,and yet another spoke of an untroubled and great-hearted people ruled by one that had not the appearance of a human being4 ,some said the real name of this ruler was ,aradia3 others boasted of large reason to believe the lord of the hidden city of ,mommur in everything male4 ,this monarch retained among mankind many secret worshippers1 marked with the sign of their service3 these worshippers had privileges3 and in the eye of each one of them1 when you looked closely1 you would find the small likeness of a horse4 ,then also men had been to ,blath ,annis1 and to the ,stremblglings1 and to a secret country among mountains wherein the lost tribes of ,israel awaited the coming of ,anti-,christ1 when a fox would liberate them2 and to the pleasant uplands of ,ladaria1 about which rolled perpetually1 with terrible reverberations1 a river not of water but of great stones2 and to bright ,audela1 to which the very brave might enter through a gateway of fire1 and no man could enter except in that way4 ,whereas yet other travellers had journeyed beyond ,mistorak and the dreadful trumpets and thunder-blasts of the ,vale of the ,devil's ,head1 and had so won to the happy ,isle of ,bragman-- ,but they came back1 ,i suggested1 at this point4 ,yes1 all had perforce returned to man's colorless workaday life1 to the tediousness of over-familiar things1 and to the ever-nearing shadow of death4 ,yet here and there1 and now and then1 some men had managed to enter into quite other ways of living4 ,men had in journeying toward death contrived--sometimes by chance1 more frequently by the aid of magic1--for a while to elude the laws of ordinary human life1 and for a while to divert themselves-- ,in alcoves1 ,i suggested4 ,yes1 if you like1 said ,harrowby1--in alcoves in which the laws of human polity and of material nature1 as we know them1 had not any jurisdiction4 ,the point is that these tales were obviously not invented by liars with the intention of deceiving their hearers4 ,for these tales1 encountered in every part of the world1 have never made the tiniest concession to plausibility3 instead of wooing1 they summons faith with the abruptness of a sheriff2 and have assumed from the first that all our best-thought-of theories about the universe are comparable1 let us say1 to the knowledge which a fly in a dining-car possesses as to the management of railways4 ,i see1 ,i stated1 comfortably4 ,men1 it was whispered1 had1 for however brief a while1 escaped from the obligations and restraints and1 above all1 from the tediousness of workaday life1--that tediousness which people have always tried to vary and color1 under every sort of human civilization1 with so many forms of fiction4 ,i see4444 ,yes1 ,harrowby1 ,i see3 and your insanity is really a great help to me4 ,but1 he began1 you have the ladder of seven metals1 and you know perfectly well the secret of the mirror and the pigeons-- ,that1 ,i protested1 isn't the point6444 ,for ,i was in fact not at all concerned with the exact amount of truth upon which these legends were based4 ,the point1 with me1 was that men had since time's beginning wanted such tales to be true2 and that these stories illustrated man's immemorial and universal desire to escape from the self-imposed routine of his daily life4 ,man had always believed that he could do this by the aid of wizardry3 and in this belief1 as ,i now saw1 he had been always and perfectly right4 #bb ,for everywhere1 of course1--to-day1 just as in ,homer's nonage1--this need is contented by the literary artist4 ,the literary artist--he1 in any event1--does actually fulfil this universal desire1 by his own especial wizardry4 ,he temporarily endows his followers with the illusion of possessing what all alchemists have sought1--unfading youth1 wealth and eternal life4 ,he engineers the escape for which men have always longed1 and which they have always known to be attainable1 as here1 by magic4 ,and his is the charitable miracle-working which enables you to figure enviably in unfamiliar surroundings4 ,through his kind thaumaturgy you1 as ,odysseus1 deal intrepidly with cyclopes and ascend the ivory beds of goddesses2 as ,job you get1 from any ethical standpoint1 decidedly the better of the ,lord ,god of ,hosts and reduce ,him to rhetorical bullying2 as the third prince you overpass all perils to win to the desired trinket2 and as ,christian you with a deadly thrust superbly discomfit lion-mouthed1 bat-winged ,apollyon4 ,it is in this fashion that the artist makes sport with the first of his three adversaries1 and derides common-sense4 ,for common-sense tempts men to be contented with their lot1 to get the most from what is theirs1 and not to hanker nonsensically after the unattainable4 ,at the elbow of each of us lurks always this enchantress1 with luring rhapsodies1 more treacherous than ever any siren lilted1 in praise of the firm worth of money and conformity4 ,let us be rational1 she whispers2 and let us remember that1 whatever we might prefer1 in this world two and two make four4 ,and with many gaudy enticements does she prompt the unwary to yield homage to her insensate paramour1 the doltish and vain idol of mathematics4444 ,thus tirelessly1 thus unabashedly1 does common-sense urge every man to obtain in this world1 such as it is1 the permitted uttermost from that life which stays peculiarly his own3 and to the wheedling solicitings of common-sense the literary artist can answer but one word4 ,that word is ,bosh6 ,and having uttered it1 the artist proceeds to divert himself by living dozens upon dozens of lives which in nothing resemble the starveling and inadequate existence allotted him by the mere accident of birth4 #bc ,yes3 the creative romanticist alone can engineer a satisfying evasion of that daily workaday life which is to every man abhorrent4 ,i am convinced1 upon several grounds1 that the motive of the literary artist is wholly unaltruistic3 he blazes for his own pleasuring the trail upon which any number of readers may1 so far as he cares1 follow or not follow1 just as they elect1 and be hanged to them6 ,whenever he journeys into some such improbable country as1 let us say1 ,poictesme1 it is1 ,i know1 for his own recreation4 ,but ,i choose here1 entirely from the viewpoint of a reader of books1 to consider with less scrutiny his selfishness than my firm grounds for gratitude4 ,for1 thanks to these haphazard sorcerers1 my life has been a marvellous affair4 ,i look back1 for example1 upon the last month1 which1 as my high-flown and roystering way of living averages1 has been uneventful enough4 ,yet in that time1 ,i have quested through ,thessaly1 disguised by the old magic of ,apuleius as ,mr4 ,gilbert ,seldes1 in pursuit of all the lively arts1 and1 somewhat more necessitously1 of a wreath of roses2 and have1 with an intrepidity which ,i perforce admired1 sailed for the moon1 to take part in the wars between ,endymion and ,phathon4444 ,descending1 ,i have passed that night with a fair and charming woman--in a bed very white and wide1 with two coverlets of scarlet silk cloth1--and all our queer intercourse has been conducted1 amid many other incomprehensible happenings1 chastely4 ,in the morning we two went out into sunlit fields2 and so came to a spring of clear water enclosed by a stone basin1 upon which someone had left forgotten a comb of gilded ivory4 ,entangled in this comb1 as ,i 7whom men called ,lancelot7 saw with glad wondering1 and with the heroic passion for which ,i had long suspected myself to have the talent1 was near a handful of the hair of ,guenevere4 ,and ,i remember how ,i thought that gold a hundred thousand times refined would seem darker than midnight compared with the brightest day of that year's summer1 if anyone were to set such gold beside this hair4444 ,soon passing thence1--and travelling now under the alias of ,gil ,blas de ,santillane1--,i have disastrously changed rings with a plump1 dimpled brown-eyed niece of the governor of the ,philippine ,islands2 ,i have come1 disguised as a green and gold pasteboard dragon1 into the bedroom of the most beautiful of ,casmirians2 ,i have criticised the sermons of the ,archbishop of ,granada and found him in nothing different from any other author under criticism4 ,fleeing episcopal wrath1 ,i chatted1 near ,plessis les ,tours1 with a thin-nosed and threadbare burgess1 who turned out to be the most shrewd of kings1 and who sent me perilously journeying to the court of yet another bishop4 ,but ,louis de ,bourbon had been murdered1 ,i discovered1 at an over-uproarious supper-party conducted by the ,wild ,boar of ,ardennes4444 ,so ,i journeyed instead into ,england1 to fetch back the ,queen's diamonds in good time for her to foil the nefarious ,cardinal1 by duly wearing these twelve gems when she danced in the ballet of ,la ,merlaison at the fte of ,messieurs the ,echevins4 ,in ,england1 though1 ,i wandered so far astray1 both northward and chronologically1 that1 lost1 ,i paused1 under the wood of ,lettermore1 to ask my way of red ,colin ,campbell1 in the very moment the great1 ruddy jovial gentleman was shot down from ambush2 and through this mishap ,i became again a fugitive1 now wandering through the howes and bracken of wild ,scotland4444 ,always1 you perceive1 no matter what mage guided1 he kept to the tried formula1 and led me1 footloose and at free adventure1 through eras and surroundings which were to him and me in nothing familiar4444 ,so that eventually ,i came1 by way of the ,british ,linen ,company's bank1 and so past the lair of ,tharagavverug1 to the steel gate1 to ,the ,porte ,resonant1 of the ,fortress ,unvanquishable2 and ,i am now upon the point of going in to cut off1 for the third or fourth time1 ,gaznak's evil head4 ,yes1 looking back1 ,i can see that the last month has been fairly various and contenting4 ,and ,i am convinced that ,i must owe all these happy adventurings to the charity of beneficent wizards rather than of mere writing persons4 ,and ,i elect to think of each and every valid romantic novelist as a skilled sorcerer who1 accompanied by a suitable cortge of readers1 departs at will from the workaday world1 to travel1 eternally young and always comfortably opulent1 upon the blessed way of wizardry which conducts him away from boredom1 and enables him to wander footloose and at continuous unflagging adventure1 in unfamiliar lands wherein1 as ,poictesme phrases it1 almost anything is rather more than likely to happen4 #bd ,and ,i would like to think that every self-respecting novelist goes to his magicking in suitable estate1 and follows high and approved old formul4 ,in any event1 so many persons have1 at odd times1 inquired about my own methods of composition that it seems well here to jot down what would appear to be a few of the more obvious rules of thumb4 ,the novelist1 then1 most appropriately prologizes his evasion of common-sense--after of course performing the proper suffumigations of camphor and aloes and amber1--by writing his first chapter in a robe of white1 with a triple collar of crystals and pearls and selenite4 ,his diet upon this day will be fish4 ,when there is fighting in manuscript1 the writer may always advantageously1 ,i believe1 shift to a rust-colored robe adorned with amethysts1 and having a belt and bracelets of steel1--clothed in which gear1 he will while writing keep as near as circumstances permit to the chimney1 favored by ,mars4 ,when he is about to kill anyone scriptorially1 he will in mere self-protection put on a wreath of ash and cypress1 and burn scammony and alum4 ,he will likewise upon this day be careful to stint none of the functions of nature2 and will circumspectly remember that he traffics with the wan and ashy overlord of the greater infortune4 ,but to bring off a love scene properly1 demands of course much more elaborate paraphernalia4 ,the room1 so far as general experience indicates1 should be hung with green and rose2 the author1 whom a ,nubian mute is fanning with swans' down1 now is robed in sky blue1 and wears a graven turquoise ring4 ,musicians are in attendance1 preferably choristers1 fiddlers and pipers4 ,upon the writer's head is a tiara of lapis lazuli and beryl1 wreathed about with myrtle and roses3 upon the auctorial breast a copper talisman opposes to the busied keys of the typewriter the mystic sign of ,anael and the inscription ,,aveeva ,,vadelilith4444 ,i do not mean that in writing the ,biography ,i myself have always in every detail followed these exact methods of composition4 ,what with one thing and another1 such as having small children in the house1 a similar account at the bank1 and the attendance within candid conversational range of one who holds at best the customary views as to what may be put up with in a husband1--with such deterrents about1 these methods have sometimes1 in some respects1 been found inexpedient4 ,and so ,i merely suggest them here as that ideal of conduct which should be aimed at by the creating romanticist1 in absolute and strict logic4 ,for he in reality is a sorcerer1 and in consequence is amenable to the most ancient of rules4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote #a3 ,an ,american periodical of the day1 designed to cure the habit of reading magazines4 ,,iii ,,minions ,,of ,,the ,,moon ,schiller's ,ruber perverted the taste and imagination of all young men4 ,the high-minded1 metaphysical thief1 its hero1 was so warmly admired that many raw students abandoned their homes and betook themselves to the forests to levy contributions upon travellers4 ,but they found that real1 everyday robbers were unlike the banditti of the stage2 and that three months in prison was very well to read about by their own firesides1 but not agreeable to undergo in their own proper persons4 #c4 ,minions of the ,moon #be ,the literary artist plays1 ,i had said1 with piety4444 ,but here ,i was pleasantly interrupted by the sun's appearance without1 and the consequent inrush of new color and of livelier gilding into the massed bindings of those books1 of so many more books than ,i shall ever accord a second reading1 assembled upon my library shelves4 ,everything had of a sudden brightened1 with a cheerfulness which my thinking absorbed1 since 7even with that awkward question of piety ahead7 ,i had found at least one excellent palliation for the devoting of my life to the ,biography4 ,for the novelist and every creative writer travelled on the gay way of wizardry while his less favored fellows1 for the major part of their journeying1 approached toward death through more staid and monotonous corridors4 ,yet in these corridors men were continually finding alcoves3 and these alcoves1 as reflection had already suggested1 were of two sorts4 ,men found solace in--to continue my figure1--alcoves of useless or even of reprehensible action2 and in alcoves of thought4 ,by the rogue1 and by the rather rarer addict of mental exercise1 might1 at reasonable intervals1 diversion be obtained as we passed toward the exit at the end of the inescapable corridor4444 ,well1 and as ,i continued idly to regard my books1 ,i noted in particular two volumes which yet stood side by side4 ,their appearance in ,america had been1 ,i recollected1 contemporaneous4 ,and these two relatively enfranchised types of men--the thinker and the rogue1--had then been1 ,i considered1 afforded exoteric illustration1 by that most quaint of accidents which gave us simultaneously as published books ,the ,education of ,henry ,adams and ,the ,legend of the ,glorious ,adventures of ,tyl ,ulenspiegel4 ,i could remember thinking that not often were thus coincidently granted1 for the first time to ,americans1 two volumes with such a plausible air of being destined for longevity1--although the cautious would affix to the making of this assertion the rider that each book centres on a personality which is by way of being unfairly beguiling4 ,each protagonist here is a personality evocative of the reader's friendship1 in the instant happy way in which people between book-covers are privileged to establish such relationship with beings less permanently issued in flesh2 and so each of these two evades calm judgment4 ,for to many of us these had figured at once as new-found1 heart-delighting and eminently personal friends1--this ,ulenspiegel come a-swaggering out of ,belgium1 and this wistful ,adams then just released from the decent reticences of living1--and we perforce appraised them with a bias of friendship rather than by any code of strictly literary values4 ,still1 the two figures appeared quite perfectly to illustrate the seeking of diversion in alcoves of reverie and of misdemeanor4 ,to ,adams ,i decided to come back3 and to the ,fleming ,i turned with frank confession that of the somewhat incongruous pair one finds ,tyl ,ulenspiegel the more difficult to judge with any pretence of equity1 precisely because this ,tyl is1 as ,i suggested at the beginning1 a rogue4444 #bf ,it would be pleasant here to digress into speculation why in our literature there should be so few rogues portrayed full-length2 and why ,america1 that in daily life derives such nave pleasure from being cheated by fine business men and far-seeing statesmen should have produced in its writings no really memorable rogue1 with the possible exception of ,uncle ,remus's ,br'er ,rabbit4 ,but upon the whole1 it appears preferable to say that ,tyl ,ulenspiegel has been for some five centuries famous among the people of ,belgium and the ,netherlands as a sort of ,dutch ,figaro or ,scapin1--as mischief-maker1 jack-of-all-trades1 and by turns fool1 artist1 valet and physician4 ,this character was appropriated and ennobled by ,charles de ,coster as the central figure of a heroic romance1 ,la ,lgende de ,tiel ,uylenspiegel1 published in #ahfg1 and since known as the ,bible of the ,flemings2 and it is this book which was1 some fifty years afterward1 translated into our tongue4 ,so much it appears preferable to say as simply as possible1 because1 in ,geoffrey ,whitworth's translation1 a splendid and great-hearted example of literary art was then rendered into delightfully adequate ,english3 and ,i incline to think that a masterpiece should be greeted simply and reverently1 and without vain speaking4 ,even to recommend it to your consideration 7as ,i none the less must conscientiously do7 seems rather on a par with saying pleasant things about a sunrise4 ,so honest comment can but come back to this3 for ,tyl ,ulenspiegel himself one straightway establishes a sort of personal liking1 a liking unbased on literary values1 and an unmoralizing liking such as entraps you into indignation when the reforming ,henry the ,fifth repudiates that other not-unlovable rogue1 ,sir ,john ,falstaff4 ,a ,fleming am ,i from the lovely land of ,flanders1 workingman1 nobleman1 all in one1--and ,i go wandering through the world1 praising things beautiful and good1 but boldly making fun of foolishness4 ,such is ,tyl ,ulenspiegel's description of himself1 in terms a bit over-modestly incommensurate to the speaker's variousness4 ,tyl can1 for example1 be upon occasion a very pretty fighting-man1 performing salutary homicides with an approach to professional despatch and thoroughness4 ,for so often as a national hero finds a deserving person to be rescued from oppression1 ten or twelve adversaries amount1 as we sometimes discontentedly foreknow1 to nothing more than to afford1 in the moment that their presumption procures for them demolishment1 yet another proof of the foolishness of the wicked2 and all such slight battues the national hero regards as trifles4 ,thus here1 for serious work1 an ,ulenspiegel too requires some three or four fully armed opposing cohorts of ,spanish cavalry to be discomfited single-handed1 and really to justify a display of that animation with which ,sieur ,roland laid about him at ,roncesvaux1 and which enabled ,achilles to choke ,scamander with slain ,trojans4 ,so much of physical prowess1 ,i repeat1 one has the fair and ancient right to expect of any national hero4 ,quite another facet of the jewel is the roguish1 not at all heroic ,tyl of elder legends1 who delights in perpetrating jokes not always pre-eminent for delicacy4 ,these thimble-rigging and cloacinal jeux d'esprit ,de ,coster1 to be sure1 has for the most part omitted1 with here and there just a bland indication4 ,for another matter1 although ,tyl is devotedly attached to the fair ,nele1 and their marriage at the end of his wanderings is a conclusion such as the erudite describe as foregone1 nobody can expect a rogue meticulously to emulate ,joseph4 ,the national hero of ,belgium1 be it repeated1 is a rogue4444 ,so there came about inevitably that affair of the beautiful gay-hearted dame whom ,tyl escorted to ,dudzeel3 in all her dealings with young men1 howsoever impudent1 she abhorred in particular the sin of cruelty1 and could not be pricked into it4 ,and there was the ,walloon maiden into whose home ,tyl went one night1 to take part in organ practise of the right accompaniment to some ,flemish love-songs4 ,and there was the ,comtesse de ,meghen1 another lovely and benevolent lady1 who offered ,ulenspiegel1 in the beginning1 hospitality1 and in the end1 her sincerest compliments upon the fact that he did not in anything resemble her elderly and flabby husband4444 ,in fine1 ,tyl ,ulenspiegel marches1 in the pride of his youth1 about a world of brightly-colored and generous women1 and graces a world wherein he displays as much continence as appears consistent with politeness2 and wherein ,joseph in the final outcome could not manage to combine these two virtues4 ,so likewise this rogue marches1 with chance for guide1 about a world which--then also1--was ruled by folly and bigotry2 and he goes with jauntiness1 as befits a master of the merry words and frolics of youth1 even in the shadowed places where over-head his betrayed and gibbeted kindred fester between him and the sun4 ,his is ,hamlet's heritage1 but the ,fleming wears his rue with a marked difference2 since the ashes of a martyred father lie upon ,tyl's breast without at all oppressing a heart whose core is roguishness4 ,and in the presence of injustice ,tyl ,ulenspiegel does not shrink1 not even into drawing morals3 instead1 with chance for guide1 he marches4 ,for those who would wrong him his eye and tongue and sword stay keen2 and the rogue knows these weapons to be in the long run sufficient3 meanwhile1 that one should now and then encounter over-troublesome fellows needing to be killed1 is as naturally a part of wandering at adventure as that one should find everywhere girls to be assisted out of virginity and flagons to be emptied1 and songs to be made beyond any numbering1 but never the last song4444 ,so the rogue marches1 and puts all things to their proper uses4 ,and the heart of the reader1 given something better than the heart of a flea1 goes out to the resistless rogue4 ,there is1 to be sure1 a story3 in fact1 around this sprightly figure ,de ,coster has woven--contemporaneously1 it is bewildering to reflect1 with the weaving of a dreary mystery about one ,edwin ,drood1--an intricate romance as cruel as life and considerably gayer4 ,somewhat to deviate metaphorically1 ,de ,coster1 in this tale of fifteenth-century ,flemings in course of being enlightened and uplifted by the auto-da-fs and hangmen of the ,holy ,inquisition1 has builded a story which is not unsuggestive of a time-mellowed fifteenth-century cathedral2 with the gentry about their devotions1 and with peasants joking on the porches1 and with a stately hymn music accompanying both the aspiration and the guffaws2 a cathedral1 too1 that is no less opulent in glowing paintings of rapt saints and archangels than in captivatingly hideous gargoyles4444 ,here again1 one is tempted to expatiate1 concerning these gargoyles3 and ,i would like here to talk about the superlunar bleak buffooneries of the chapter which depicts the death of ,charles the ,fifth1 and his trial in heaven2 or to applaud the account of ,tyl's hunting of the werwolf2 or1 at least1 to note that really intolerable catharsis by pity and terror when ,katheline the good witch attempts to share her cup of cold water with ,joos ,damman in the torture chamber4444 #bg ,but what1 above all1 remains with us is the figure of the tall young rogue who passes hardly any alcove which hide-bound morality has labelled ,keep ,out without a little dalliance therein4 ,ahead is a closed door1 lightly ajar1 a black door with silver-plated handles1 which one perforce approaches always3 in the meantime it is astonishing to note what a number of pleasant and blameworthy things one can discover to do4 ,reflection finds the circumstance unfortunate that most of the agreeable actions of life are either forbidden or else deplorably behedged with restrictions4 ,from drunkenness and from the effects of certain drugs can be obtained moments1 and even hours1 of conscious contentment3 probably in no other way1 indeed1 is it possible for human beings to induce an unbroken twenty minutes of actual and complete happiness3 but with repetition such pleasures increasingly work the deuce of a damage to one's health and purse4 ,besides1 our inefficient bodies prove unable to stay comfortably inebriate1 for more than a brief while1 without drifting into sleep or collapsing in sickness3 and our equally inefficient medicine men have found out no amiable method of1 in the time-honored phrase1 recuperating from alcoholic excesses4 ,then also the more intimate recreations of amour1 when once you are over with the disappointments unavoidably attendant upon loss of innocence1 compose a very pleasant pastime so long as the game is played by relative strangers4 ,even superficial exploration of the charms and the little ways of any unfamiliar and personable young woman1 they tell me1 is unflaggingly rewarded and incited to fresh exertions by the discovery of some slight novelty or small strangeness4 ,thighs differ1 breasts are always unpredictable1 and the piquant mole continually by himself surprises1 ,i am informed4 ,yet1 in ,america at all events1 one finds extant a perceptible tendency to deprive the oldest and most popular of amusements of just this essential element of unfamiliarity1 by restricting it to married persons2 and even within this licensed class to limit each husband to the embraces of his own wife4 ,now with the morality of this social ruling the most precise need pick no fault3 ,i would merely point out that1 here again1 should monogamy ever become prevalent among us1 we would be deliberately abating one of the more considerable pleasures of an existence wherein pleasures are not over-frequent4 ,nor1 of course1 not even in actual need1 are you allowed to take another person's money away from him except through the tedious channels of business2 nor to fare publicly appareled in lovely colors except just where your necktie shows but stays invisible to--of all people--you alone2 nor are you permitted to keep enjoyable1 through the amenities of homicide1 your commerce with persons who admittedly exist but to annoy their fellows4 ,tyl ,ulenspiegel might deal as the whim took him with those obnoxious cohorts of ,spanish cavalry4 ,but with us there is never an open season for religious revivalists or book peddlers or collectors of internal revenue3 and traffic policemen and the conductors of tag-days#b and prohibition agents all live in exasperating immunity4 ,even the women you adored1 and wrote letters to1 approach you intrepidly4 ,everywhere1 in fine1 this or that pleasant action is forbidden or in one way or another restricted2 and man1 upon the verge of actual1 sharp1 zestful enjoyment is brought up short by a taboo of his own inventing4 ,so it is pleasant--faute de mieux1 as in our current fiction superb worldlings no longer observe to other members of the lite1--it is very pleasant to indulge in these sports vicariously through considering the exploits of the ,ulenspiegelian rogue who does do these things4 ,and we cannot but rather fondly admire the dashing fellow who commits the pleasure-giving misdemeanors from which we are held back by prudence or by physical limitations4 ,every country rejoicing in the dubious benefit of a history has1 they say1 alike its great national hero and its great national thief3 and it is a fact that ,st4 ,george endures in balladry with ,robin ,hood1 ,st4 ,denis with ,cartouche1 ,st4 ,andrew with ,rob ,roy4 ,then1 too1 if ,belgium yet remembers ,tyl ,ulenspiegel1 ,spain has not yet forgotten ,guzman d',alfarache1 nor ,germany her ,schinderhannes1 nor ,hungary her ,schubry4 ,everywhere through the shadowland of legend canter and gallop--with the gleaming eyes of nocturnal creatures1 with a multitudinous tossed shining of steel1--these squires of the night's body1 ,diana's foresters1 these minions of the moon1 whom the prosaic call thieves and highwaymen3 and everywhere men have admired and cherished some cunning strong unconquerable rogue4 ,this foible has from the beginning been recognized and shared by the literary artist4 ,it is perhaps one reason 7among others7 why really reputable persons have always felt1 however obscurely1 that there is something dangerous in novels2 and why the reading of fiction has always been more or less deprecated by all citizens of appreciable elevation and influence4 ,and here the well-thought-of are1 very luckily for the literary artist1 far more profoundly in the right than ever the well-thought-of have comprehended3 for in all polities imaginative literature has tirelessly advocated revolution1 by depicting the possibilities of a more pleasure-giving state of affairs2 and in his diversions the artist has consistently tended to identify himself with the rogue and the law-breaker4 #bh ,romantic art has from the first inclined to glorify the breaker of laws current in the artist's lifetime4 ,nor are the provocatives for this sedition obscure2 since no society has ever provided any exact or generally respected status for the artist1 nor afforded him1 at most1 much more than the half-contemptuous1 cosseting indulgence which is granted to lap-dogs4 ,moreover1 the artist alone is permitted hourly to use his reason1--an action which in any other walk of life would at once upset business usage or professional etiquette1--because of men's general conviction that here it doesn't especially matter4 ,in consequence the artist has always found our human ordering of this world1 under all rgimes1 to be unsatisfactory2 and to offenders against any part of this ordering he inclines with irrational unavoidable sympathy4444 ,you may1 in fact1 observe that nobody is quite at ease in dealing with a policeman3 the man represents1 however genially1 with howsoever bright adornments of figured brass and rubicundity1 an oppression that is upon us2 and while in theory the relation between the legally honest tax-payer and his two hired and liveried retainers1 the policeman and the mail-carrier1 is the same1 one notes in practise a marked difference4 ,the courts and officers of the law1 and all legal processes1 are matters with which we as if by instinct avoid involvement3 for1 here again1 man occupies somewhat the position of a ,frankenstein4444 ,so ,robin ,hood is voted an unending triumph1 from black letter ballads to the moving pictures1 and the fact that ,christ was crucified by due process of law has everlastingly endeared ,his story to romantic art and human sympathy4 ,now very often1 ,i daresay1 the artist is guided by this sympathy for the rogue without suspecting its existence4 ,thus even in the most genteel and circumspect of arts1--which ,i take to be the composition of a novel in the ,english language1--it is droll to find from the beginning the most respectable of scribes1 if not always of pharisees1 depicting one or another rascally law-breaker with fervors of fond admiration whereof the writer seems wholly unconscious4 ,for the ,english novel began with the rogueries of ,lovelace and ,tom ,jones4 ,then followed the chronicles of ,rob ,roy and ,jack ,sheppard and ,paul ,clifford1 most exemplary and magnanimous of highwaymen4 ,seth ,pecksniff presently fell down the steps of his cottage in ,wiltshire3 and tall ,redmund ,barry fled up to ,dublin1 just two years later1 after his duel with ,captain ,quin4 ,by and by1 in ,lymport1 the great ,mel assumed his over-tight lieutenant's uniform1 and was laid out in his coffin1 by way of beginning the tale which his personality infuses all through3 and the gay young ,master of ,ballantrae 7after tossing a guinea with his brother7 travelled northward from ,durrisdeer1 singing as he rode toward ,culloden1 with a fine new white cockade in his hat4444 ,for all these are rogues1 in each of whom his creator obviously joyed1 no matter under what protective coloration of moral purpose and of self-deceit4 #bi ,that art is a criticism of life1 appears a favorite apothegm among those who know least about either4 ,yet the statement is true enough1 in the sense that prison-breaking is a criticism of the penitentiary4 ,art is1 in its last terms1 an evasion of the distasteful4 ,the artist simply does not like the earth he inhabits3 for the laws of nature his admiration has always been remarkably temperate2 and with the laws of society he has never had any patience whatever4 ,so the literary artist leaves the earth which he inhabits1 daily and with no more to-do than daily is made over the same feat by professional aeronauts4 ,and the literary artist diverts himself by constructing other worlds1 whose orderings are different1 and to his mind more approvable4 ,all creative writers have thus1 whether consciously or no1 embarked in an undertaking compared with which the axiomatic attempt to weave ropes of sand or to construct silk purses from even less adapt material is a quite sane and unassuming enterprise4 ,for the literary artist here is at play with the second of his adversaries1 with piety2 and has offered to instruct the aggregate wisdom of his fellows and even of ,omnipotence how to create a more satisfactory world4 ,by the less venturous the suggestions thrown out have been partial and in the nature of slight amendments to existent orderings4 ,for centuries where magic has attempted to coerce ,providence1 and religion has urged the bribing of ,heaven1 whether with burnt offerings or good behavior1 here the artist has more urbanely adhered to moral suasion1 by setting a praiseworthy example for the ,demiurge to follow4444 ,thus has the novelist long proposed1 through this delicate intimation of setting the example1 that a time limit might advantageously be placed upon human discomforts1 and immunity from the sum total be granted1 say1 along with a marriage license4 ,suitable incomes1 it has in the same tactful way been suggested to ,providence1 should be conferred upon all virtuous and guileless persons1 for whom the bonds of reality rarely afford coupons4 ,and something certainly ought to be done about man's positively dangerous racial custom of getting older and dying2 for which the novelist's alternative would seem to be that1 after an equitable distribution of confessions and brides and unexpected legacies and jail-sentences1 everybody should enter a static condition of middle age4 ,such at least is the impression left by the last paragraphs of our elder novels1 with all the characters congealed into perdurable domesticity and standing sponsor for one another's children4 ,scheherezade is1 to me1 the only known tale-teller who has punctiliously and convincingly accounted for the future of her puppets1 after the winding up of each comedy1 by stating that they were duly disposed of by the destroyer of delights1 and presumably the undertaker4444 ,let it1 in fine1 be understood that the business of human life1 as we know it1 will by and by be reorganized1 and everything be made entirely and permanently different3 and fortified by that firm understanding1 we can for the present allow the conditions of human life4 ,that much at least has been from the beginning a proviso insisted upon by every creative writer4 ,but those whom life has more deeply disappointed and bored1 these turn to diverting themselves with worlds that are in everything dissimilar from the one world with which ill luck has made them familiar4 ,these are the romantics1 the fantastics1 who1 cursed with actual imagination1 devoted it in youth to pre-figuring what life must be when you became an untrammeled adult4 ,they have faced the reality1 they have faced the real and incredible antickry of men as social units4 ,they have faced it with a candor uncharacteristic of common-sense4 ,and they have now no further concern with the laws and other hebetudes of men1 except to forget these disappointments as utterly as possible1 and to divert themselves in worlds of their own creation wherein their whims are the only laws4 ,so ,ulenspiegel is sent hunting werwolves2 ,holy ,mal is tricked into sailing northward1 in a demon-rigged stone trough1 among fabulous seas and immodest sirens2 the huge shadow which bears obscurely1 as if beneath the wings of a bat1 the ,seven ,deadly ,sins1 is cast across the roof of ,anthony's hut in the ,thebaid2 the ,snow ,queen is bundled into a great sledge painted white1 and fetched south to kidnap little ,kay2 ,alice is lured into the rabbit hole and tumbled1 very slowly1 down that very deep well whose walls were inset with cupboards and bookshelves3 and the creating romantic is diverted4 #cj ,meanwhile you may note the unreflective raising somewhat of a pother over the circumstance that the artist is as a rule disliked and is belittled1 if not actually persecuted1 by his contemporaries4 ,yet no other outcome can seem more natural1 ,i am afraid1 when you consider that the art of every important creative writer is an hourly protest that he finds his contemporaries dull and inadequate persons1 and that he esteems the laws which they have devised1 and live under1 to be imbecile4 ,laws based upon rationality one could endure3 but any sane person1 as the fretted artist perceives1 must regard with an eye full of provisos the professed aim of so many of our laws1 to make for the public's general welfare and happiness4 ,for the artist is logical2 and therein differs from the majority of his fellows1 who unthinkingly assume that all efforts to promote the well-being of mankind at large are praiseworthy4 ,i myself concede that we are here apt1 through however admirable motives1 to act precipitately1 where one calm instant's thought would tend to show all such efforts irreligious and illogical4 ,by no religious code1 and by no course of logic taught in any school1 is the average man entitled to happiness3 his demerits justify in logic the earthly misery which religion postulates3 and to impose upon him happiness would be1 by the best-thought-of standards1 an unreasonable and blasphemous act1 which1 one may proudly say1 ,american civilization has never come anywhere near committing4 ,instead1 the orthodox should find it very gratifying to note with what complete inutility altruism flourishes everywhere1 and legal enactments pullulate to promote men's general well-being2 since faith and logic alike1 ,i take it1 are strengthened by the utterness with which all these laws fail1 and1 in fact1 appear to muddle matters rather worse than ever4 ,and it is perhaps a good thing too that we1 who have taxes1 by-laws1 licenses1 passports1 burial certificates1 and permits to marry1--we who must do all that is done by us either in violation or with the permission of one or another law1 we who live bound and fretted by innumerable small legal requirements and taboos and restrictions1--cannot in the least imagine what living must have been like under less omnipresently paternal governments4 ,in simpler and upon the whole less muddle-headed ages the relatively few laws whereunder mankind lived did not pretend to accomplish anybody's positive benefit2 their slighter and more feasible aim was to prevent your undue annoyance of anybody else3 and1 that secured1 the laws took--it becomes a positively incredible concept1--no further account of your actions4444 --,which is not of course to suggest that the artist fared in more ,arcadian days a whit the merrier4 ,i would not imply that the artist was then content with his material surroundings1 nor that in any society he is likely ever to be content4 ,here and there1 to be sure1 as ,i have admitted1 he wins to the cuddlings and applause of the lapdog with a quaint repertoire of tricks2 and dies1 some while after forgetting these tricks1 comfortably enough of being over-pampered4 ,but the romantics1 the true romantics1 these also1 are in a wholly un-,falstaffian sense all minions of the moon1--who has condemned them1 as ,i recall my ,baudelaire1 eternally to love the place where they are not and the woman whom they know not4 ,astrology is more exact2 and1 under those whom the moon rules1 defines very perfectly the true romantic1 as a soft tender creature1 a searcher of and delighter in novelties2 unsteadfast1 timorous1 prodigal2 loving peace and to live free from care2 hating labor2 and content in no condition of life1 either good or ill4 ,to me that last clause seems in every sense conclusive4 ,he that is born one of the minions of the moon must therefore always be a little at odds with what his fellows describe as piety4 ,for his reason1 such as it is1 compels him to disapprove of most human laws1 upon the ground of their foolishness1 and of most natural laws1 upon the ground1 not merely of their unreason nor even of their lewdness and cruelty1 but of their ugly and unsthetic results4 ,so that in the worlds he builds as both a lesson and a rebuke to ,providence1 the creative artist inclines to favor and to place in a heroic light such persons as ,tyl ,ulenspiegel and ,robin ,hood1 who1 by the standards of human laws1 are better fitted for jail4 ,nor is that all4444 #ca ,no3 that is not by any means all4 ,for the romantic enters into frank competition with nature by attempting not merely to create more interesting persons than nature creates1 but also to outvie nature by making his creations durable4 ,and1 as a sort of supreme affront1 creative art now and then plucks from the graveyard one of nature's put-by failures1 and1 with a triumphant1 ,see now what ,i can do with the very material this bungler has flung away6 converts the dead man or woman into an ever-living romantic myth4 ,so are begotten those favored persons whose vitality and whose adventuring each generation of mankind renews4444 ,i refer1 of course1 to such persons as ,prometheus and ,pan and ,judas and the ,sphinx1--and to ,andromeda and ,helen of ,troy and ,satan4 ,i refer to the ,wandering ,jew and ,faust and ,odysseus1 who stay always irresistible to the romanticist3 and ,i refer to ,king ,solomon and ,queen ,cleopatra and the knight ,tannhuser1 and to ,lilith and ,don ,juan also1 for whom are yet reserved1 we know1 the most spirit-stirring adventures in the manuscripts of writers still unborn4 ,i refer to ,blue ,beard1 and to ,dame ,mlusine1 and to ,punch1 and to a great many others who were so lucky as to originate in a satisfyingly romantic myth1 and who in consequence stay always real and always free of finding life monotonous4 ,now1 it is an ever-present reminder of our own impermanence to note that no human being stays real4 ,in private annals a species of familiary canonization sets in with each fresh advent of the undertaker2 no sooner1 indeed1 do our moribund lie abed than we begin even in our thoughts to lie like their epitaphs2 and all of us by ordinary endure the pangs of burying ineffably more admirable kin than we ever possessed4444 ,nor does much more of honesty go to the making of those national chronicles which ,mr4 ,henry ,ford1 with a candor that at one time really seemed incurable by anything short of four years in the ,white ,house1 has described as bunk4 ,in history one finds everywhere an impatient desire to simplify the tortuous and complex human being into a sort of forthright shorthand4 ,alexander was ambitious1 ,machiavelli cunning1 ,henry the ,eighth bloodthirsty1 and ,george ,washington congenitally incapable of prevarication4 ,that is all there was to them1 so far as they concern the average man3 and thus does history imply its shapers with the most curt of symbols1 somewhat as an astronomer jots down a four's first cousin to indicate the huge planet ,jupiter and compresses the sun that nourishes him1 into a proof-reader's period4 ,always in this fashion does history work over its best rles into allegories about the ,lord ,desire of ,vain-glory and ,mr4 ,by-ends1 about ,giant ,bloody-man and ,mr4 ,truthful2 and rubs away the humanness of each dead personage resistlessly1 as if resolute to get rid in any event of most of him2 and pares him of all traits except the one which men1 whether through national pride or the moralist's large placid preference for lying1 have elected to see here uncarnate4 ,quite otherwise fare those luckier beings who began existence with the advantage of being incorporeal1 and hence have not any dread of time's attrition4 ,the longer that time handles them1 the more does he enrich their experience and personalities4444 #cb ,i found recorded1 for example1 not long ago1 in ,mr4 ,robert ,nichols' fine book ,fantastica1 the very latest adventures of three of these favored beings4 ,and let me protest forthwith that ,i profoundly enjoyed this book4 ,this trio of stories1 about such copious protagonists as ,andromeda and the ,sphinx and the ,wandering ,jew1 came1 to me at least1 as the most amiable literary surprise since ,mr4 ,donn ,byrne published ,messer ,marco ,polo4 ,here was beauty and irony and wisdom2 here was fine craftsmanship3 but here1 above all1 were competently reported the more recent events in the existence of favored persons whose vitality and whose adventuring each generation of mankind renews4 ,i found1 for instance1 ,mr4 ,nichols writing very beautifully about ,andromeda4 ,well1 it was ,euripides1 they say1 who first popularized this myth of ,andromeda3 and1 for all that the dramas he wrote about her are long lost1 it were time-wasting1 of a dullness happily restricted to insane asylums and the assembly halls of democratic legislation1 here to deliberate whether ,andromeda or ,euripides be to us the more important and vivid person1 in a world wherein ,euripides survives as a quadrisyllable and wherein ,andromeda's living does1 actually1 go on4 ,you have but1 for that matter1 to compare ,andromeda with the overlords of the milieu in which her fame was born1 with the thin shadows that in pedants' thinking1 and in the even gloomier minds of schoolboys upon the eve of an examination1 troop wanly to prefigure ,cleon and ,pericles and ,nicias1 to see what a leg up toward immortality is the omission of any material existence4 ,these estimable patriots endure at best as wraiths and nuisances1 in a world wherein ,andromeda's living does1 actually1 go on4 ,it is not merely that she continues to beguile the poet and painter1 but that each year she demonstrably does have quite fresh adventures4444 ,only yesterday1 ,i reflected1 ,mr4 ,c4,c4 ,martindale had attested as much1 in his engaging and far too scantly famous book1 ,the ,goddess of ,ghosts2 as now did ,mr4 ,nichols in ,fantastica4444 ,for it is1 through whatever human illogic1 yesterday's fictitious and most clamantly impossible characters who remain to us familiar and actual persons1 the while that we remember yesterday's flesh-and-blood notables as bodiless traits4 ,so it comes about that only these intrepid men and flawless women and other monsters who were born cleanlily of imagination1 in lieu of the normal messiness1 and were born as personages in whom1 rather frequently without knowing why1 the artist perceives a satisfying large symbolism1--that these alone bid fair to live and thrive until the proverbial crack of doom4 ,their living does1 actually1 go on1 because each generation of artists is irresistibly impelled to provide them with quite fresh adventures4444 ,and no one can1 with certainty1 say why4 ,one merely knows that these favored romantic myths1 to whom just now ,i directed the stiletto glance of envy1 remain the only persons existent who may with any firm confidence look forward to a colorful and always varying future1 the only persons who stay human in defiance of death and time and the even more dreadful theories of new schools of poetry2 and who keep1 too1 undimmed the human trait of figuring with a difference in the eye of each beholder4 ,for all the really fine romantic myths have this in common4 ,as ,mr4 ,nichols phrases it1 in approaching a continuation of the story of ,prometheus one may behold in the ,fire-,bringer1 just as one's taste elects1 a pre-figuring of ,satan or of ,christ or of ,mr4 ,thomas ,alva ,edison4 ,and this one sometimes guesses to be--perhaps--the pith of such myths' durability1 that the felt symbolism admits of no quite final interpreting4 ,each generation finds for ,andromeda a different monster and another rescuer2 continuously romance and irony endeavor to contrive new riddles for the ,sphinx2 whereas the ,wandering ,jew--besides the tour de force of having enabled ,general ,lew ,wallace to write a book which voiced more fatuous blather than ,ben-,hur1--has had put to his account1 at various times1 the embodying of such disparate pests as thunderstorms and gypsies and ,asiatic cholera4 ,well6 here--just for an instant to recur to ,fantastica1 as a volume which ,i delight in commending to the particular notice of the urbane1--here one finds ,mr4 ,nichols also writing remarkably contemporaneous parables about the ,sphinx and her latest lover1 about ,andromeda and ,perseus1 about the ,wandering ,jew and ,judas ,iscariot4 ,they are1 to my finding1 very wise and lovely tales2 they are1 ,i hope1 the graduating theses of a maturing poet who has become sufficiently sophisticated to put aside the1 after all1 rather childish business of verse-making4 ,but the really important feature1 in any event1 is that ,robert ,nichols adds to the unending imbroglios of these actually vital persons1 and guides with competence and a fine spirit the immortal travellers4 ,nor is this any trivial praise when you recall that1 earlier1 they have been served by such efficient if slightly incongruous couriers as ,goethe and ,charles ,kingsley and ,euripides and ,eugne ,sue1 as ,matthew of ,paris and ,flaubert and ,nathaniel ,hawthorne and the ,reverend ,george ,crowley4 #cc ,for these great myths have1 over and above that quality of which ,i spoke just now as wizardry1 some common and not readily definable power which resistlessly makes captive the dreams of men of all conditions and faiths and degrees of intelligence4 ,i can remember puzzling a long while over what conceivable feature these so divergent stories could be said to have in common2 since some shared trait must be1 ,i reasoned1 the explanation of their virtually uniform allure4 ,and these myths baffled me4 ,their might seemed1 as their origin1 not wholly explicable4 ,i say their origin because no great romantic myth seemed the product of any especial brain4 ,never could we detect any writer seated at his desk about the diligent invention of any one of these stories1 told now for the first time4 ,rather did legends gather slowly and contradictorily1 arising none knew whence1 about the tale's protagonist1 who was by ordinary an actual personage some while since dead4 ,by and by somebody had perhaps written down a part of this rumor1 always with plain inability to narrate the whole2 and the result might be1 to the one side an ,odyssey1 to the other a ,juif ,errant4444 ,sometimes one of these inexplicably macrobiotic myths had found no formal chronicler1 and for centuries existed in detachment from literature4 ,there was1 for example1 ,i reflected1 the fine figure of ,punch1 which imaginative artists had prodigally left unexploited4 ,in fact1 nobody except ,mr4 ,conrad ,aiken#c seemed ever to have written with seriousness about ,punch2 and this superb theme as yet awaited merely the attention of some gifted writer1 to enrich the world with a masterpiece4 ,then there was ,mlusine4 ,there was1 for that matter1 ,blue ,beard4444 ,all these stayed uncommemorated with any adequacy as yet1 and were1 despite that fact1 no whit the less recognizable as magnificent and immortal4 ,i could not see that these old stories had anything whatever in common2 and even if in these ageless fables some shared feature were discovered1 that would hardly explain the unvarying strange sequel4 ,it would not1 ,i thought1 explain the emergence from the story of a figure which1 the story done with1 and all its incidents put behind1 continued to live on in other stories1 and continued through generation after generation to have quite fresh adventures4 ,nothing seemed able ever to explain that4 ,yet it was a fact4 ,one was tempted to imagine these immortal figures had guiles of their own1 and exerted strange potencies less to afford the artist a fruitful theme than to demand his service4 ,man here again1 it might be1 enacted his not infrequent rle of ,frankenstein4444 ,at any rate1 the secret was not in the stories3 artists did not repeat these stories1 but instead arranged new imbroglios for the old tales' protagonists4 ,of course the truth was that these figures1 for one reason or another as yet unrevealed to me1 were such as1 for that reason1 appealed to a majority of creating romanticists4 ,they were toys with which1 for howsoever veiled causes1 the artist peculiarly delighted to play4 ,it might1 ,i guessed1 have been the element of dubiety which fascinated1 and the half-vexed feeling that1 when all which is apparent to sense and rationality had been checked off and labeled1 much yet remained amenable to neither4 ,it might be1 just as ,i had said1 the pith of such myths' durability that the felt symbolism admits of no quite final interpreting2 and so arouses the not utterly rational suspicion that the whole truth about these mythic figures has never yet been apprehended by anybody4 #cd ,strikingly did this seem exemplified by the perennial magic of ,pan4 ,his epopee1 as taken over by the artist1 was virtually eventless4 ,pan figured in no story of marked interest or importance4 ,he merely was3 and what he was1 nobody had presumed to voice with any precision4 ,pan was but indicated--always with a queer effect of the narrator's suspecting somebody might1 undesirably1 be eavesdropping1--by this vague talk about a hirsute wanderer with the horns and feet of a goat and a taste for pipe-playing3 these features were1 you knew1 not the essentials4 ,such tales recorded only small and immaterial truths1 as if--you somehow knew1--you were to define the ,pope as an elderly ,catholic who wears underclothing and eats breakfast1 or a duly nominated candidate for the ,white ,house as a ,protestant of unexigent honesty4 ,so the creating romanticist had begun to divert himself with guesses about ,pan3 and now these guesses filled libraries4 ,but ,pan was not in the library4 ,he was afield1 he was in all the magazines for the month after next now on the news-stands1 having quite fresh adventures1 which yet-living poets were under a tribal bond to contrive for him4 ,in the records of ,english literature research might look in vain for any considerable poet who had not paid his scot of contriving some fresh adventure for ,pan1 and ,pan yet roved the jungle of free verse4 ,pan1 alone of the old ,hellenic gods1 had thus lived on1 and had survived all his peers4 ,pan would not1 to be sure1 especially regret them1 since he had never forgathered with the other gods4444 ,and there1 in that seemingly irrelevant fact1 ,i began to detect a darkling light4 ,pan had never forgathered with the other gods3 ,olympos he appeared at utmost to visit now and then1 with1 as ,i recall ,the ,book of ,job1 a curious similarity to ,satan's coming among the sons of ,god1 from going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it4 ,pan1 also1 that unexplainedly dreadful and lonely wanderer1 was the divine outcast4 ,in the one existent story1 that of ,psyche1 wherein ,pan was represented as having any even very remote dealing with the other gods1 his part was to aid a mortal against them4 ,pan1 alone of the gods1 had abandoned1 and at a pinch sided against1 ,heaven4 ,and that might well be the reason why the romantic artist had cherished him4 ,that perhaps was why ,pan had become for romanticists the ,master4 ,that might be why1 when ,olympos crumbled1 romanticists had set between those ungainly horns the pentagram2 had caused this hairy brown body to burgeon with scales and feathers2 had given to the most virile of the gods the breasts of a woman2 and had kindled in his honor the moons of ,chesed and ,geburah4 ,the goat god had thus1 alone of the ,olympians1 endured4 ,he endured as ,baphomet1 as ,azazel1 as ,janicot1 as ,eblis2 as the ,master of the ,gnostics1 the ,master of the ,sabbath1 the ,master of the ,two ,moons1 moons which had1 here again1 their minions4444 ,i shall not1 in this place1 speak at any length of what the prosaic perhaps do well to regard as bedlamite nonsense3 here ,i shall only indicate from afar the mystery ,i could not ignore4 ,for ,i knew that the romantic had whispered of two scapegoats1 of ,christ and ,pan1 the saviors severally of religion and of art3 the one dying in atonement for human sin1 in the manner of the stainless beast which was sacrificed in the ,temple2 the other serving men in the manner of that other beast1 not necessarily immaculate1 which was loaded with the sins of the twelve tribes1 and driven out of the ,temple forever1 as one consecrated not to death but to life1 and condemned not to rest but to the exile's freedom1 in those desert places which belonged to ,pan-,azazel4 ,for it is recorded--where we would least look for it1 even in our ,english ,bible1#d--that the ,lord of ,sabaoth commanded such sacrifice and such honor be divided between ,himself and the goat god1 as equals share4 ,and it is recorded too1 in the sacred lore of the ,moslems1 that to the ,master of the ,two ,moons1 and to that especial manifesting of ,pan which the ,east called ,eblis1 was relinquished by ,heaven--through a compact such as1 once again1 is made by equals1--the overlordship of all loneliness1 of wine1 of verse and song and rhetoric1 and of all the arts4 ,you will perceive this is1 very exactly1 the heritage of the creating romantic4444 ,well6 thus ,christ had ,his servitors1 whose reward was to be1 by and by1 in a land fulfilled with the glory of the ,sun1 eternal rest3 and ,pan1 the ,master of the ,two ,moons1 had mustered likewise his minions1 whose reward was their work4 ,by these exceedingly diverse saviors1 ,i knew1 had been evolved the magic of the sanctuary and of the wilderness1 the white magic and another magic rather less candid4 ,so had arisen the messiahs who led men severally to hope for contentment to come1 or to create contentment1 somehow1 even in this unsatisfying life and moment4444 ,pan was1 in fine1 the god who had looked upon the divine handiwork1 and seen that it was not good2 or1 at any rate1 not good enough4 ,the creating romanticist had always hoped that somewhere must at least one such clear-sighted god exist2 and1 finding him1 had worshipped appropriately4444 ,and so ,i got my clue1 and esteemed it1 upon the whole1 unwelcome4 ,for ,i saw that the one feature common to all the great mythic figures over whose deathlessness ,i had been puzzling1 was that each was a divine and unrepentant outcast1 that each one of them was a rebel who had gained famousness by warring in one way or another against ,heaven4 ,and that might be1 ,i felt uncomfortably1 just what had made them to all creative artists irresistible4 ,here well might lurk1 for so long unapprehended by me1 another and more lurid instance of art's need to make sport with piety2 here revealed in art's unfaltering endeavor to glorify not merely the rogue but the rebel4 ,once the discovery might have pleased me4 ,but nowadays1 rebellion in any form really does seem rather unurbane and almost certainly futile3 and very much as penitent ,villon turned monk1 or as the wild ,highlanders ceased to rebel after the ,stuarts lost in ',forty-five1 so have ,i found the same numeral to be remarkably sedative4 ,nevertheless1 at the bottom of his heart1 the romantic artist1 ,i knew1 has not ever been in harmony with ,providence and this world's ,demiurge4 ,he has not ever honestly believed1 as ,i recall the dicta of ,john ,charteris1 that this world reflected credit upon its ,maker4 ,and so1 toward offenders against this divine ordering the artist might well incline with unavoidable1 unreasoning and1 ,i preferred to think1 unconscious sympathy4 #ce ,certainly1 of the myths ,i have named1 all save two deal with protagonists who are condemned perforce to struggle against1 and who contrive to thwart1 inimical gods1 as did ,andromeda and ,odysseus2 or who rebel with the volition and candor of ,satan and ,tannhuser and ,prometheus4 ,but the myths of the ,sphinx and of ,queen ,helen rest upon other bases of impiety4444 ,helen1 indeed1 stands pedestalled above the bickerings of mere gods4444 ,and to the romantic the ,sphinx has never really been that offensively feeble-minded monster who molested dipus with a conundrum so inane as to result1 quite properly1 in the death of its perpetrator4 ,instead1 the ,sphinx has become1 for the romantic1 the one being who foreknows the answer to all riddles and the outcome of all experience4 ,and because of this foreknowledge1 obviously denied to demiurgically experimenting gods1 the ,sphinx does nothing4444 ,this dreadful certitude1 equally male and female1 as was ,baphomet and as was the veiled ,lord of ,mommur1 this quietness that is equally a beast of the field and an unslayable immortal1 this very large and pitiless felinity1 lies waiting2 and waits in blasphemous and perturbingly untroubled ease4 ,the years pass2 pious nations come into being and high power and pass2 heaven is no longer great enough to contain a catalogue of the gods that have reigned in heaven3 the ,sphinx1 men say1 has never stirred4 ,for the ,sphinx waits4 ,all the august doings of ,olympos and ,sinai and ,valhalla have been witnessed by the ,sphinx3 and the most favorable interpreting of that changeless face is1 upon the whole1 to hope it wears the provisional smile we bend toward the playing of not yet unbearable children4 ,and therein lies the impiety of the waiting ,sphinx1 in this amused deep comprehension that there is no need to rebel against our gods4444 ,for the ,sphinx is immortal3 and the secret of the ,sphinx1 men say1 is that secret which the harried gods strive desperately to surmise3 the ,sphinx knows why no god may ever hope to be immortal4 #cf ,yes3 all these so inexplicably popular myths commemorate a rebel against ,heaven's orderings4 ,each myth1 in one fashion or another1 adopts the true ,byronic posture of looking the ,omnipotent in the face and imparting to ,him the1 upon the whole unstartling1 information that ,his evil is not good4 ,and that--where every dictum is perforce an hypothesis1--that well may be why these especial myths1 rather than others1 overruled the art of yesterday2 and why upon us is yet laid their mastery1 from which the spiritual descendants of us who are minions of the moon shall not escape4 ,no matter into what sort of world this planet develops1 through howsoever laudable a magic-working of social and mechanical and hygienic improvements1 that future also belongs to these inscrutable immortals4 ,into that world1 however handsomely it all be changed by new inventions and fresh fallacies1 ,i think1 they will come as conquerors4 ,first will come ,helen4 ,i mean that ,helen who was verily at ,troy4 ,for the wife of ,menelaus1 we know1 did not ever come to this city3 and ,philostratus tells us how the whole truth as to the ,greeks' crusade1 in the high cause of outraged morality1 was revealed by ,achilles' ghost to ,apollonius of ,tyana4 ,for a long time we leaders of the ,achans were deceived and tricked into fighting battles in ,helen's behalf1 through our belief that she was in ,ilium2 whereas she really was living in ,egypt1 in the house of ,proteus1 whither through the device of ,zeus she had been snatched away from ,paris4 ,but when we became convinced of this1 we continued fighting to win ,troy itself and the riches of ,troy and the power these riches would give to us1 proclaiming that this empire must be destroyed in order that the world might be made safe for democracy4 ,and from ,egypt ,helen's husband--if that at all matters1--duly retrieved her on his way homeward when the warring was done4 ,but ,hera1 it is recorded1 gave to ,paris that woman's likeness1 made of the white mists of night and of dawn's rosy-colored clouds and of the golden clouds of sunset1 and shaped in that perfect loveliness with which ,hera had before this time betrayed ,ixion1 leading the ,king of ,thessaly to beget upon this shining phantom a dreadful spawn of twisted and blotched monsters4444 ,and this bright emptiness was what the heroes fought for1 in the most famous yet not by any means the most irrational of all the wars that have ever been4 ,and when the warring was done1 the leaders shared the spoils with much quarreling1 and maimed soldiers knew they had fought for a colored mist1 in this war also4 ,so ,troy fell because the appearance of this phantom had beauty without any flaw4 ,and the ,trojans died4 ,and the ,greeks died4 ,and ,menelaus and his wife died too4 ,and in time ,queen ,hera also died4 ,but the phantom that had been at ,troy endured1 masterless1 purposeless1 and immortal4 ,wherever men have been1 she too1 the romantic aver1 has passed like a cool flame of marsh-fire1 passionlessly1 inconceivably bright3 and of the beauty of this ,helen there are many tales recorded4 ,yet whosoever has not seen her1 it is declared by these poets also1 to him beauty remains but one of the words he puts upon paper4 ,they that have seen her1 are a wistful folk who go thereafter with dazzled eyes and can write nothing truly4 ,none the less does ,helen keep her old complaisance2 she1 impassionate1 denies not anything to the passion of her lovers3 and they may still beget upon her loveliness all manner of twisted and blotched monsters1 in the fashion of the ,king of ,thessaly4 ,so art endures1 and critics and curators are providentially provided for4 ,and ,helen grants to her lovers everything except happiness3 that they may never hope for2 that she has not to give1 nor has she ever known of it1 who goes as a bright emptiness1 without any like or kindred anywhere save in the monsters which are her spawn1 as ,helen passes from the ruining of one lover to another lover1 masterless1 purposeless1 and immortal4444 ,yes1 ,helen will come first1 ,i think4 ,and near to her1 no doubt1 will follow her servitors from of old1 crafty and great-thewed ,odysseus1 and ,faust1 in the pulled down cap and the furred robe of a scholar4 ,and ,don ,juan1 and pallid1 desperate ,tannhuser1 and ,ahasuerus1 who has put away despairing and hope forever1 will come too2 with many others4 ,and for an instant these thronged myths will look smilingly upon the ensorcelled romanticists of that far-off strange future4 ,in that instant all the new schools of literature will perish2 all the magazines sufficiently vital to be in bankruptcy will suspend publication2 and--for that single instant1--the youngest of that far day's realists will cease from telling about what a devil of a fellow he was at college4 ,now1 these immortals will say1 do you leave off this foolishness1 and contrive for us fresh adventures4 ,and the tale-tellers will obey4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote #b3 ,the reference is to a then prevalent form of brigandage and blackmail practised by the females of the smaller ,american cities1 by which reputable women also were permitted to accost and to exercise all the other street privileges of strumpets4 ,footnote #c3 ,a minor poet and essayist of the period4 ,footnote #d3 ,in the ,revised ,version3 ,king ,james's bishops hushed up this awkward matter with a pious mistranslation4 ,,iv ,,the ,,thin ,,queen ,,of ,,elfhame ,this pleasing method of instilling instruction into the mind has been found by experience to be the shortest and best way of accomplishing that end among all ranks of persons4 ,the fable of ,the ,poor ,man and ,his ,lamb1 for example1 as related by ,nathan to ,king ,david1 carried with it a blaze of truth that flashed conviction on the mind of the royal transgressor3 and many lessons of reproof1 religion1 and morality1 we find to be continually delivered in this mode by the sages4 #d4 ,the ,thin ,queen of ,elfhame #cg ,the literary artist plays1 ,i had said1 with these large ageless symbols4 ,and all artists would1 ,i thought1 continue indefinitely in such playing1 because their fundamental desire in life is not quite the same desire which guides their fellows4 ,the artist is as other men3 he may well1 in common with ,shylock1 assert himself to be fed by the same food and subject to the same diseases as a ,christian is3 and yet between him and the ,christian is a difference4 ,certainly1 there was a difference3 and the nearest ,i could come to defining this difference was to say it lay paradoxically housed in the circumstance that the artist1 precisely like the most zealous of ,christians1 is in this material1 four-square world not ever utterly at home4 ,the ,christian's desiderated home1 we knew1 was heaven3 but the artist1 as ,i had suggested1 looked to a somewhat different savior4 ,meanwhile the artist went among men as a visitor1 evincing at once the astonished interest and the detachment of a tourist in a foreign country4 ,his home1 and his fundamental desire1 stayed elsewhere4 ,this world of men and women did not content nor even vitally concern him3 and always he wanted--no matter with what nebulousness he envisaged his need1--something else1 which1 somehow1 was his heritage4 ,some day1 the artist felt1 he would set forth to seek and find this needed something1 like ,anavalt in the old tale which ,i had once retold4 ,and ,i fell here to recalling the story of ,anavalt's last quest4 ,for ,i had been assured time and again that this tale was a parable of a withdrawal from life to the solaces of art1 and that there was some obvious symbolism1 toward the end1 in a seemingly off-hand reference to the tenuity of canvas and of paper4 ,and ,i could only reply with the admission which youth finds it impossible to make about anything1 but which with age comes easier4 ,i said1 ,i do not know4 ,nescience seemed alike the end and the beginning of the old story1 which narrated why so many silken ladies wept4444 #ch ,for even just how many silken ladies wept1 well out of eyeshot of their husbands1 when it was known that courteous ,anavalt had left ,count ,emmerick's court1 remains an indeterminable matter4 ,but it is certain the number was large4 ,there were1 in addition1 the tale tells1 three women whose grieving for him was not ever to be ended3 these did not weep4 ,in the meanwhile1 with all this furtive sorrowing some leagues behind him1 and with a dead horse at his feet1 tall ,anavalt stood at a sign-post1 and doubtfully considered a rather huge dragon4 ,no1 the dragon was saying1 comfortably1 no1 for ,i have just had dinner1 and exercise upon a full stomach is unwholesome4 ,so ,i shall not fight you1 and you are welcome1 for all of me1 to go your ways into the ,wood of ,elfhame4 ,yet what1 says ,anavalt1 what if ,i were to be more observant than you of your duty and of your hellish origin8 and what if ,i were to insist upon a fight to the death8 ,when dragons shrug in sunlight their bodies are one long green glittering ripple4 ,i would be conquered4 ,it is my business to be conquered in this world1 where there are two sides to everything1 and where one must look for reverses4 ,i tell you frankly1 tired man1 that all we terrors who keep colorful the road to the ,elle ,maid are here for the purpose of being conquered4 ,we make the way seem difficult1 and that makes you who have souls in your bodies the more determined to travel on it4 ,our thin ,queen found out long ago that the most likely manner of alluring men to her striped windmill was to persuade men she is quite inaccessible4 ,said ,anavalt1 ,that ,i can understand2 but ,i need no such baits4 ,aha1 so you have not been happy out yonder where people have souls8 ,you probably are not eating enough3 so long as one can keep on eating regularly1 there is not much the matter4 ,in fact1 ,i see the hunger in your eyes1 tired man4 ,anavalt said3 ,let us not discuss anybody's eyes1 for it is not hunger1 nor indigestion either1 which drives me to the ,wood of ,elfhame4 ,there is a woman yonder1 dragon1 a woman whom ten years ago ,i married4 ,we loved each other then1 we shared a noble dream4 ,to-day we sleep together1 and have no dreams4 ,to-day ,i go in flame-colored satin1 with heralds before me1 into bright long halls where kings await my counsel1 and my advising becomes the law of cities that ,i have not seen4 ,the lords of this world accredit me with wisdom1 and say that nobody is more shrewd than ,anavalt4 ,but when at home1 as if by accident1 ,i tell my wife about these things1 she smiles1 not very merrily4 ,for my wife knows more of the truth as to me and my powers and my achievements than ,i myself would care to know3 and ,i can no longer endure the gaze of her forgiving eyes1 and the puzzled hurt which is behind that forgiveness4 ,so let us not discuss anybody's eyes4 ,well1 well6 the dragon returned1 if you come to that1 ,i think it would be more becoming for you not to discuss your married life with strangers1 especially when ,i have just had dinner1 and am just going to have a nap4 ,with that the evil worm turned round three times1 his whiskers drooped1 and he coiled up snugly about the sign-post which said ,keep ,out of ,these ,woods4 ,he was a time-worn and tarnished dragon1 as you could see now1 with no employment in the world since men had forgotten the myth in which he used to live appallingly2 so he had come1 in homeless decrepitude1 to guard the ,wood of ,elfhame4 ,anavalt thus left this inefficient and outmoded monster4 #ci ,and the tale tells how1 when ,anavalt had passed this inefficient and outmoded monster1 ,anavalt went into the wood4 ,he did not think of the tilled meadows or the chests of new-minted coin or the high estate which belonged to ,anavalt in the world where people have souls4 ,he thought of quite other matters as he walked in a dubious place4 ,here to the right of ,anavalt's pathway were seen twelve in red tunics3 they had head-dresses of green1 and upon their wrists were silver rings4 ,these twelve were alike in shape and age and loveliness3 there was no flaw in the appearance of any1 there was no manner of telling one from another4 ,all these made a lament1 with small sweet voices that followed the course of a thin and tinkling melody3 they sang of how much better were the old times than the new2 and none could know more thoroughly than did ,anavalt the reason of their grieving1 but since they did not molest him he had no need to meddle with these women's secrets any more4 ,so he went on3 and nothing as yet opposed him2 at most1 a grass-hopper started from the path1 sometimes a tiny frog made way for him4 ,he came to a blue bull that lay in the road1 blocking it4 #dj ,the tale tells that a blue bull lay in the road1 blocking it4 ,the tale narrates that this beast appeared more lusty and more terrible than other bulls1 telling of how all his appurtenances were larger and seemed more prodigally ready to give life and death4 ,courteous ,anavalt cried out1 ,o ,nandi1 now be gracious1 and permit me to pass unhindered toward the striped windmill4 ,to think1 replied the bull1 that you should mistake me for ,nandi6 ,no1 tired man1 the ,bull of the ,gods is white1 and nothing of that serene color may ever come into these woods4 ,and the bull nodded very gravely1 shaking the blue curls that were between his cruel horns4 ,ah1 then1 sir1 ,i must entreat your forgiveness for the not unnatural error into which ,i was betrayed by the majesty of your appearance4 ,while ,anavalt was speaking1 he wondered why he should be at pains to humor an illusion so trivial as he knew this bull to be4 ,for this of course was just the ruler of the ,kittle cattle which everywhere feed upon the dewpools4 ,the ,queen of ,elfhame1 in that low estate to which the world's redemption had brought her1 could employ only the most inexpensive of retainers1 the ,gods served her no longer4 ,so you consider my appearance majestic6 ,to think of that now6 observed the flattered bull2 and he luxuriously exhaled blue flames4 ,well1 certainly you have a mighty civil way with you1 to be coming from that overbearing world of souls4 ,still1 my duty is1 as they say1 my duty2 fine words are less filling than moonbeams3 and1 in short1 ,i do not know of any sound reason why ,i should let you pass toward ,queen ,vae4 ,anavalt answered3 ,i must go to your thin mistress because among the women yonder whose bodies were not denied to me there is one woman whom ,i cannot forget4 ,we loved each other once2 we had1 as ,i recall that radiant time1 a quaint and callow faith in our shared insanity4 ,then somehow ,i stopped caring for these things1 ,i turned to matters of more sensible worth4 ,she took no second lover1 she lives alone4 ,her beauty and her quick laughter are put away1 she is old1 and the home of no man is glad because of her who should have been the tenderest of wives and the most merry of mothers4 ,when ,i see her there is no hatred in the brown eyes which once were bright and roguish1 but only forgiveness and a puzzled grieving4 ,now there is in my mind no reason why ,i should think about this woman differently from some dozens of other women who were maids when ,i first knew them1 but there is in my mind an unreason that will not put away the memory of this woman's notions about me4 ,well1 said the bull1 yawning1 for my part1 ,i find one heifer as good as another2 and ,i find1 too1 that in seeking ,queen ,vae one pretext is as good as another pretext1 especially from the mouth of such a civil gentleman4 ,so do you climb over my back1 and go your way1 to where there are no longer two sides to everything4 ,thus ,anavalt passed the ,king of the ,kittle cattle4 #da ,anavalt thus passed the ,king of the ,kittle cattle1 and the tale tells how ,anavalt journeyed deeper into the ,wood of ,elfhame4 ,no trumpets sounded before him as they sounded when the ,anavalt who was a great lord went about the world where people have souls3 and the wonders which ,anavalt saw to this side and to that side did not disturb him1 nor he them4 ,he came to a house of rough-hewn timber1 where a black man1 clothed in a goat-skin1 barked like a dog and made old gestures4 ,this1 as ,anavalt knew1 was the ,rago3 within the house sat cross-legged1 at that very moment1 the ,forest-,mother1 whose living is innocent of every normal vice1 and whose food is the red she-goat and men4 ,yet upon the farther side of the home of perversity was to be seen a rusty nail in the pathway1 and bits of broken glass1 prosaic relics which seemed to show that men had passed this place4 ,so ,anavalt made no reply to the obscene enticements of the ,rago4 ,anavalt went sturdily on1 to a tree which in the stead of leaves was overgrown with human hands3 these hands had no longer any warmth in them as they caught at and tentatively figured ,anavalt1 and presently released him4 ,now the path descended1 among undergrowth that bore small purple flowers with five petals4 ,anavalt came here upon wolves which went along with him a little way4 ,running they could not be seen1 but as each wolf leaped in his running his gray body would show momentarily among the green bushes that instantly swallowed it3 and these wolves cried hoarsely1 ,janicot is dead6 ,but for none of these things did ,anavalt care any longer1 and none of the peculiarities of ,elfhame stayed him1 until his path had led further downward1 and the roadway had become dark and moist4 ,here were sentinels with draggled yellow plumes1 a pair of sentinels at whom ,anavalt looked only once3 then with averted head he passed them1 in what could not seem a merry place to ,anavalt1 for in the world where people have souls he was used to mirth and soft ease and to all such delights as men clutch desperately in the shadow of death's clutching hand4 ,in this place ,anavalt found also a naked boy4 #db ,in this place ,anavalt found1 as the tale tells1 a naked boy whose body was horrible with leprosy3 this malady had eaten away his fingers1 so that they could retain nothing1 but his face was not much changed4 ,the leper stood knee-deep in a pile of ashes3 and he demanded what ,anavalt was called nowadays4 ,when courteous ,anavalt had answered1 the leper said then3 ,you are not rightly called ,anavalt4 ,but my name is still ,owner-of-the-,world4 ,says ,anavalt1 very sadly1 ,even though you bar my way1 ruined boy1 ,i must go forward to the windmill of the ,elle ,maid4 ,and for what reason must you be creeping to this last woman8 ,for she will be the last1--as ,i forewarn you1 tired man1 who still pretend to be ,anavalt1--she will be the last of all1 and of how many6 ,anavalt answered3 ,i must go to this last love because of my first love4 ,once ,i lay under her girdle1 ,i was a part of the young body of my first love4 ,she bore me to her anguish1 even then to her anguish4 ,i cannot forget the love that was between us4 ,but ,i outgrew my childhood and all childishness3 ,i became1 they say1 the chief of ,manuel's barons3 and my living has got me fine food and garments and tall servants and two castles and a known name1 and all which any reasonable mother could hope for her son4 ,yet ,i cannot forget the love that was between us1 nor our shared faith in what was to be6 ,to-day ,i visit this ancient woman now and then1 and we make friendly talk together about everything except my wife1 and our lips touch1 and ,i go away4 ,that is all4 ,and it seems strange that ,i was once a part of this woman1--,i who have never won to nor desired real intimacy with anyone1--and it seems strange to hear people applauding my wisdom and high deeds of statecraft1 and in all matters acclaiming the success of ,anavalt4 ,i think that this old woman also finds it strange4 ,i do not know1 for we can understand each other no longer4 ,i only know that1 viewing me1 there is in this old woman's filmed eyes a sort of fondness1 even now1 and a puzzled grieving4 ,i only know that her eyes also ,i wish never to see any more4 ,still1 still1 you must be talking dipean riddles6 the leper answered4 ,i prefer simplicity1 ,i incline to the complex no longer4 ,so1 very frankly1 ,i warn you1 who were ,anavalt1 that you are going1 spent and infatuate1 toward your last illusion4 ,anavalt replied3 ,rather do ,i flee pellmell from the illusions of others4 ,behind me ,i am leaving the bright swords of adversaries and the more deadly malice of out-rivalled friends and the fury of some husbands1 but not because ,i fear these things4 ,behind me ,i am leaving the puzzled eyes of women that put faith in me1 because ,i fear these unendurably4 ,you should have feared them earlier1 tired man1 replied the other1 in a sunlit time when ,i who am ,owner-of-the-,world would wonderfully have helped you4 ,now you must go your way1 as ,i go mine4 ,there is one who may1 perhaps1 yet bring us together once again2 but now we are parted1 and you need look for no more reverses4 ,as he said this1 the ruined boy sank slowly into the ash-heap1 and so disappeared2 and ,anavalt went on1 through trampled ashes1 into the quiet midst of the wood4 ,among the bones about the striped windmill that is supported by four pillars1 the witless ,elle ,maid was waiting4 #dc ,the witless ,elle ,maid was waiting there1 as the tale tells1 among much human wreckage4 ,she rose and cried3 ,now you are very welcome1 ,sir ,anavalt4 ,but what will you give ,maid ,vae8 ,anavalt answered1 ,all4 ,then we shall be happy together1 dear ,anavalt1 and for your sake ,i am well content to throw my bonnet over the windmill4 ,she took the red bonnet from her head1 and turned4 ,she flung her bonnet fair and high4 ,so was courteous ,anavalt assured that the ,queen of ,elfhame was as he had hoped4 ,for when seen thus1 from behind1 the witless ,queen was hollow and shadow-colored1 because ,maid ,vae is just the bright thin mask of a woman1 and1 if looked at from behind1 she is like any other mask1 with no more thickness than has canvas or paper4 ,so when she faced him now and smiled1--and as if in embarrassment looked down and pushed aside a thigh bone with her little foot1--then ,anavalt could see that the ,elle ,maid was1 when properly regarded1 a lovely and most dear illusion4 ,he kissed her4 ,he was content4 ,here was the woman he desired1 the woman who did not exist in the world where people have souls4 ,the ,elle ,maid had no mortal body that time would parody and ruin1 she had no brain to fashion dreams of which he would fall short1 she had no heart that he would hurt4 ,there was an abiding peace in this quiet ,wood of ,elfhame wherein no love could enter1 and nobody could1 in consequence1 hurt anybody else very deeply4 ,at court the silken ladies wept for ,anavalt1 and three women were not ever to be healed of their memories3 but in the ,wood of ,elfhame1 where all were soulless masks1 there were no memories and no weeping1 there were no longer two sides to everything1 and a man need look for no reverses4 ,i think we shall do very well here1 said courteous ,anavalt1 as yet again he kissed ,maid ,vae4 ,v ,,celestial ,,architecture ,to this end1 that ,scyrian ,pherecydes1 ,pythagoras his ,master1 broached in the ,east among the ,heathens first the immortality of the ,soul1 as ,trismegistus did in ,egypt1 with a many of feigned ,gods4 ',twas for a politic end and to this purpose the old ,poets feigned those ,elysian fields1 their cus1 ,minos1 and ,rhadamanthus1 their infernal ,judges1 and those ,stygian lakes1 fiery ,phlegethons1 ,pluto's kingdom1 and variety of torments after death4 #e4 ,celestial ,architecture #dd ,the literary artist plays1 ,i had said1 with death4 ,but everybody played with death3 it was the one subject not anywhere to be approached except in a spirit of sober superficiality4 ,and ,i wanted--in at any event this epilogue to the ,biography1--to offend the sensibilities of nobody4 ,at forty-five one has become1 with no choice in the matter1 bourgeois2 and has no least desire to pater one's clan4 ,here1 indeed1 it occurred to me that1 somewhat farther back1 ,i had referred1 without assuming the proper elongation of countenance and a suitably spondaic utterance1 to our natural delight in most forms of what we are generally agreed to describe as sin4 ,and ,i hoped that would not be taken as implying that we can nowhere find more diverting employment than in wrong-doing1 and should give over our lives to its practise4 ,for iniquity1 in its pleasanter branches1 ,i reflected1 is a pursuit in which the young excel4 ,with age1 one is adapted only for the less amusing crimes3 and so with age one tends1 upon the whole1 and willy-nilly1 to become reasonably virtuous4 ,one tends1 one in fact is driven1 to seek diversion in the alcoves of thought rather than of action4 ,one begins to toy amorously with ideas1 now that age abates the ardor and the equipment for more juvenile recreations4 ,of course there were many ideas to play with3 so congressmen harped zealously upon morals1 with a just half-boastful air of having often heard of them2 the clergy averted from instructing ,heaven in its painful duty toward ,germany1 to settle civic affairs and the proper number of feet allowable to an embrace in moving picture films2 and among our state justiciary far-reaching codes of literary criticism1 not to speak of ,clean ,book ,leagues1 were evolved by the distressing discovery that one's daughter was running counter to parental traditions by reading a book4 ,but hardier spirits would play with the greatest and most diverting of all ideas4444 ,so that1 in the outcome1 ,i decided ,i would not1 as ,i had intended to do1 recur to ,henry ,adams4 ,his thinking hardly aspires1 it lacks such elevation as would warrant dwelling upon its modest pinnacles4 ,besides1 there was always the ugly book which ,adams wrote about ,john ,randolph of ,roanoke1 to shake one's faith in the ,education3 once anybody has been at public pains to demonstrate himself an expert at coloring and falsifying the truth about another man1 he cannot complain if none regards very trustingly his pretensions to write the truth as to himself4 ,no doubt the prompter to this biographical blackguardism1 the notion of standing up for your family name and your great-grandfather's intelligence1 was all very well3 and here1 indeed1 ,i could peculiarly sympathize1 since it happened that my own paternal great-grandfather1 also1 had been aspersed by ,randolph with just the same spirited and careful malignity he displayed in his verbal portraits of the ,adams bear and cub4 ,even so1 it seemed to me that the natural impulse to atone by defaming ,randolph was more easily understood than justified4 #de ,in any event1 this ,henry ,adams1 too1 is everywhere faintly rancid with the taint of ,puritanism1 and that fact could not but lead me into injustice4 ,puritanism has many excellent points1 which it perhaps employs too much in the manner of the porcupine3 yet we ,virginians cannot ever quite overcome our feeling that the ,puritans are parvenus1 deriving from families too recently arrived in this country to be as yet completely ,americanized4 ,we have never1 for that matter1 learned to think of the ,pilgrim ,fathers and their descendants as belonging1 exactly1 to the gentry4 ,and while we do try1 at a pinch1 to be polite and respectful about their undeniable virtues1 the result1 somehow1 stays a bit unconvincing and condescending4 ,besides1 ,i had faced my especial troubles with the ,puritan tradition1 through the imbroglio incidental to the attempt to suppress ,jurgen1 and through the clinging1 undesirable repute thus fastened to that book1 and indeed to my books in general4 ,i mildly resent1 even now1 my need to rest for the remainder of my lifetime under the imputation of being in lack-lustre eyes an indecent writer4 ,it sounds all very well1 and stays1 ,i believe1 undeniable1 to say that it was only a coterie of the obsessed--obsessed with the mad notion that decency is an affair of corporal centrifugality1--who had esteemed ,jurgen an improper book4 ,but that is1 too1 upon a par with protesting on a pestered summer night it is only mosquitoes who are annoying you4 ,those shyster ,sanhedrins of tinpot ,torquemadas--as ,mr4 ,mencken1 you may remember1 has for some reason or another not yet called the incorporated supporters of the ,puritan tradition in letters1--are1 beyond question1 made up of peculiarly filthy and senseless little creatures acting after the law of their insectean kind4 ,yet they are also innumerable and poisonous3 and they are blest1 too 7no doubt in common with the mosquitoes7 with sincerity and an approving conscience1 in all these assaults of the petty upon that which1 however harmless1 offends them by being bigger than they are4 ,but ,i drift into a discussion of the ,jurgen case1 which1 as goes the law1 is settled3 and all that ,i really need to say about the indecency of ,jurgen1 or of the ,biography as a whole1 and about the baffling literary problem of censorship in general1 was said some while ago4 #df ,for censorship of our reading matter1 as ,i granted even when ,jurgen was yet lying under arrest in ,mr4 ,sumner's#e cellar1 may1 in pure theory1 be--just possibly--advisable4 ,in practise1 though1 ,i can imagine no persons or class of persons qualified to perform this censorship4 ,speaking here with all1 if only1 the respect due to the ,society for the ,suppression of ,vice1 ,i must none the less insist there is a difference between pornography and fine literature1 if but the difference that everybody enjoys the first where few care one way or the other about the second3 and certainly the two should be appraised by diverse and appropriate standards4 ,a work of art should therefore1 in theory1 be judged entirely as a work of art1 by a jury of practitioners of the art concerned4 ,yet1 since every self-respecting author at bottom abominates his competitors1 despises his inferiors1 and is frantically irritated by the writings of those who differ from him in sthetic canons1 such an arrangement would1 in practise1 only fling open more conspicuous fields wherein to flaunt the mutual spite and miscomprehension common to us creative writers4 ,besides1 it is not difficult to forecast what sort of writers might1 and would1 be chosen for the judiciary1 as representing pre-eminence in letters by the happiest combination of mediocrity and senility4 ,thus1 in the end1 an attempt to establish a purely literary tribunal would result in setting over ,american art a death-watch of genial clergymen and decrepit college professors3 and ,i despondently question if their decisions would be a whit less imbecile than the present arbitraments of the ,society's hired spies4 ,it remains1 moreover1 the defect of every method of legal suppression that magistrates and courts of law are unable really to suppress any book4 ,a book1 once printed1 either suppresses itself or else stays1 as things human fare1 immortal4 ,and that always appeared to me the very silliest feature of the ,jurgen imbroglio4 ,irrespective of any possible legal decision1 as ,i patiently pointed out1 over and over again1 when ,jurgen lodged in ,mr4 ,sumner's cellar1 the book existed in a sufficient number of unarrestable copies to place it beyond destruction by anything except its own inherent faults4 ,if ,jurgen contained the right constituents it would live2 and if it lacked the stuff of longevity it would in due course die3 either way1 the outcome was to be decided neither by me nor by vice commissioners1 nor even by a judge and a grand jury4 ,nobody disputed this logic3 nobody in fact paid any attention to it4 ,and as touches my personal share in the publication of an indecent book called ,jurgen--though1 indeed1 ,i hear that a great deal of the ,biography is indecent1--it is in the end by my book that ,i must be condemned or justified1 rather than by what anyone1 including me1 may for some while to come elect to say about my book1 which is the ,biography4 ,so ,i say nothing4 ,for against the explicit charge of having violated the current morality of #aibj1 ,i think1 any serious defence would be waste of effort1 if only because the question must so soon1 and in fact already tends to1 become of purely antiquarian interest4 ,our children may not improve1 even from the standpoint of humor1 upon our moral standards1 but our children will certainly not retain them4 ,when1 as must inevitably happen before very long1 our present ethical criteria have come to seem as quaint as those of the ,druids or the ,etruscans1 or even as the flyblown and rococo axioms of #aiac appear nowadays1 offences against any one of these outmoded codes will hardly be esteemed worth talking about4 ,should ,jurgen be remembered ten years hence1 it will1 through being remembered1 be amply exonerated3 whereas if ,jurgen be forgotten1 the book will then of course be violating nobody's moral sensibility4 ,time thus lies under bond to silence1 whether with praise or with oblivion1 every conceivable sort of moral aspersion2 and willy-nilly ,i must defer to time4 ,none the less do ,i still believe that ,jurgen is1 as originally labelled1 a book wherein each man will find what his nature enables him to see3 and when anyone confesses that he finds therein only offensiveness1 and lasciviousness1 and lewdness1 and indecency1 ,i must make bold to take the announcement as a less candid summary of the book's nature than of the critic's4 #dg ,what can be done1 people very often ask of me1 with a flattering if misplaced assumption of my ability to answer1--what can be done toward restraining our present literary saturnalia of prudishness8 ,and ,i must answer1 if at all1 with a shrug3 for the intelligent here contend against well-meaning and courageous persons who fight for high aims4 ,the most fantastic feature of this droll year-long warring is the profound sincerity of the participants1 upon both sides4 ,you and ,i may know--and welcome1 as the saying runs1--that we are in the right so far as goes the unhuman abstraction called rationality4 ,but the officers and backers of the ,clean ,book ,league and of the ,society for the ,suppression of ,vice1 also1 quite honestly believe they are engaged in praiseworthy work when1 to cite but two farces from the exhaustless repertoire1 they hale ,petronius and ,mademoiselle de ,maupin into the police courts4 ,indeed they appear inebriated to these antics by much the same real love of virtue which incites a portion of their congeners to burn an unruly negro as a torch to illumine their reprehension of lawlessness2 and drives yet others to express their disfavor of intemperance by decreeing that wine is a compound too atrocious to be employed for any purpose except to symbolize the blood of ,christ4 ,in the face of so many laudable intentions thus obscurely communicated1 we can but deduce1 ,i am afraid1 that whenever stupidity and high morals pig together they beget an offspring doubly cursed with zealotry and toxic aphasia4 ,nor1 of course1 does it appear quite unblasphemous to contend against these presumably ordained phenomena4 ,at all events1 those who believe the artist has any rights are in the negligible minority4 ,i hardly need to explain why the bashaws of such orgiastic societies have embattled back of them the complacent muddle-headedness of that solid upper middle-class which pays pew-rent1 and which from the first has rather fretfully resented any talk about sthetics4 ,dr4 ,paul ,e4 ,more1#f in one of the letters relative to the ,jurgen imbroglio1 has nicely summed up this popular point of view3 ,i am not at all in sympathy with a group of writers who would take any protest against the ,society as a justification of what they are pleased to call art4 ,the harm done by the ,society seems to me very slight1 whereas the harm done by the self-styled artist may be very great4 ,now that is really the popular and1 therefore1 the most exalted moral attitude4 ,for the morality of a republic is1 after all1 a matter of elementary arithmetic3 and one counts the ballots 7sometimes1 here and there1 it is said1 quite honestly7 in order to distinguish between right and wrong1 because the voice of the people is notoriously the voice of ,god4 ,and time and again this divine orality has proclaimed that the ,american peerage of nature's noblemen does not want to be bothered with any nonsense about literature and art3 for the reasons1 first1 that such fripperies play no part in honest poll-tax-payers' lives2 and1 second1 that in very much the manner of this ,dr4 ,more1 our reputable citizenry--obscurely and inarticulately1 but none the less genuinely1--resents the impudence of self-styled artists who presume to know more than their betters about what they are pleased to call art4 ,and here1 ,i must protest1 our more reputable citizens are wholly in the right4 ,i think they feel1 without ever quite perceiving1 the innumerous dangers1 for the reputable1 which lurk in this continual playing with piety and common-sense4 ,the artist1 they dimly feel1 is up to something which--somehow--threatens them and their security3 and in this1 ,i repeat1 they are wholly right4 ,if art were not very cruelly restrained it would empoison and wreck all civilizations1 not here to speak of reordering heaven4 ,but there is no need to worry1 because art1 as it happens1 is always1 and probably always will be1 just thus restrained1 by the inefficiency of the artist4 ,so art may never ruin ,america1 after all4 ,it seems1 in any case1 eminently appropriate that in our ,national ,hall of ,statuary1 along with such world-famous statesmen and shapers of human destiny as ,jacob ,collamer1 ,s4,j4 ,kirkwood and ,george ,l4 ,shoup1 the sole representative of our art and letters should to-day be ,general ,lew ,wallace2 for ,ben-,hur is really the perfected expression of the best-thought-of ,american ideals in literature4 ,and it is equally appropriate1 ,i like to think1 that1 when judged by these ideals1 ,jurgen and all the rest of the ,biography should be decreed offensive1 and lascivious1 and lewd1 and indecent4444 ,well6 a good deal of this ,i said 7over and over again7 before the courts decided that ,jurgen had been incarcerated for twenty-one months1 as an indecent book1 through error4444 ,and ,i have not anything to add or to retract4 ,still1 the affair has left me1 ,i cannot but suspect1 with a bias against the ,puritan tradition and its adherents4 ,i feel1 indeed1 that much of what ,i have just written down does not over-cloyingly reek of loving-kindness toward--in ,swinburne's phrase1--the barbarian sect from whose inherited and infectious tyranny this nation is as yet imperfectly delivered4 ,so ,i dismiss the ,puritans and their latter-day flowering in ,henry ,adams1 in favor of a noticeably different person4 ,i turn instead to ,m4 ,anatole ,france1 as affording a clear illustration of the point ,i have in mind2 and as perfectly illustrating my point as to the most diverting of all themes which thought can play with1 in ,la ,rtisserie de la ,reine ,pdauque4 #dh ,what one first notes about ,la ,rtisserie de la ,reine ,pdauque1 as ,i have elsewhere observed1 is the fact that in this ironic and subtle book is presented a story which is remarkable for its innocence of subtlety and irony4 ,abridge the plot into a synopsis1 and you will find your digest to be what is manifestly the outline of a straightforward1 plumed romance by the elder ,dumas4 ,indeed1 ,dumas would have handled to a nicety the strange surprising adventures of ,jacques ,tournebroche1 if only ,dumas had ever thought to have his collaborators write this brisk tale1 wherein d',astarac and ,tournebroche and ,mosade display1 even now1 a noticeable something in common with the ,balsamo and ,gilbert and ,althotas of the ,mmoires d'un ,mdicin4 ,one foresees1 to be sure1 that1 with the twin-girthed ,creole for guide1 ,m4 ,jrme ,coignard would have waddled into our affections not quite as we know him1 but with somewhat more of a fraternal resemblance to the ,dom ,gorenflot of ,la ,dame de ,monsoreau and ,les ,quarante-,cinq2 and that the blood of the abb's deathwound could never have bedewed the book's final pages1 in the teeth of ,dumas' economic unwillingness ever to despatch any character who could be used in a sequel4 ,and one thinks rather kindlily of the ,rtisserie as ,dumas would have equipped it4444 ,yes1 in reading this book1 it is the most facile and least avoidable of mental exercises to prefigure how excellently ,dumas would have contrived this book1--somewhat as in the reading of ,mr4 ,joseph ,conrad's novels a many of us are haunted by the sense that the ,conrad story is1 in its essential beams and stanchions1 the sort of thing which ,w4 ,clark ,russell used to put together1 in a rather different way1 for our illicit perusal4 ,whereby ,i only mean that such seafaring was illicit in those aureate days when1 ,cleveland being consul for the second time1 your geography figured as the screen of fictive reading-matter during school hours4 ,one need not say that here is no question1 in either case1 of imitation1 far less of plagiarism2 nor need one1 surely1 point out the impossibility of anybody's ever mistaking the ,rtisserie for a novel by ,alexandre ,dumas4 ,ere ,homer's eyesight began not to be what it had been1 the fact was noted by the observant ,chian1 that very few sane architects commence an edifice by planting and rearing the oaks which are to compose its beams and stanchions4 ,you take over all such supplies ready hewn1 and choose by preference time-seasoned timber4 ,since ,homer's prime a host of other great creative writers have recognized this axiom when they too began to build3 and originality has by ordinary been1 like chess and democracy1 a ,mecca for little minds4 ,besides1 there is the vast difference that ,m4 ,anatole ,france has introduced into the ,dumas theatre some pre-eminently un-,dumas-like stage-business3 the characters1 between assignations and combats1 toy amorously with ideas4 ,that is the difference which at a stroke dissevers them from any helter-skelter character in ,dumas as utterly as from any of our clearest thinkers in office4 ,it is this toying1 this series of mental amourettes1 which incommunicably makes the difference in almost all the volumes of ,m4 ,france familiar to me2 but our affair is with this one story4 ,now in this vivid book we have our fill of color and animation and gallant strangenesses1 and a stir of characters who impress us as living with a poignancy unmastered as yet by anybody's associates in flesh and blood4 ,we have1 in brief1 all that ,dumas could ever offer1 here utilized not to make drama but background1 all being woven into a bright undulating tapestry behind an erudite and battered figure1--a figure of odd medleys1 in which the erudition is combined with much of ,autolycus1 and the unkemptness with something of ,kempis4 ,for what one remembers of the ,rtisserie is l',abb ,jrme ,coignard2 and what one remembers1 ultimately1 about ,coignard is not his crowded career1 however opulent in larcenous and lectual escapades and fisticuffs and broached wineflasks1 but his religious meditations1 wherein a merry heart does1 quite actually1 go all the way4 ,coignard ,i take to be a peculiarly rare type of man 7there is no female of this species71 the type that is genuinely interested in religion4 ,in that his mind is actually at grapple with the most diverting of all themes1 he stands apart4 ,he halves little with the staid majority of us who sociably contract our sacred tenets from our neighbors like a sort of theological measles4 ,he halves nothing whatever with our more earnest-minded juniors who--perennially discovering that all religions thus far put to the test of nominal practise have1 whatever their paradisial entre1 resulted in a deplorable earthly hash1--perennially run yelping into the shrill agnosticism which believes only that one's neighbors should not be permitted to believe in anything4 ,the creed of ,coignard is more urbane3 ,always bear in mind that a sound intelligence rejects everything that is contrary to reason1 except in matters of faith1 where it is necessary to believe blindly4 ,your opinions are thus all-important1 your physical conduct is largely a matter of taste1 in a philosophy which ranks affairs of the mind immeasurably above the gross accidents of matter4 ,indeed1 man can win to heaven only through repentance1 and the initial step toward repentance is to do something to repent of4 ,there is no flaw in this logic1 and in its clear lighting such abrogations of parochial and transitory human laws as may be suggested by reason1 and the consciousness that nobody is looking1 take on the aspect of divinely appointed duties4 #di ,some dullard may here object that ,m4 ,france could not himself have believed all this while writing the book1 and that it was with an ironic glitter in his ink he recorded these dicta4 ,to which the obvious answer would be that ,m4 ,france 7again1 like all great creative writers7 is an ephemeral and negligible person beside his more permanent puppets2 and that1 moreover1 to reason thus is1 it may be precipitately1 to disparage the plumage of birds on the ground that an egg has no feathers4444 ,whatever ,m4 ,france may have believed1 our concern is here with the conviction of ,m4 ,coignard that his religion is all-important and all-significant4 ,and ,i find it curious to observe how unerringly the abb's thoughts aspire1 from no matter what remote and low-lying starting point1 to the loftiest niceties of religion and the high thin atmosphere of ethics4 ,sauce spilt upon his collar is but a reminder of the influence of clothes upon our moral being1 and of how terrifyingly is the destiny of each person's soul dependent upon such trifles2 a glass of light white wine leads1 not1 as we are nowadays taught to believe1 to instant ruin1 but to edifying considerations of the life and glory of ,st4 ,peter2 and a pack of cards suggests1 straightway1 intransigent fine points of martyrology4 ,always this churchman's thoughts deflect to the most interesting of themes1 to the relationship between ,god and ,his children1 and what familiary etiquette may be necessary to preserve the relationship unstrained4 ,these problems alone engross ,coignard unfailingly1 even when the philosopher has had the ill luck to fall simultaneously into drunkenness and a public fountain2 and retains so notably his composure between the opposed assaults of fluidic unfriends4 ,what1 though1 is found the outcome of this philosophy1 appears a question to be answered with wariness of empiricism4 ,none can deny that ,coignard says1 when he lies dying3 ,my son1 reject1 along with the example ,i gave you1 the maxims which ,i may have proposed to you during my period of life-long folly4 ,do not listen to those who1 like myself1 subtilize over good and evil4 ,yet this is just one low-spirited moment1 as set against the preceding fifty-two high-hearted years4 ,and the utterance wrung forth by this moment is1 after all1 merely that sentiment which seems the inevitable bedfellow of the moribund1--,were ,i to have my life over again1 ,i would live differently4 ,the sentiment is familiar and venerable1 but its truthfulness has not yet been attested4 ,to the considerate1 therefore1 it may appear expedient to dismiss ,coignard's trite winding-up of a half-century of splendid talking1 as just the infelicitous outcropping1 in the dying man's enfeebled condition1 of an hereditary foible4 ,and when moralizing would approach an admonitory forefinger to the point that ,coignard's manner of living brought him to die haphazardly1 among preoccupied strangers at a casual wayside inn1 you do1 there is no questioning it1 recall that a more generally applauded manner of living has been known to result in a more competently arranged-for demise1 under the best churchly and legal auspices1 through the rigors of crucifixion4 ,so it becomes the part of wisdom to waive these mundane riddles1 and to consider instead the justice of ,coignard's fine epitaph1 wherein we read that living without worldly honors1 he earned for himself eternal glory4 ,the statement may 7with ,st4 ,peter keeping the gate7 have been challenged in paradise2 but in literature at all events1 the unhonored life of ,jrme ,coignard has clothed him with glory of tolerably longeval looking texture4 ,it is true that this might also be said of ,iago and ,tartuffe1 but then we have ,balzac's word for it that merely to be celebrated is not enough4 ,rather is the highest human desideratum twofold1--,d'tre clebr et d'tre aim4 ,and that much ,coignard promises to be for a long while4 #ej ,the thoughts of ,m4 ,jrme ,coignard1 then1--here somewhat to retrace my argument1--untiringly return to the most diverting of all themes1 to the relationship between ,god and ,his children1 and what familiary etiquette seems most adapt to keep that relationship an affable one4 ,i know that religion is1 just now1 rather out-of-date4 ,i know that nowadays a great deal of atheism is going about among the foolish and unreflective4 ,but we may wiseliest1 ,i am sure1 put out of mind the notion of there being no ,god1 and of the dead finding beyond the black door at the end of the gray corridor1 that silver-handled door which is the sole exit from our workaday existence1 nothing whatever4 ,even if one would1 upon the whole1 prefer to find there nothing1 here it remains1 in every sense1 a rather wasteful parade of agnosticism to admit the existence of nothing4 ,it is wasteful because no diversion is to be had of thinking about nothing4 ,but any amount of diversion can be gained from meditation upon the strange realms beyond the tomb for which we may1 quite conceivably1 all be en route3 for in this place also is the proffered lure that ageless aspiration toward lands which are in nothing familiar4 ,these conjectural kingdoms were1 of course1 the earliest chosen subject matter for poetic adornment everywhere3 poets were1 of course1 the first to guess at what it would be most interesting to find beyond the black door3 and every ancient religion1 again1 of course1 grew up from people indulging in the two habits1 now equally antique1 of reciting poetry and of taking it seriously4 ,they had at least the excuse that this poetry was magnificent1 because in surveying and populating these post mortem countries the creating romanticist has displayed his most imposing reach of power4444 ,here he1 indeed1 has need of power3 for he is here intent to make sport with his third great opponent1 and to play with death2 intent to bereave the tyrant of all terribleness1 intent to color roseately the dreadful face of doom1 intent to detect in the skeleton's multidentate grinning a smile of reassurance4 ,he has done this1 handsomely4 --,though1 to be sure1 these promised paradises are fugacious3 over and over again has the ,scriptural prophecy been fulfilled as to the heavens being rolled up like a scroll1 and one by one the heavens pass away with no greater noise than is made by the staid commentaries of ethnologists4 ,for a winter that will have no ending has oppressed the blissful fields of ,alu3 the proud castle of ,nin-kigal is pulled down1 its seven gates are fallen away into dust2 and only pedants now and then recall the lion-guarded golden thrones whereon sat crowned1 and endowed with eternal youth1 the chief ones and the sages of ,babylon4 ,manannan holds court no more in ,emhain4 ,instead1 he amicably shares his somewhat lowlier estate in nothingness with ,oannes and ,ahura-,mazda2 for all of these well know to-day that all promised paradises are fugacious4444 ,nor may the noblest of heroes any longer win to ,xisuthros and that most lovely1 nameless land1 at the mouth of the rivers1 wherein contentment had no wasting away under the nibbling of time1 and human grief was like the fragment of some word in a torn manuscript written in a language which no man any more remembers4 ,the white vase of ,thoth is broken1 also3 he has no need of it to-day1 he has desisted from the weighing and the taxing of ghostly imports1 now that the narrow bridge which led across the abyss to ,sraosha's thousand-pillared palace upon ,demavend1 has for some while been closed to traffic4 ,for these promised paradises are really very fugacious4444 ,so the carved and shining house of ,e-,sagila is decayed2 and ,olympos may not claim to oversee and rule the doings of gods and men from a rather modest official altitude of #i1ged feet4 ,only the professorial in quest of solar myths now care to thrust and poke1 like rag-pickers1 among the dust-heaps that were ,gimli and ,audlang and ,vidblain3 and time strips every paradise alike of its delights and its believers4 ,yet1 at forty-five1 one does not really marvel at the flying of felicity anywhence4 ,and so it seems a stranger pillagement that all the hells1 which once were the fine thriving homes of bale and anguish1 have been by time's dilapidation bereft of every little discomfort4 ,for the ice of ,nifleheim is melted3 the dreadful flames of ,tartarus have spluttered out like damp firecrackers3 even ,aratu1 wherein reigned mere oblivion1 has been swallowed by oblivion4444 ,poets build against eternity sometimes in dealing with trifles2 but never in erecting the eternal homes of men4 ,meanwhile it is most gratifying to reflect that1 while they lasted1 the glories and the terrors of all this celestial architecture divertingly filled many lives with spiritual consolation and salutary dread2 have checked extravagance in the way of bloodletting or of chastity or of whatever at the time was vice2 have heartened the devout to eat their parents or to burn infidels or to give alms1 or to do whatever else at the time was virtue2 and have evolved their countless hierarchies of saints and holy persons4 ,here is no room for irony4 ,nuns1 doubtless1 have assumed the veil and entered convents in a religious exaltation as lofty as that with which the virgins of ,assyria put on the crown of little cords and went to the temple of ,mylitta and their first communion with the first amorous male passer-by4 ,yet1 to uphold the splendors of the paradise of ,mohammed his ,mussulmans have waged religious wars with a malignity not often surpassed by the servitors of ,christ3 and ,solomon may well have gazed upon the completed ,temple1 and have beheld the ark of the covenant of the ,lord brought in unto the most holy place under the wings of the cherubim1 in very much that pious joy with which1 from high ,tenochtitlan1 rapt priests looked down upon the slowly advancing line1 two stately miles in length1 of warriors who ascended to disembowelment upon the jasper altar of ,huitzilopochtli4 ,in fine1 these hells and paradises1 the while that their bright evanescence lasted1 have provided employment1 and support1 and recreation1 and exalted sentiments to boot1 for innumerable millions4 ,even so1 in populating these worlds1 the romanticist has been tardy ever to imagine the gods as other than sinister and1 as a rule1 detestable beings4 ,you see1 the creature stays incurably logical1 he is as faithful to logic as was ,florian de ,puysange in the old story1 and he reasons from effect to cause4 ,the romanticist has thus from the first been unable to conceive of this world1 which he found1 upon the whole1 abominable1 as being the creation of any other sort of ,demiurge1 or as being ruled by any other sort of overlords4 ,in all heathen theogonies heaven is thus the home of every pravity in the way of lust and greed1 of deceit and cruelty and plain childishness2 and looms as a mysteriously splendid court of rogues and paphians presided over by a supreme tyrant1 who is also a master-rogue4 ,this formula was1 very gradually1 improved upon by ,hebraic poets1 who in particular recolored all anaphrodisiacally3 so that the ,old ,testament presents1 by and large1 a rather novel and a more strait-laced notion of the ,demiurge and his immediate entourage2 with only here and there1 in passages about the sons of ,god and the daughters of men1 and more embarrassingly in the stories of ,eve and ,sarah1 the unedited1 unexpurgated1 unrecolored legend of divine amours left1 to consideration1 apparent4 #ea ,but about the ,jahveh-,elohim of the ,old ,testament1 who remains by tacit admission the ,god the ,father of the ,new ,testament1 ,i really prefer here not to speak at all4 ,i find it far too difficult to resist an unfair bias in the favor of any target of so many assaults4 ,for ,his present embarrassment is not merely that ,colonel ,william ,jennings ,bryan#g and the ,reverend ,william ,ashley ,sunday#h have ruthlessly united to compromise ,him with their praise3 even the state legislators of ,tennessee and ,oklahoma1 and ,florida1 have officially endorsed ,him in ,his difference of opinion with ,charles ,darwin1 and rest vociferant in ,zion4444 ,outside1 is a troubling babblement about tribal deities and ,babylonian myths1 and a rather distressing tendency to discuss the birth of ,christ from ,joseph's point of view4 ,meanwhile the ordained and inescapable clergy are at pains to suggest that in ,his official revelations the ,lord ,god of ,sabaoth1 like the dear1 queer1 overmodest old fellow ,he is1 has branded ,himself with uncommitted atrocities2 and in their denials of any really grave wrong-doing1 commend ,him in terms as high as were1 from any pulpit1 ever applied to a prohibition agent detected in embezzlement4 ,and meanwhile too1 among the advanced young1 there is much superior sniffing at ,his bloodthirstiness and variability of mind1 at ,jonah's great fish and the bears of ,elisha1 at ,noah's raven and ,adam's rib4 ,and ,i find it droll to reflect that the deity who was everywhere trusted and worshipped in my youth is to-day as little regarded as ,jupiter ,stator or ,marduk of the ,bright ,glance4 ,and to me ,his downfall seems in some ways rather sad4 ,for1 as ,i recall it1 ,he was not thought of as being particularly cruel and dreadful--any longer4 ,and the ,old ,testament was accepted in its entirety and without any especial difficulty in the ,virginia of that day1 wherein almost all other generally respected elderly gentlemen had been1 as a matter of public knowledge1 rather wild in their youth4444 ,as ,i recall it1 there was a prevalent feeling that ,god had some while since settled down1 in very much the manner of your grandfather2 and that the ,amalekites and the ,hittites and all those other demolished persons were in some way connected with the hundreds of ,yankee soldiers whom1 for equally inexplicable but assuredly good causes1 your grandfather had killed so long before you were born4 ,thus there was no large difficulty about our ,episcopalian ,jehovah1 and really no terribleness4444 ,and ,i sometimes incline to question if this god--with wild oats undeniably sown and harvested in the past1 but with a prevailing disposition nowadays to be agreeable1 subject always to ,his not having been of late upset by one or another mysterious grown-up affair1--was not1 after all1 the most plausible sort of demiurge ,i have yet heard of4 ,he still seems to me the likeliest creator1 upon the whole1 to have fashioned1 it may be in some moment of youthful indiscretion and effusion1 such as elsewhere had resulted in people having mulatto cousins1 the wholly incomprehensible world we live in4444 ,and essentially1 ,i find1 ,i still believe in ,him1 with a faith that undermines and goes deeper than mere reason because it was developed in me earlier4 ,during thunderstorms this faith assumes especial vigor3 and while ,i do not presume to think all this terrific display was got up solely for my benefit1 the notion most certainly does flicker about me1 livid and troubling1 that while ,he has this storm in hand1 and is actually passing my way1 it might appear to ,him mere thriftiness to use a thunderbolt in the old1 practical1 explicit manner4 ,so ,i do not quite heartily enjoy the beauty of a thunderstorm4444 ,but the point is that this demiurge also conformed to the great general rule4 ,the point is that men have not ever1 at any time1 pictured the benevolence of their gods and creators as being anything like a good risk2 and that no mythology has ever told of such gods as would in strict logic seem apt to be foreplanning a pleasant future for anybody4 ,none the less1 here also1 men have very manfully forced that slippery shirk optimism to help out with logic's work4 ,and so have men always been assured that these overlords would by and by arrange everything satisfactorily2 and that the door at the far end of the corridor opened1 when you also had done with alcoves1 and when you also had perforce passed through1 upon one or another delightful vista4 ,the fact has been divinely revealed1 or in any event has the authentic ,ingoldsbean support of one or another leading citizen who well remembers to have heard his grandmother say that ',somebody told her so4' 444 ,and men have preferred to accept the revelation rather than to recollect that1 by all current accounts1 the deity accredited with this revelation is not elsewhere remarkable for truthful dealings4 ,men have1 out of so many thousand years of speculation1 contrived no surer creed than ,coignard's creed1 that in matters of faith it is necessary to believe blindly4 ,men have discovered no firmer hope than that1 in defiance of all logic and of all human experience1 something very pleasant may still be impending1 in--need ,i say8--bright lands which are in nothing familiar4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote #e3 ,john ,s4 7,sexton87 ,sumner2 other authorities state that ,sex was his middle name2 secretary of the then notorious ,new ,york ,state ,society for the ,suppression of ,vice4 ,footnote #f3 ,archologist of the period4 ,mencken has several mentions of him4 ,footnote #g3 ,of the ,third ,nebraska ,volunteer ,infantry4 ,footnote #h3 ,itinerant clergyman of the day1 who preached a species of ,christianity4 ,,vi ,,romantics ,,about ,,them ,he has more authorities than those whose names he has given4 ,these are1 however1 a few3 ,alcmon of ,crotona2 ,dionysius of ,apollonia2 ,herodorus of ,heracleum in ,pontus1 the father of ,bryson the sophist2 ,ctesias of ,cnidos2 ,herodotus of ,halicarnassus2 ,syennesis of ,cyprus2 ,polybus2 ,democritus of ,abdera2 ,anaxagoras of ,clazomene2 ,empedocles of ,sicily2 and many more which do not just now occur to my memory4 #f4 ,romantics ,about ,them #eb ,the literary artist plays1 ,i repeated1 with death4 ,but ,i had not meant only in a religious way3 ,i had not meant merely that the artist lovingly carves the beads1 and polishes the rhetoric of the prayer-books1 with which not merely the aged delight to play in turn4 ,and ,i had not meant1 either1 to dwell so long upon orthodox religious diversions1 since reputable religion is of necessity1 like any other popular fashion1 an ever-varying unstable affair4 ,one sect alone--made up of true believers in the everywhere underlying1 and the really religious principle1 as ,i interpreted it1 of the ,biography1--seemed not ever to have varied in its faith4 ,i was thinking of the immodest1 impotent1 and internecine sect of literary artists4 ,and ,i could1 ,i believed1 best indicate the two main tenets of the literary artist's religion by a rather roundabout approach4 #ec ,for chance1 no great while earlier1 had condemned me to sit by and listen to a pair of notably successful authors in what1 at that time1 had seemed a preposterous talk4 ,this talk1 a little1 troubles memory even now4444 ,for they were not at all heeding me4 ,these two when they forgather effuse a nave effect of emperors meeting1 incognito and with a relished casting off of formality1 in a world of underlings4 ,each one of them is1 in fact1 too fair a judge of literature to depreciate in anything an admirable book on account of his own name being upon the title-page3 and if these two endure each other excellently1 it is because each loyally esteems the other to be the next to the most wondrous of ,american writers1 and affects some modest reticence as to the first choice4 ,the scene was the library of one of them1 the period after dinner4 ,the visiting author had but now looked up from where his polychromatic volumes were gaily marshalled 7with a perhaps not unpremeditated conspicuousness7 toward a shelf across the way1 a shelf whereon the host's own books more sombrely convened4 ,the two men had1 ,i repeat1 quite recently eaten and had drunk with some thoroughness4 ,they were replete and a bit drowsy4 ,all earthly worries and obligations stood for the moment aloof4 ,both men had reached their later forties2 both were done alike with actual fervors and with real self-distrust2 and each1 ,i am certain1 is assured1 in his private meditations1 of a tolerably permanent sort of fame4 ,we1 said the visitor1 the while that he1 reflectively1 thus looked from the backbones of the one set of books to those of the other1 we have been lucky4 ,i wonder8 said the host4444 ,yes1 stated the first and 7upon the whole7 the fatter of the two speakers1 for we have got what we wanted1 without paying the full price4 ,we might have been poor ,dowson or ,villon1 you know-- ,or any other of the mighty poets in their misery and customary attics dead8 ,i always wondered how they managed to stuff the broken window pane with a pair of trousers1 though-- ,but the visitor was talking unfrivolously4 ,yes1 the world's full of talent4 ,talent is nothing4 ,genius is nothing4 ,these congenital amateurs who have nothing but genius give me a pain4 ,he specified the corporal location of this pain4 ,he continued3 ,it is the getting what you want that counts4 ,and we have got a great deal-- ,i grant it3 we belong1 we also1 to the race of go-getters4 ,but then the bargain1 ,i suspect1 was for cash payment4 ,now for an instant1 through the two pairs of big round spectacles1 as if with the magnified eyes of somewhat torpid insects1 the two men were looking each at the other1 in a slow sort of shared and unmirthful amusement4 ,they said nothing4 ,then the visitor went on3 ,yes1 we have paid a great deal1 too4 ,still1 here at almost fifty we have rather charming homes and bank accounts1 and wives that continue to put up with us2 and the books are done1 quite as we wanted them done4 ,there aren't many of us1 you know3 not many ,s4,o4,b4's contrive to say that much unsmashed4 ,no3 we haven't paid for doing those books the full and usual price4 ,we have slipped by1 somehow-- ,the other surmised pensively3 ,you mean1 by that big ,thing that doesn't approve of our getting our books done8 ,i hadn't guessed ,he bothers you4 ,after a request for deific condemnation of the third personal singular neuter pronoun1 the visitor stated he meant all the ,things4 ,they don't like us1 you know4 ,they're as vicious as the bright young men4 ,it is droll1 how ,they seem1 the host conceded1 to lurk behind you somewhere1 watching1 waiting1 and--that's the worst1--so able to wait4 ,they don't have1 you see1 to hurry4 ,but you have to4 ,so1 with every book1 when ,i unwrap the advance copies1 ,i always feel1 ,well1 ,i got that one done1 anyway6 ,and we've slipped by ,them6 ,so far1 the other amended4 ,and he exhibited his fingers crossed4 ,whereon the visitor mentioned the infernal regions1 with an outbreak of rolling1 oleaginous1 wholly unreticent laughter4 ,and he said exultantly3 ,but ,i'm forty-seven6 ,and sixteen books are done the way ,i god-damn wanted them done6 ,they can begin on me1 now1 when ,they are ready4 ,the host1 however1 looked disapproving4 ,i wish you would be a little more tactful about ,them4 ,this is my library1 you know4 ,i really1 you know1 would rather not have anything said here to attract ,their particular attention to the place4 ,you see1 only next month ,i am all of forty-nine1 and there are one or two other books ,i want to do here4 ,both of these aging romantics seemed quite in earnest4444 #ed ,they were talking1 ,i reflected1 the most incomprehensible of nonsense4 ,a whit later1 though1 ,i believe1 ,i understood these not unpompous and1 from some aspects1 not utterly underisible nor unpathetic fiction-mongers4 ,for1 as ,i now construe it1 they talked of that formidable three with whom the artist plays and makes his troubled sport4 ,they talked1--they also1 ,i believe1--of common-sense and piety and death4 ,and so to these oldsters some slight periphrases seemed called for1 since1 in their own romanticizing eyes 7as ,i interpret it71 they went as rebels under the fitful surveillance of powers that do not deal tenderly with rebels4 ,they felt themselves to have escaped quite unaccountably1 thus far4 ,besides1 at best1 you went to each day's typing a bit precariously1 having only the stiffening fingers of this undependable middle-aged body to work with1 nowadays1 in a world wherein1 according to the morning paper1 your juniors were every day evincing such inconsideration for your natural feelings1 by dropping down with apoplexies and heart seizures4444 ,well1 by and by would come the unavoidable1 with its concomitant indecent exposure of the partially done book on which you would then be typing4 ,and people1 viewing it1 would perforce decide that your mind had preceded you in your departure1 for people would not comprehend that only in the last revisions could you knit together the loose ends with verbal love-knots4 ,meanwhile you went about the one thing you1 nowadays1 knew how to do1 typing1 always typing1 in a continuous tte--tte with this indeterminate tapped-out tattoo of ticktocking types and tinklings4 ,for you were intent upon getting a fair copy of what might yet be finished1 intent to get down what might yet be permanently phrased1 if only ,they did not strike in time for to-morrow's paper4444 ,yes1 ,i1 upon reflection1 seemed to understand those aging romantics' odd air of furtiveness--and the blustering1 too4 #ee ,for the aim of art is1 to the one side1 an illegal economy and a thievish sortie upon oncoming times' remembrance4444 ,this1 to be sure1 is the less important of the artist's bifold endeavors4 ,fame and immortality rank in all moderately clear eyes 7for reasons to which ,i shall recur7 as but the stakes that1 with favoring luck1 may be won at this game which the clear-eyed play in chief for diversion4 ,the artist1 even so1 does undeniably strive for these stakes2 sometimes indeed he 7foolishly enough7 thinks his immortality a really important hazard3 and his art becomes a form of freebooting rebellion1 in a world whose polity foredooms all men to perish utterly as far as go their earthly relics4444 ,yet none the less does the literary artist mutinously attempt to avoid the appointed customs of obliteration2 and he tacks with a harried and piratical shiftiness about the quiet haven wherein his betters--the far-seeing statesmen and the ,federal judges1 the bankers and the writers of book reviews and the big-sleeved bishops and the best known of moving-picture actors1--all enter every day and law-abidingly cast anchor1 among the wharfs of ,lethe4 ,for his despairing1 futile aim is to economize and--herewith to remit that perhaps over-colored buccaneerish simile1 in favor of a more cadaverous figure1--to embalm as lastingly as may be1 where time flows like a cool and steady wind and all else is vapor1 his personal notions4 ,yet1 somewhere1 may be watching him1 as to the mazed artist is whispered by what seems a nameless and troubled instinct1 somewhere may be incuriously observing his rebellion1 a power which that instinct fears as the calm foe of human presumption4 ,somewhere may exist supernally an all-overbrooding common-sense aware that the upshot of any man's life is a matter most profitably forgotten4 ,and this high common-sense 7endowed perhaps with plenary executive duties7 may well be one of ,them4444 #ef ,to the other side1 the artist seeks and goes always seeking--unpatriotically1 if not with absolute irreligion1--to divert himself in his native universe1 whose constitution does not self-evidently provide for the amusement of the inhabitants4 ,no artist's long-faced magniloquence about his work1 ,i must for the hundredth or so time repeat1 can in the least prevent that vocation being in reality1 and only1 his diversion4444 ,and a very striking attestation of this truth1 now ,i think of it1 is furnished by the failure of such talk for one half-instant to delude the man's wife4 ,for women have1 as some profound philosopher or another has observed1 their intuitions4 ,the woman whom marriage with a creative artist has swindled of a husband thus always knows1 or she at worst obscurely feels1 that behind those locked doors the humbug is at a sort of secret tippling3 and for that reason 7among others7 you will find the wife of every valid artist to regard his art1 however tacitly1 however self-perjuringly even1 with unconcealable impatience4444 ,so much is true1 ,i believe1 of all the arts4 ,the endeavor of the really serious creative writer1 in any case1 is hourly to divert himself3 and1 pending extinction1 he intends to continue to divert himself with such fancies as he elects4 ,the man1 as ,i have admitted1 lies about it1 through1 one would like to think1 some remnants of shame4 ,or perhaps it is by his publishers alone that the besotted hedonist is restrained from answering those critics who deplore his fancies1 or who pick fault with his chosen manner of expressing them3 ,what is that to me8 and how am ,i concerned with your likings and your dislikings8 ,these notions divert me4 ,i have set them forth in the fashion which ,i personally found most diverting4 ,why1 as we meet here1 momentarily1 doomed prisoners in the death-cell of existence1 should ,i be bothering about your taste in ansthetics8 ,mix1 in your own god's name1 whatever drugs you like1 to keep you firm in magnanimity until you too are summoned to that last hackneyed journalistic hearty breakfast of ham and eggs and to the other clichs of being killed4 ,meanwhile ,i stick to my approved strong tipple4 ,so then--not quite out of rash hilarity1--does the creating writer intoxicate himself with such self-brewed imaginings as he finds most effective3 so does he flout perforce the opinions of his fellow citizens1 the while that he creates a more approvable race in his own image3 and so does he dismiss1 half negligently1 the material cosmos as rather bungling prentice work1 in very little exemplifying the rules which he himself prefers as demiurge4 ,as ,hecuba to ,hamlet1 so to him is the knowledge that such creatures as realists are everywhere truckling to nature in their tenth large editions1 and go enfranchised in these books to patch up a mimic existence in every respect as undesirable as their own4444 ,for the creating romanticist quite simply declines to accept either the human conduct of life upon earth or any assumable theocratic overseeing of it from heaven as a competent performance4 ,men and whatever gods may potter about in charge of men this myopic weakling unaffectedly esteems to be not at all up to his standards4 ,yet1 none the less1 somewhere from afar may be watching him--as1 here again1 seems whispered by irrational instinct1--a power which exacts1 without any pliable descent into logic1 that its material handiwork be approached with the civil condonations of piety4444 ,that power may well be the second of ,them4 ,and by this ruthless but unangered power perhaps the babbling runagate must always be punished1 in one way or another1 for his disloyalties to his fellows and to his native overlords4 ,such was the feeling1 ,i believe1 which fidgeted in the bottom of the minds of my replete1 romantic oldsters1--the both of them well-nigh used up1 it might be1 but both unsmashed1 and both unrepentantly aware of not having been1 in common with the most of their contemporaries1 wasted1--as they drowsed among their finished books4 ,for1 whatever happened1 that many of their books were finished4444 #eg ,why then1 though1 granting these delusions1--the sane may reasonably inquire1--should any madman seek to provoke this punishment1 and even court it with painstakings and with year-long self-denials8 ,the reply to that question is simple3 ,i do not know4 ,i doubt if anybody does4 ,nor1 ,i imagine1 had either of these paunched and spectacled and thin-haired fanatics1 blinking among his finished books1 the leisure for such1 upon the whole1 irrelevant problems4444 ,it would merely seem1 ,i daresay1 to his romanticizing time-bleared eyes1 that single-mindedness1 if but occasionally1 if but for a brief while as go the necessaries of high-wrought prose1 may evade ,them4 ,it would seem to him that1 in this grudged1 snatched while1 he1 somehow1--in part through less of crass ill luck than daily tumbles mere genius graveward1 and in part1 too1 through wasting no least moment upon irrelevant matters1--had contrived to get some of his books completed in more or less the shape he had wanted1 with that irrational1 inborn1 resistless hunger which made the other matters irrelevant4444 ,and then you would be almost as grateful for as you were worried by the unaccountable way in which you would seem still to be slipping by ,them1 somehow1 and thus far4 ,and so at times you would bluster to keep up your courage4 ,and at other times you would cross your fingers4444 ,for1 really1 in the last forties1 with those depressing items in the paper every morning1 you might with an equal sense of assurance be typing1 always typing1 on a battlefield to a distracting accompaniment of burst shells4 ,and each new book completed by you would thus take on an element of the miraculous not wholly based upon the volume's contents3 and you would1 in point of fact1 quite probably unwrap the first actual copies saying1 with rather more of wonder than of gloating1 ,well1 ,i got that one done1 anyway6 ,for about the third of ,them there is no doubt nor any possible disputing4 ,and it is against common-sense and piety and death that the artist conducts his utterly futile rebellion4444 ,yes1 ,i believe1 ,i understood those aging romantics1 who approached1 the colophon of so many books4 #eh --,because1 ,i submit1 it is wholly conceivable that men may1 by and by1 get rid of common-sense and piety2 but this human habit of dying appears ineradicable4 ,there is always ahead1 and always a little nearer1 the one and one only exit from the familiar corridor of our workaday existence4 ,all of us thus pass1 futilely1 nesciently1 helplessly1 through tedium to horror3 for we live in articulo mortis2 our doings here1 when unaffectedly regarded1 are but the restlessness of a prolonged demise2 and the birth-cry of every infant announces the beginning of the death-agony4444 ,and that1 too1 you observe1 is in the approved time-tested style4 ,for it is through consideration of his own unimportance and transiency that man rises to the largest resonance of poetry and wisdom4 ,vanity of vanities6 saith the ,preacher1 the son of ,david3 and schylos answers1 ,oh1 ye little race of men1 what does your living show6 and goes on with the customary observations as to parti-colored leaves that are swept away by the wind4 ,horace takes up the tale1 ,we are all bound on one voyage4 ,villon continues with derogatory evaluations of the final worth of the fair queens and the thrasonical potentates and the melted snows of yesterday2 and ,shakespeare rounds off the dirge with the assertion that human living1 however full of sound and fury1 signifies precisely nothing4444 ,everywhere fine literature1 in its more purple passages1 tends to voice the futility of man's endeavors1 the impermanence of his works1 and his generally unarguable claims not to be worth writing about4 ,nevertheless1--here to continue in this high scholastic vein1--nevertheless1 as ,chrysippus of ,cnidos1 you will remember1 has strikingly phrased a weighty truth1 in that noble monograph ,on the ,cabbage 7which some critics of the ,alexandrian school1 as we should of course with due caution bear in mind1 would attribute to a somewhat later date and to a pupil of ,erasistratus71--nevertheless1 death is the one impending fact which is certain4 ,now1 thought of in its physical aspects1 death is an indignity before which any sort of human self-respect--not here to speak of the wild actuality of human pride1--becomes preposterous4 ,thought about logically1 it makes any conceivable human action rather silly1 as upon the whole inappropriate to condemned persons in a death cell4 ,thought of in the light of man's possible immortality1 it seems no longer to raise1 if ever it did1 any positive enthusiasm4 ,and so beyond doubt the majority of us act wiseliest by not thinking about it at all1 except as a thing which happens to other people4 ,and it is perhaps inadequate comfort to reflect that the one world known to us1 wherein everything exists by virtue of destruction1 can hardly be described as a realm of life rather than of death4 ,as ,i write1 ,i can observe1 in the long field across the roadway1 our family cow indefatigably grazing in the level light of sunset1 a stolid ,gothic monster whose placid conduct of existence ,i have sometimes envied4444 ,more often1 though1 have ,i frowningly gazed out of the library window1 in search of some elusive word1 to find the creature tirelessly munching forward1 and never for one instant having to use her brain2 and then ,i have suspected that cow of being a really competent literary critic4444 ,well1 the grass is1 as we say1 alive1 and by its death she is being nourished4 ,and it is rather vexatious to reflect that this cow will probably for some time be retained as the source of our milk supply4 ,otherwise ,i could go on to moralize how she will presently become steaks and roasts1 to furnish me with nutriment through her cenatical interment2 and how ,i in a little while shall be dead and nourishing new grasses for her descendants to feed on2 and how the cycle of grass1 cow and man will thus go on interminably and1 some say1 aimlessly4 ,it could be worked up1 ,i think1 into a quite effective prose passage4 ,unluckily1 ,i know ,i shall in every likelihood never eat that especial cow2 and so my neat and edifying sermon is despoiled by the raid of common-sense1 always inimical to art4 ,none the less do two minutes of reflection beget perturbing offspring1 in shape of the knowledge that everywhere life brings about death1 and death life1 until the hardiest of philosophers may hardly dare assert which upon earth is prevalent4 ,from wasp to tiger1 from the eagle to the frog1 all animate beings must kill ceaselessly1 and eat and kill again1 until they themselves be killed for another's nourishing4 ,we may say1 as we very glibly do1 that the worm is the wren's food3 yet it seems equally true that every wren is but a flying compost of dead worms1 just as that cow yonder is1 to the considerate1 a heaving rick of dead hay4444 ,and we human beings also are condemned to incessant killing1 we are doomed to the diurnal massacre of innumerable fellow mammals1 who very much excel us in some virtues1 such as patience and taciturnity1 even if they be upon the whole our inferiors in malevolence and folly4 ,i do not imagine1 for example1 that many persons would declare an archbishop to be as near a thorough ,christian as is a lamb1 or could1 with an unpricking conscience1 affirm a congressman to be1 in every district1 as intelligent as a cow4 ,so we all live by grace of killing1 as indubitably as did any medival bravo or headsman4 ,wheresoever1 in the familiar ,scriptural phrase1 two or three are gathered together1 there again is the customary alliance of the ,bible and ,shakespeare justified by the aptness of the nave old stage direction1 ,enter three murderers4444 ,nor is it instantly apparent that an assassination is converted into righteousness by a subsequent eating of the corpse4 ,it is an epilogue1 indeed1 which savors a little distastefully of the necrophile4 ,besides1 a passionate or disinterested murder may well in many circumstances retain a certain childish grace1 as befits the first invention of the first baby3 a mere murder is often picturesque and1 ,i am told1 enjoyable3 but that crime which is called a dinner party was never1 to my knowledge1 either of these things4444 ,and therefore one laments this obscene crunching and devouring which1 when reflected upon1 abates man's proper pride in his race1 and coolingly checks love and every other exalted sentiment4 ,it is not possible to think with adoration1 or even with actual pleasure1 of the most dear of ladies as the sarcophagus of fish and chicken1 as the moving monument of so many mangled sheep1 as the animated ossuary of oxen1 as in brief a mere morgue4 ,and man that is born of woman does literally1 we see1 come out of a coffin into the tedium of life1 whereunder he encounters on all sides the yawning of one or another grave1 in the persons of his fellow omnivora4 ,so by the considerate our world may hardly be described as the realm of life rather than of death4 ,and in all lands men have obscurely felt that death was perhaps the beginning as well as the end of all things4 ,thus1 naturally enough1 you find the ,northmen talking of ,ymir1 the slain giant1 whose flesh and blood and bones decayed into our earth and sea and mountains4 ,in ,india men told of the giant ,purusha1 from whose dead body the world was just thus mortifyingly made3 in ,babylon1 of rotting ,tiamat2 in ,china1 of ,p'an ,ku2 and in ,persia1 of ,gayomart4 ,everywhere you encounter the suspicion that this world and the busy life with which it swarms reveal the phenomena attendant upon the putrefying of any other sizable carcass3 among all nations the older poets have1 with queer unanimity1 identified mankind with the worms which breed in a puffed and bubbling corpse2 and have protested that1 rightly speaking1 in our terrestrial existence is nowhere apparent anything save the operation and products of death4 #ei ,yet the chelonian-footed progress of science here1 as usual1 has in the outcome managed to catch up with the forerunning hare-brained fancies of the poets4 ,astronomers are now agreed that we inhabit a world already dying1 a world made tenable for parasites through the abating of its vital heat2 and that our race infests earth only during the last stages of the globe's demise4 ,we men and women in our worldly relations rank1 if you be an optimist1 with lice3 if pessimism be your creed1 you will lean to the old poetic idea of our being maggots4 ,for the science of the astronomer does1 in essentials1 but revert to the most ancient notions of cosmology2 finds nowhere apparent anything save the operation and products of death2 and rather cheerlessly unveils the cold and murderous tides of circumambient ther1 about which drift so many other moribund planets among the corpses of their fellows4 ,none the less1 it is with this omnipresent and omnicorporeal monarch that the artist makes sport1 depriving death of terrors with the opiates of religion2 and maiming death of potency likewise1 so long as the artist eludes destruction and survives in his art4 ,to that attenuated1 grotesque and defamatory survival ,i shall by and by come back3 meanwhile ,i must protest1 even here1 that in this third struggle is no least beckoning chance of victory4 ,for1 before common-sense or piety man figures1 as ,i have said1 in the rle of ,frankenstein2 he is as ,dom ,manuel before the vivified image of ,sesphra2 and he combats1 without much hope1 his own terrible creation3 but here1 the opponent seems far more likely to have created him1 however accidentally4 ,by the fanciful may mankind1 thus1 be viewed as an unpremeditated by-product1 as some serious task's dbris1 which for the moment rather clutters this corner of death's workroom4 ,others will play with the notion--which1 as ,i remember1 ,felix ,kennaston once suggested1--of life's having somehow got into the material universe as a small1 alien1 unwelcome interloper2 and will suspect this is the reason that death appears to come upon us and our labors frowningly1 as the vexed housewife comes toward the unloved weavings of the spider1 just seen4 ,but1 in either case1 the poets are sonorously agreed that never while time lasts can man's existence really matter2 for time1 they say1 is death's broom4 ,,vii ,,diversions ,,of ,,the ,,anchorite ,he shaved himself1 and changed his raiment1 and came in unto ,pharaoh4444 ,and ,pharaoh took off his ring from his hand1 and put it upon ,joseph's hand1 and arrayed him in vestures of fine linen1 and put a gold chain about his neck2 and he made ,joseph to ride in the second chariot which he had2 and they cried before him3--',bow the knee6'444 ,and in the plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls4 #g4 ,diversions of the ,anchorite #fj ,the literary artist plays1 ,i had said1 with such ideas as he personally finds diverting4444 ,but at this point criticism1 remote but decisive1 dwelt feelingly1 and with1 ,i believe1 a tinge of imaginative embellishment1 upon the miseries of housekeeping in establishments wherein people never could manage to be on time for their meals4 ,for ,i seemed to have written through and blotted out another entire1 bright1 irretrievable afternoon3 and rising1 prior to a brief venturing into the society of human beings1 ,i wondered how the poetically favored simile of the life of a galley-slave could ever have occurred to1 of all persons1 some writer or another1 as representing thralldom4444 ,after supper ,i returned to the library3 and there--with the artificial aid of electricity now1 somehow symbolically1 replacing the true sun1--,i resumed the quest of my epilogue4444 ,to the one side1 as ,i had pointed out1 the artist seeks to divert himself with the ideas which he1 whether or no he absolutely and crudely believes in them1 does personally find diverting4 ,this is the game he chooses to play3 it is the game with which1 at any cost1 he intends to amuse himself4 ,and considering all things1 ,i was really afraid that when ,mr4 ,joseph ,conrad talked about the artist being prompted by an obscure inner necessity1 we overheard the resort of a pricking conscience to pleonasm4 ,there is nothing particularly obscure about our general human unwillingness to be bored3 and the artist evades his boredom by playing at his art4 ,that seemed to me all there was to it4 ,let us excogitate1 as a most pregnant example1--,i said1 with the pedantic touch befitting graver issues1--the famous case of ,joseph ,hergesheimer4444 #fa ,now1 in order to approach the most striking but one of all modern instances1 and the case which in so many features1 ,i believe1 resembles my own case1 ,i must recapitulate a great deal written a while back1 when ,joseph ,hergesheimer was to me1 in the main1 a collection of some half a dozen books1 and the hand which wrote them had shaken my hand not more than half a dozen times4 ,since then we have become--within the limits of such confidence as remains possible and wary between creative writers1--rather intimate4444 ,but ,i am speaking of a time before this intimacy1 and of my very first impressions of ,mr4 ,hergesheimer as these impressions were derived from his books alone4 ,at that time so said they1 spoke they1 and told they the tale1 in literary gossip1 that ,joseph ,hergesheimer wrote for a long while before an iota of his typing was transmuted into proof sheets4 ,and the tale told how for fourteen years he could find nowhere any magazine editor to whose present needs a ,hergesheimer story was quite suited4 ,it was then1 and to-day remains1 my belief that1 in approaching ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's writings1 one should bear constantly in mind those fourteen years1 for to me they appear1 not uncuriously1 to have shaped and colored every book he has ever published4 ,the actual merit of the writing done during that period of unavailability is--here1 at least--irrelevant4 ,it is not the point of the fable that he high-heartedly wrote a story to which1 when completed1 his unbiased judgment could not quite honestly deny such deference as is due to a literary masterpiece2 and which1 through some odd error1 was rejected by a magazine that every month was publishing vastly inferior stories2 and which was later declined by another magazine1 and by a host of magazines1 with a dispiriting bland unanimity not unsuggestive of editorial conspiracy4 ,meanwhile--of course--he had written another tale1 which was much better than the first1 and which proved to be an equally faithful chaperon of return postage4 ,so story followed story1 each dreeing the same weird4444 ,and he used to wait for the postman1 no doubt1 and to note from afar that it was a large envelope2 and would open the damned thing with a faint hope that perhaps they just wanted some slight changes made2 and would find only the neat1 impersonal1 and civilly patronizing death-warrant of hope4 ,and ,joseph ,hergesheimer kept on with his foolishness1 without any gleam of success1 or even 7they report7 any word of encouragement4 ,and doubtless his relatives said the customary things4444 ,yet none of these circumstances1 either1 is the point of the apologue1 because in all save one detail the comedy has been abraded into pointlessness by over-constant repetition2 and is1 of course1 being futilely performed at this moment in one prefers not to reflect how many thousand homes4 ,the leading rle1 though1 is too unprofitable and irksome for any quite sane person to persist in enacting it for fourteen years4 ,here ,i speak with curt decision as to a subject upon which ,i protest myself an authority4444 ,this rle1 then1 ,joseph ,hergesheimer did enact for fourteen years2 and that is the fable's significant point4 #fb ,yes1 it is the boy's illogical pertinacity which is the fable's point1 because that pertinacity at once explains why nearly all the men in ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's books are hag-ridden by one or another sole desire which spurs them toward a definite goal1 through every instant of their mimic lives4 ,these men but variously reflect1 ,i take it1 that younger ,hergesheimer's will to write1 that wholly selfish and unconquerable will4 ,to ,mr4 ,hergesheimer1 even to-day1 it probably seems natural that a man's whole living should be devoted to the attaining of one desire quite clearly perceived1 because once his own life was thus dedicated4444 ,the more shrewd mass of practical persons that go about in flesh are otherwise2 and comfortably fritter through the day1 with no larger objective at any time in mind than the catching of a car1 the rounding off of a business transaction1 the keeping of an engagement for luncheon1 and the vesperal attendance to some unmental form of recreation1--with one small interest displacing another in endless succession1 until bed-time arrives and the undertaker tucks them in4 ,those fourteen years explain to me the ,hergesheimer women1 too1 those somewhat troublingly ornamental odalisques4 ,they are fine costly toys1 tricked out in curious tissues3 and1 waiting for the strong male's leisure1 they smile cryptically4 ,they will divert him by and by1 when the day's work is despatched1 maintaining their own thoughts inviolate1 even in that treacherous instant of comminglement wherein the strongest of men must abate reserve4 ,but their moment is not daylit1 for the ,hergesheimer women are all-incongruous with what is done during office-hours1 nor are they to be valued then4 ,sometimes they are embodied ideals1 to be sure1 remotely prized as symbols or else grasped as trophies to commemorate the nearing of the goal3 but for the most part they rank candidly as avocational interests4 ,i find nowhere in ,joseph ,hergesheimer's stories any record of intimacy and confidence between a man and a woman4444 ,and this too1 ,i think1 reflects that all-important formative fourteen years wherein1 whatever may have been ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's conduct of his relatively unimportant physical life1 his fundamental concernments were pursued in a realm1 of necessity1 uninhabited by women4 ,indeed1 no woman can with real content permit the man whom she proprietorially cherishes1 to traffic in this queer lonely realm1 and she cannot but1 secretly1 regard his visits thereto as a personal slight4 ,so the creative artist remains 7when luckiest7 at silent feud with his current wife1 because both are perpetually irritated by the failure of their joint effort to ignore the fact that she ranks as an avocational interest4 ,and the creative artist remains1 at bottom1 an anchorite whose actual living is given over to his diversions in a withdrawn and not over-wholesome country whereinto no other person can ever enter2 and whence he1 tired out for the while by his playing1 deviates now and then into four-square existence--should it be only1 we will say1 to come down to his supper1--as a talking and laughing and amorous and blatant animal1 very much as other wearied persons wander off into their dreams4 #fc ,what1 though1 the dull may wonder1 was the precise goal of the fourteen years of visually unproductive writing8 ,since those first stories have not ever been printed1 one may here seem to advance on a bridge of guesswork4 ,yet really1 to the considerate1 the answer is plain4 ,in all that is to-day accessible of ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's earlier creative feats--with one exception duly noted hereinafter1--you observe perforce an overt negligence1 and indeed an ostentatious avoidance1 of any aiming toward popularity4 ,that during the fourteen years young ,hergesheimer labored toward the applause and cheques of a best-seller becomes to the considerate inconceivable4 ,nor could that well1 indeed1 have been a motive strong enough to sustain him thus long1 since the maker of reading-matter1 like any other tradesman1 has need of quick returns where the artist battens on immediate rejections4 ,no3 ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's monomania1 one perceives1 was then to write for his own diversion4 ,he was then playing all the while at the game the artist must always play3 and doubtless he also1 like the most of his confrres in diversion1 devised extremely imposing titles for his self-indulgence4 ,but the point is that here1 for fourteen years1 the one possible incentive for the boy to go on writing was that he enjoyed doing it4 ,the point is that ,joseph ,hergesheimer1 whatever his voiced pretexts or his actual intentions1 gave over these fourteen years to an attestation of the fact that the main and the all-absorbing purpose of literary art is to divert the literary artist4 ,some by-products in the way of minor gains1 he1 questionless1 might look for as he went about his playing with words1 and gave all to the game which he played in large part because he could not help it1 and in part with the hope of1 somehow and some day1 obtaining an audience with the same or a kindred sense of beauty4444 ,this hope1 to be sure1 seems always a vain aspiration3 and that which we loosely talk about as beauty perhaps does not exist as a vital thing save here and there in the thoughts of not too many and not to be too seriously taken persons4 ,in life1 rather frequently1 one appears to catch a glimpse of something of the sort just around the corner or over the way2 but it is rarely1 and perhaps never1 actually at hand4 ,sometimes1 of course1 one seems about to incorporate the elusive thing into one's daily living2 and1 striving1 finds the attempt a grasping at an opalescent bubble1 with the same small shock1 the same disrupting disillusionment4 ,and beauty1 thus1 is by the judicious conceded to be an unembodiable thought1 never quite to be grasped by the mind2 and certainly not ever nicely nor with any self-content to be communicated via the pages of a book1 wherein are preserved1 at best1 the faded petals and the flattened crumbling stalks of what seemed lovely once to somebody who is as dead as are these desiccated relics of his ardor and of his disputable taste4 ,in brief1 it may be granted--and by ,mr4 ,hergesheimer most cheerfully of all persons1--that during these fourteen years young ,joseph ,hergesheimer diverted himself by attempting the self-evidently impossible4 #fd ,now1 to my thinking1 there is something curiously similar to that unreasonable endeavor to be found in all the ,hergesheimer novels4 ,here always ,i find portrayed1 with an insistency and a reiteration to which ,i seem to detect a queer analogue in the writings of ,christopher ,marlowe1 men laboring toward the unattainable1 and a high questing foiled4 ,no one of the ,hergesheimer novels has varied from this formula1 from the first published of them to the current ,balisand4444 ,anthony ,ball1 of ,the ,lay ,anthony1 strives toward the beauty of chastity1--not morally concerned one way or the other1 but bent to preserve his physical purity for the sake of a girl whose body1 he finds at last1 has long ago been ravished by worms4 ,again1 in ,mountain ,blood is no hint of moral-mongering1--for ,mr4 ,hergesheimer is no more concerned with moral values than is the ,decalogue1--when ,gordon ,makimmon toils toward the beauty of atonement1 to die in all a broken man1 with his high goal yet gleaming on the horizon untouched4 ,the three black ,pennys flounder toward the beauty of a defiant carnal passion1 which through the generations scorches and defiles1 and burns out futilely by and by1 leaving only slag where the aspiring lovely fire was4 ,and through the formal garden ways of ,java ,head pass feverishly at least five persons who struggle 7and fretfully know their failure to be fore-doomed7 toward the capturing of one or another evincement of beauty1 with the resultant bodily demolishment of three of them and the spiritual maiming of the others4 ,that which one1 for whatever reason1 finds most beautiful must become one's diversion from all other interests2 it is a goal which one seeks futilely1 and with discomfort and peril1 but which one seeks inevitably3 such is the plot of these four novels4 ,such is also1 as ,i need hardly say1 the plot of the aforementioned fourteen years wherein not anything tangible was achieved except the consuming of youth and postage4444 ,nor does the dnouement differ1 either1 in any of these novels3 the postman comes with the plethoric envelope which signals from afar that the result of much high-hearted striving is not quite suited to the present needs of this world's editor2 and sometimes the postman is ,age1 but more often he is ,death4 #fe ,now the fifth of the ,hergesheimer novels is ,linda ,condon1 which renders self-confessedly a story of the old service of beauty1 of the old gesture toward the stars1--here never to be won1 never to be realized1--of the service which only beauty knows and possesses4444 ,for ,linda ,condon is to be valued less as the life-history of a woman than as the depiction--curt1 incisive and yet pitying1--of a shrine that1 however transiently1 was hallowed4 ,at the exacting workaday pursuit of being a human being this ,linda fails1 fails chilled and wistful4 ,she has1 like more of us than dare proclaim the defect1 no talent whatever for heart-felt living3 so that most persons seem but to pass grayly upon the horizon of her consciousness1 like unintelligible wraiths gesticulating1--and always remaining somehow disjunct and not gravely important1--the while that all the needs and obligations of one's corporal life must be discharged with an ever-present sense of their queer triviality4 ,toward nobody1 neither toward ,linda ,condon's mother nor lover1 nor husband nor children1 may she1 the real ,linda1 quite entertain any sense of actual attachment1 far less of intimacy4444 ,meanwhile she has her loveliness1 not of character or mind1 but a loan of surpassing physical beauty4 ,and to ,linda ,condon her own bright moving carcass becomes a thing to be tended and preserved religiously1 because beauty is divine1 and she herself is estimable1 if at all1 as the fane which beauty briefly inhabits4444 ,and by and by1 under time's handling1 her comeliness is shriveled1 and her lovers are turned to valueless dust3 but first1 has ,linda's lost young beauty been the buried sculptor's inspiration1 and this has been perpetuated1 in everlasting bronze4 ,the perfection of ,linda ,condon's youth is never to perish1 and is not ever to be dulled by old age or corrupted in death4 ,she comprehends this as she passes out of the story1 a faded1 desolate and insignificant bit of rubbish1 contented to know that the one thing which really meant much to her is1 as if by a miracle1 preserved inviolate4 ,the statue remains1 the immutable child of ,linda's comeliness and ,pleydon's genius1 the deathless offspring of transitory things4 ,beauty is divine2 a power superior and somewhat elfinly inimical to all human moralities and rules of thumb1 and a divinity which must unflinchingly be served3 that1 in this book is ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's text4 ,for this is the divinity which he1 too1 has served1 time and again1 with strangely patterned evocations1 in striving to write perfectly of beautiful happenings4 ,it is an ideal here approached more nearly and more nobly than in the preceding ,hergesheimer books4 ,nowhere1 indeed1 to my thinking1 has ,joseph ,hergesheimer found an arena nicelier suited to the exercise of his most exquisite powers than in this modern tale of domnei1--of the worship of woman's beauty as1 upon the whole1 ,heaven's finest sample of artistic self-expression1 and as1 in consequence1 the most adequate revelation of ,god2 and1 as such a symbol1 therefore1 the one thing to be revered above all else that visibly exists1 even by its temporary possessor4 ,that last is ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's especial refinement upon a tenet sufficiently venerable to have been nodded over by ,troy's gray-bearded councillors when that phantom woman whom they believed to be ,queen ,helen passed1--and a refinement1 too1 which would have been repudiated by ,helen herself1 who1 if one may trust to ,euripides' report of her sentiments1 was inclined to regard more prosaically her own personal appearance1 as a disaster-provoking nuisance4 ,well1 and to ,linda1 also1 was beauty a nuisance1--a bitter and luxurious god1 that implacably required to be honored with sacrifices of common joys and ties and ruddy interests1 but was none the less divine4 ,sustained by this one faith1 ,linda ,hallet goes out of the story1 when youth is over1 and when she too must pass1--and goes regarding not very seriously that which is human and ephemeral1 even as embodied in her lovers and her children1 nor in herself1 but1 rather1 always turning grave blue eyes toward that which is--perhaps--divine4 ,she passes1 as at once the abandoned sanctuary1 the priestess1 the postulant1 and the martyr1 of that beauty to which fools had referred as hers4 ,she passes not as the wreckage of a toy1 but as an outworn instrument which has helped to further--it may be--the labor of a god4 ,for she passes1 as all must pass1 without any assurance of achievement2 but with content4 ,that1 really1 is the happy end4444 #ff --,which reminds me that for the most part ,i am rattling very old bones4 ,those seemingly unfruitful fourteen years are to-day at one with those other fourteen years which brought an elder ,joseph into ,egyptian publicity4 ,neglected merit has here been rewarded with that sort of loud and full-blown triumphing which in fairy-stories moves us to delighted applause1 and in real life to instant1 envious1 sharp disparagement4 ,for ,mr4 ,hergesheimer has long ago arrived3 his books have found their proper and appreciative audience2 whereas his short stories are purchased1 and probably read1 along with the encomiums of ready-made clothing and safety razors1 by the ,i forget how many million buyers of the world's most popular magazine4444 ,now1 here1 when ,i first wrote about ,mr4 ,hergesheimer1 here ,i seemed to find stark provocations of uneasiness4 ,i spoke with diffidence1 and was not entirely swayed1 ,i believe1 by the natural inclination of every writer to backbite his fellow craftsman4 ,in any event1 dismissing ,gold and ,iron 7after some reflection7 with unqualified applause1 ,i took up ,the ,happy ,end3 and of the seven stories contained therein six seemed to me to display a cornerstone of eminently popular psychology1 ranging from the as yet sacrosanct belief that all ,germans are perfectly horrid people1 to the axiom that the youngest1 unrespected brother is invariably the one to exterminate the family enemies2 and duly including the sentiment that noble hearts very often beat under ragged shirts4 ,and ,i was made uneasy by the spectacle of these uplifting faiths--these literary baking powders more properly adapted to the ,horrible ,trites and the ,gluepot ,stews among reading-matter confectioners1--thus utilized by a ,joseph ,hergesheimer4 ,i was made uneasy because ,i reasoned in this way3 when ,mr4 ,hergesheimer is writing a short story to be printed next to advertising matter in some justly popular periodical1 ,mr4 ,hergesheimer1 being rational and human1 cannot but think of the subscribers to that popular periodical4 ,i forget1 ,i repeat1 how many millions of them have been duly attested upon affidavit to exist1 but certainly not many thousands of our fellow citizens can regard ,mr4 ,hergesheimer at his best and purest with anything save bewildered abhorrence4 ,so he must compromise1--subconsciously1 ,i believe1--and must adapt his methods to the idiosyncrasies and the limitations of his audience1 very much as he probably refrains from addressing his chauffeur in the heightened and consummated ,english of ,san ,cristbal de la ,habana4 ,the danger1 ,i reflected1 was not that ,joseph ,hergesheimer would lower his ideals1 nor in anything alter what he wished to communicate2 but was the fact that he must attempt to transmit these things into the vernacular and into the orbits of thought of his enormous audience1 with the immaculate motive of making his ideas comprehensible4 ,he could not1 being rational and human1 but by and by be tempted yet further to endeavor--as he had flagrantly endeavored in the tale called ,tol'able ,david1--to convey his wayside apprehensions of life via some such always acceptable vehicle as the prehistoric fairy-tale clich of the scorned and ultimately victorious third champion4 ,this was with a vengeance the pouring of new wine into a usage-battered and always brazen cup which spoiled the brew4444 ,six of these stories1 then1 were beautifully written moral tales3 although1 to be sure1 there was an alleviating seventh1 in ,the ,flower of ,spain1 which was a well-nigh perfect and a profoundly immoral work of art4 ,i therefore put aside this volume with discomfort4444 ,but ,i suspect that here the axiomatic mutual jealousy of all authors should be discounted4 ,as an outsider in letters1 ,i could not1 at the time to which ,i refer1 be expected to view with equanimity the then recent installation of ,mr4 ,hergesheimer in the ,american ,national ,institute of ,arts and ,letters1 wherein the other representatives of creative literature were such approved masters as ,mr4 ,nelson ,lloyd1 ,mr4 ,will ,payne1 ,mr4 ,robert ,w4 ,chambers and ,professor ,hermann ,hagedorn4 ,at this port1 once so neatly charted as the ,ellis ,island of the ,academy1 had the skipper of ,the ,happy ,end arrived4 ,the fact had been formally recognized by our best-thought-of cultural element1 that in artistic achievement ,joseph ,hergesheimer had but fifty living superiors1 and only a hundred and ninety-nine equals1 at that moment resident in the ,united ,states3 and ,i1 who had not been tendered any such accolade1 could not but be aware of human twinges when ,mr4 ,hergesheimer as a matter of course accepted this distinction4 ,so it was1 no doubt1 the impurest sort of envy and low-mindedness which caused me here to suspect alarming symptoms4 ,i1 in any event1 put aside ,the ,happy ,end with profound discomfort2 and turned to the reflection that ,mr4 ,hergesheimer had since written ,linda ,condon1 which discomforted me quite as poignantly by exposing to me my poverty in phrases sufficiently noble to apply to this wholly admirable book4 #fg ,yet ,mr4 ,hergesheimer1 even in the least worthy of his magazine stories1 writes really well4 ,the phrase has an inadequate ring3 but of how many novelists can this be pardonably said by anybody save their publishers8 ,the majority of us1 whatever and however weighty may be our other merits1 can manage1 in this matter of sheer writing1 to select and arrange our adjectives and verbs and other literary ingredients acceptably enough1 every now and then3 and that is the utmost which honesty can assert4 ,but ,mr4 ,hergesheimer almost always writes really well1 once you have licensed his idiosyncrasy of depending upon interjected proper names to explain to whom his1 ,hergesheimer's1 pronouns refer2 or of1 as if with a feigned yawn1 inserting the synonym1 the qualification1 which explains1 suggests1 that the word1 the phrase1 used1 printed1 isn't1 after all1 entirely1 quite the affair he'd wanted4444 ,perhaps ,i here drift too remotely into technicalities1 and tend to substitute for a consideration of architecture a treatise upon brick-making4 ,in any event1 ,i shall not here join in the chorus of the innumerable hundreds of critics who have pointed out how intensely ,mr4 ,hergesheimer realizes the sensuous world of his characters and1 in particular1 the optic world4 ,yet ,i grant1 he is the most insistently superficial of all writers known to me1 in his emphasis upon shapes and textures and pigments4 ,his people are rendered from complexion to coat-tail buttons1 and the reader is given precisely the creasing of each forehead and the pleating of their under-linen4 ,the ,works of ,joseph ,hergesheimer contain whole warehousefuls of the most carefully finished furniture in print2 and at bric--brac he has no ,english equal4 ,it is all visioned1 moreover1 very minutely4 ,here is a guide who exhibits not merely the halls and presence-chambers of the building wherethrough he shepherds the public1 but forces you to observe the chairs and panellings and wall-papers and window-curtains also1 with an abnormal scrutiny4 ,the scenery and the weather1 to be sure1 are done just as painstakingly2 but these are indigenous impedimenta to most stories4 ,now of course1 like virtually every other practise of realism1 this is untrue to life3 nobody does in living regard adjacent objects as attentively as the reader of a ,hergesheimer story is compelled to note them4 ,for one1 ,i cannot quite ignore this fact1 even when ,i read with most complaisance4 ,i have1 though1 my own faith as to the value of all descriptory passages3 and1 it may be1 ,i shall presently speak of this4444 ,meanwhile ,i sometimes wonder if ,mr4 ,hergesheimer premeditatedly sits down to inventory for scriptorial use the precise aspect of a chair or an andiron1 of a fan or a shelf of ,east ,india money or a fallen magnolia petal2 or whether his personal existence is actually given over to this concentration upon externals and inanimate things4 ,but he was once a painter2 and large residuals of the put-by art survive4 ,all this results in a style to which the reader is never quite oblivious4 ,the ,hergesheimer dramas--dramas wherein each of the players has a slight touch of fever1--are enacted1 with a refining hint of remoteness1 behind the pellucid crystal of this style1 which sharpens outlines1 and makes colors more telling than they appear to everyday observation1 and brings out unsuspected details 7seen now for the first time by the reader1 with a pleasurable shock of delight71 and just noticeably glazes all4 ,the ,hergesheimerian panorama is1 thus1 if ,i may plagiarize a little1 rather truer than truth3 and to turn from actual life to ,joseph ,hergesheimer's pages arouses a sensation somewhat akin to that sustained by a myopic person when he puts on spectacles4444 ,and thus1 too1 is an inoffensive tropic town fore-doomed to be a perennial source of disappointment to all tourists who have previously read ,san ,cristbal de la ,habana1--that multi-colored sorcerous volume1 with which ,i have here no instant concern1--and who1 being magic-haunted1 will over-rashly bring to rest upon a duly incorporated city1 thriftily engaged in the tobacco and liquor-business1 their eyes unre-enforced4 #fh ,such1 then1 were1 and are yet1 this artist's materials3 in a world of extraordinary vividness a drama of high questing foiled1 a tragedy of beauty sought1 with many blunders but single-mindedly1 by monomaniacs1--in fine1 a performance suggestively allied1 in its essentials1 to the smaller-scaled and unaudienced drama of the young man with the percipient eyes of a painter1 who throughout fourteen years was striving to visualize in words his vision of beauty2 and who was striving to communicate that vision2 and who--the tastes of the average man being that queer slovenly aggregation which makes the popular periodical popular1 and the ostensible leaders of men being regular subscribers to the slatternly driveling host1--was striving in vain4 ,these things are but the raw materials1 ,i repeat1--the bricks and mortar and the scantlings1--for1 of course1 there is in ,joseph ,hergesheimer's books far more than plot or thought1 or even style3 there very often is that indescribable element which is magic4 ,when ,linda ,condon came to look closely at ,pleydon's statue1 you may remember1 she noted in chief the statue's haunting eyes1 and marveled to find them nothing but shadows over two depressions4 ,much the equivalent of that is the utmost to which one can lay a crude finger in appraising the best of ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's books4 ,they are like other books in that they contain nothing more prodigious than words from the nearest dictionary put together upon ordinary paper4444 ,but the eyes of ,pleydon's statue--you may remember1 too1--for all that they were only indentations in wet clay1 gazed fixed and aspiring into a hidden dream perfectly created by his desire4 ,and viewing the statue1 you were conscious of that dream1 not of wet clay3 and you were moved by the dream's loveliness as it was communicated1 incommunicably1 by ,pleydon's art4 ,now1 at its purest1 the art of the real ,hergesheimer1 the fundamental and essential thing about ,joseph ,hergesheimer1 is just that intangible magic which he ascribes to his fictitious ,pleydon4 ,and the dream that ,joseph ,hergesheimer1 too1 has perfectly created by his desire1 and has so often sought to communicate1 ,i take to be the old gesture toward the stars 444 a faith spiritual1 because1 here1 it is never to be won1 never to be realized4 ,this is1 ,i think1 the gesture of the materially unproductive fourteen years3 and its logic1 either then or now1 is indefensible4 ,still1 one agrees with ,cyrano1 ,mais quel geste6 and one is conscious of a warm indiscriminate thrill about the heart and of a treacherous sympathy1 which evades reason4444 #fi ,it was through distrust of this beguiling sympathy that1 when ,i first wrote elsewhere about ,mr4 ,hergesheimer1 ,i spoke throughout with self-restraint1 and hedged with ,i think and ,i believe and ,it seems to me1 and niggled over ,hergesheimerian faults that were certainly tiny and possibly non-existent2 because of my private suspicion that all my private notions about ,joseph ,hergesheimer were probably incorrect4 ,to me1 ,i confess1 he did at that time appear a phenomenon a little too soul-satisfying to be entirely credible4 ,pure reason did not brevet it as plausible that the ,hergesheimer ,i privately found in the pages of the ,hergesheimer books could flourish in any land wherein the creative writer is as a rule condemned to choose between becoming the butt or the buttress of mediocrity2 so that ,i must cautiously refrain from quite believing in this ,joseph ,hergesheimer as a physical manifestation in actual trousers and waistcoat4444 ,indeed1 his corporeal existence could not well be conceded except upon the hypothesis that ,america had produced1 and was even nourishing1 a literary artist who might endure in the first rank4 ,which was absurd1 of course1 and a contention not to be supported this side of ,bedlam1 and1 none the less1 was my firm private belief4 ,none the less1 also1 did it then seem to me the part of wisdom to speak with very self-conscious self-restraint1 because for the judicious any more thorough-going dicta were checked by the probability1 and the ardent hope1 that ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's playing with words and ideas had hardly begun4 ,nobody would be so rash as to predict the upshot of any author's career with no ampler data to educe from than the initial chapters1 however fine4 ,rather1 must it perforce content me to believe that the ,joseph ,hergesheimer who had made head against the fourteen years of neglect and apparent failure1 without ever arranging any very serious compromise with human dunderheadedness and self-complacency1 was now in train to weather unarithmeticable decades of public success by virtue of the same wholesome egoism4 ,and ,i could see besetting him1 ,i said1 just one lean danger1--a feline peril which hunts subtly1 with sheathed claws and amicable purrings1--in the circumstance that the well-meaning ,philistia which yesterday had been ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's adversary1 so far as it had noted him at all1 would be henceforward affording him quite sensible and friendly and sincere advice4 ,well6 the results should1 at the worst1--,i said also1--be interesting4444 #gj ,and the results have1 indeed1 been interesting4 ,the drawback to my appraising these results is the fact that ,i have since come to know the author with a familiarity which clouds my vision of his art4 ,i can invest in my judgment of ,joseph ,hergesheimer's later books no heartier faith than ,i would hazard on my opinion of my own writings4 ,no3 ,i for various reasons cannot judge ,steel1 nor ,the ,bright ,shawl1 nor ,balisand2 about my extreme fondness for ,the ,presbyterian ,child here is no need to speak2 and as to ,cytherea ,i shall likewise say not anything4 ,for the man talks to me--talks all abeam and generally reminiscent of a time-battered cherub who fell long ago with ,lucifer1 but only as far as ,pennsylvania1--about the book he is going to write4 ,i1 meekly attendant1 warm alike to his notion and to his cordial delight in himself4 ,and by and by he publishes a volume which1 to cold reason1 would seem1 ,i daresay1 very faintly suggestive of the book he talked about4 ,but ,i do not ever read the published volume in the light of cold reason4 ,instead1 ,i read with comprehension4 ,not only do ,i understand and by ordinary applaud the changes from his original conception1 the changes based upon logic and expediency and upon ,mr4 ,hergesheimer's virtually inerrant technical skill3 ,i also read into the actual book those fine first ideas which1 for one cause or another1 proved impracticable1 and were omitted wholly4 ,i read the book1 in brief1 with a comprehending sympathy that befogs judgment1 and with such passionate unwillingness to find fault anywhere as makes for no very valuable critical appraisements4 ,i know it is all most gratifyingly good4 ,but just how good1 ,i have no notion4444 ,no3 here is an artist whom ,i can no longer criticize with any feeling of security2 and so about his later books 7which1 indeed1 do not bear weightily upon the point ,i would now emphasize7 ,i shall here say nothing4 ,yet ,i must in this place confess that ,i read sundry criticisms of his playing--which you may1 if you like1 call work1--with a half-fretted sense of wonder4 ,joseph ,hergesheimer is1 to my mind1 a fact1 a largish1 a significant1 and an enduring fact4 ,the regret of brilliant and earnest-minded reviewers that ,joseph ,hergesheimer is not in one or another feature different1 seems a small and ephemeral fact3 and ,i candidly wonder why the critic thinks the regret worth stating4 ,it really does1 when appraised from any utilitarian standpoint1 suggest the squandered insolence of the gentleman who spoke disrespectfully of the equator4 ,i do not contemplate with seriousness the notion that some reviewer here or there may imagine that his disapproval will cause ,joseph ,hergesheimer1 or1 for that matter1 any other self-centered creating romanticist1 to follow in his next book the critic's advice1 because such a delusion cannot be harbored1 ,i hope1 by anybody4 ,for the artist plays the especial game he chooses3 the diversion he gets out of such playing is for him the one veritably important thing in life3 and when you tell him you do not approve of all the by-products of his diversion1 he very frequently does not damn your impudence quite audibly2 but he invariably wonders why you should be telling1 of all persons1 him about your disapproval1 rather as if you expected him to do something about it4 #ga ,so1--to go back1--,i can criticize none of these later books with any feeling of security4 ,but of one thing ,i am wholly certain4 ,it is to the ,hergesheimer ,i never knew that ,i now have large cause to be grateful1--to the younger ,hergesheimer of those seemingly wasted fourteen years1 which1 far from being wasted1 were given over to establishing the fact that at least one other novelist then wrote primarily to divert himself2 and that1 for at least one other person1 the craft of the creating romanticist stayed all this while a game at which the artist played1 regardful always of his high and joyous gaming and of nothing else4 ,nor1 very naturally1 does he play with those ideas--any more than does ,m4 ,anatole ,france1--in which he crudely believes4 ,i glance back1 for example1 over the novels of which ,i have just spoken4 ,well6 the author of ,mountain ,blood and ,the ,lay ,anthony is1 ,i consider1 as rational as most of us about atoning for his misdeeds or about preserving one's physical chastity3 ,i would trust him as utterly as ,i would myself never in private life to evince upon either topic any embarrassing fanaticism4 ,and it is equally gratifying to record that the man who wrote ,the ,three ,black ,pennys and ,linda ,condon is neither the dazed slave of carnal passion nor of any continual high evaluation of his own physical loveliness4 ,the ideas of these novels1 in fine1 are not his idols but his playthings2 and are the diverting toys with which the anchorite has entertained his stay in that withdrawn queer lonely country to which also ,i recently referred4 ,and such1 ,i repeat1 is the ultimate and lean1 but real1 value of all human ideas4 ,so ,i applaud the wisdom of ,joseph ,hergesheimer4 ,i applaud too1 because of the joy ,i have got out of it1 his talent4 ,yet ,i in part applaud because of my pleased consciousness that this fine talent seems1 like all considerable creative talent1 a form of self-indulgence which has become beneficent to other persons almost by chance4 ,for ,i think that through the haze of those wasted fourteen years one glimpses1 clearly enough1 the artist who labors primarily to divert himself4 ,,viii ,,the ,,delta ,,of ,,radegonde ,the same mode of teaching was not adopted by all1 nor1 indeed1 did individuals always confine themselves to the same system1 but each varied his plan of instruction according to circumstances4 ,for they were accustomed1 in stating their argument with the utmost clearness1 to use figures and apologies1 and to put cases as circumstances required2 and these might be either cases which came under trial in the courts or fictitious cases4 #h4 ,the ,delta of ,radegonde #gb ,the literary artist plays1 ,i had said1 at the game of lending to his personal notions a life which will survive the life of his body4 ,but1 as ,i prepared to go on to that1 ,i was stayed by an uneasy doubt lest here was needed some further explanation as to why ,i should label the younger ,joseph ,hergesheimer1 and for that matter every other valid artist1 an anchorite4 ,the especial word1 ,i reflected1 might still be considered inappropriate by persons who in their muddled minds had somehow associated anchorites with extreme religious zeal and with physical asceticism and pietistic self-denials4 ,yet an anchorite was1 of course1 a person who lived in actual rather than specious retirement3 among the great anchorites of all time1 whose real living was in the little farm of one's own mind1 where a silence so profound may be enjoyed1 had been that ,marcus ,aurelius who walked and spoke in unflagging imperial publicity and slept with ,faustina4444 ,but1 ,i knew1 here again was a matter most nearly explicable by a parable3 and my thoughts turned to another old tale out of ,poictesme1 the story of that gallant ,holden who was for all the bustle of his daily living an anchorite and also1 in his way1 ,i suspect1 an artist4 #gc ,it was1 the tale declares1 just after the followers of the ,silver ,stallion had sacked ,lacre ,kai that young ,holden found1 among his plunder1 the triangular portrait of ,elphnor's queen3 and for the time young ,holden thought little about the picture4 ,he could not foreknow that its old frame1 in shape like the ,greek letter ,delta1 was to bind all his living4 ,but after a few months of peace the lad went to ,guivric1 afterward called the ,sage1 who was already coming into esteem as a most promising thaumaturgist4 ,guivric1 says ,holden1 the lady in this three-cornered picture is the lady of my love2 and you must tell me how ,i may win her affections4 ,guivric looked at the portrait for some while1 scratched off a fleck of paint from it with his finger-nail1 and answered3 ,there are impediments to your winning this ,queen ,radegonde4 ,for one thing1 she has been dead for thirteen centuries4 ,i admit that thirteen is proverbially an unlucky number2 but my all-consuming love is not to be intimidated by superstitions4 ,guivric thereupon consulted the oldest and most authentic poems1 and ,guivric admitted3 ,well1 perhaps her being dead such an unlucky number of centuries does not matter1 after all1 because my authorities appear agreed that love defies time and death4 ,yet it does matter1 ,i suspect1 that the woman in this picture was the notion which a dead artist perpetuated of the ,queen ,radegonde whom he saw in the flesh4 ,so would ,i see her1 ,guivric4 ,holden1 my meaning is more respectable than your meaning4 ,i mean that1 if the man labored as a tradesman executing an order1 your cause may prosper3 but there is the ugly chance that this radiant1 slim1 gray-eyed girl was born of the man's brain1 very much as1 even more anciently1 they say1 ,king ,jove brought forth a gray-eyed daughter to devastate the world with wisdom3 and in that case1 ,i fear the worst4 ,what1 then1 is the worst that can happen8 ,thinking about it too much beforehand1 replied ,guivric1 drily4 ,whereupon the young mage gave directions which must be followed to the letter if one wished to avoid an indescribable fate4 ,but ,holden was cautious1 and did follow these instructions to the letter2 and when it proved to be the ,greek letter ,delta he entered it1 and so came to his desire1 and communicated his love to ,queen ,radegonde4 ,now this ,radegonde had been alone ever since she was first painted1 because in filling in the background1 and in completing her portrait1 the painter had provided her with no company in the quaint triangular tropic garden he had painted to enhance her charms4 ,so to have ,holden thus thrusting himself into the vacancy was welcome to ,radegonde4 ,and to him her loveliness1 and the dearness of her1 was greater than he could quite believe in after he had left the ,delta1 and had returned1 in the gray and abject way which ,guivric had foretold1 to the world of men4 #gd ,holden thereafter kept the picture in a secret place1 and the years wore on3 and in the spring of one of these years ,sir ,holden rescued a bright-haired princess1 from an enchanter in a large and appalling line of business near ,perdigon3 and ,holden married her1 and they got on together very nicely4 ,but times had changed in ,poictesme1 for ,manuel the ,redeemer had ridden away to a far place beyond the sunset1 and his wife ,dame ,niafer ruled over-strictly in the tall hero's stead3 and to ,holden life seemed not the affair it once had been1 and all his pleasuring was to go into the ,delta that belonged to tender and warm-blooded ,radegonde4 ,the delights of that small tropic garden were joys unknown in the world of men1 wherein there are no such women as ,elphnor's queen3 and therefore the poets have not invented any words to describe these delights1 and they must stay untold4 ,but these delights contented ,holden4 ,blessed above all men that live am ,i1 in that ,i am lord of the ,delta of ,radegonde1 said ,holden1 who could not foreknow his fate4 #ge ,and it was to ,holden an unfailing cordial1 thus to steal away from his prosaic workaday life of fighting dragons and ogres1 and discomfiting wicked monarchs by guessing their riddles out of hand1 and riding about in every kind of weather redressing the afflictions of downtrodden strangers in whom he was not interested2 and from the strain of pretending to be wise and admirable in all things for the benefit of his numerous children2 and from living among many servitors somewhat lonelily4 ,for comeliness and mirth had soon departed from his bright-haired princess wife1 through much child-bearing1 and presently life too had gone out of her2 and her various informal successors proved to be rather stupid once you got to know them4 ,but tender and warm-blooded ,radegonde1 whom alone ,sir ,holden loved1 and the engaging ever-new endearments of ,elphnor's queen1 were to the knight an unfailing cordial4 ,blessed above all men that live am ,i1 in that ,i am lord of the ,delta of ,radegonde1 still said1 in his gray beard1 ,sir ,holden1 who could not foreknow his fate4 #gf ,but as the years went1 so went youth2 and the appearance and the abilities of ,holden were altering1 and bashfully ,radegonde asked questions about certain noticeable changes4 ,the aging champion explained1 as well as he could1 the ways of nibbling age and of devouring death1 to ,elphnor's ageless queen1 who knew nothing of these matters1 because her painter had willed to put other affairs in the triangular garden4 ,and it troubled ,radegonde that ,holden must be stripped by such marauders of all vigor4 ,her love for her sole lover1 and her horror of being left alone where no other man was ever apt to come thrusting himself into the vacancy1 were so great that1 with a shedding of resistless tears1 the gray-eyed girl persuaded ,holden to consult once more with ,guivric the ,sage2 and to discover through the aid of his magic if there were no wizardry by which ,radegonde could be made mortal4 ,for then1 said she1 we shall abate in vigor together1 my dearest1 and die together2 and not even after death need we dread separation1 when ,i lie buried at your side where men will have engraved upon your tomb ,resurgam4 ,and wise ,guivric said that certainly there was a way in which ,radegonde might come out of the picture1 and assume mortality4 ,but ,guivric1 shaking his white head1 advised against it4 ,and ,guivric said3 ,it would be better1 old friend1 to accept the common lot of men2 and to be content to see your dreams played with a while and then put by1 rather than see them realized4 ,besides1 you have many grandchildren1 and you owe them an example4 ,but ,holden answered1 ,bosh6 ,do ,i owe nothing to myself8 ,so the high-hearted lovers followed the way of which ,guivric had told them4 ,this way is not to be talked about2 but blood was shed in the ,delta1 and the worm that dies not was imprisoned3 and after other appalling happenings1 ,holden the ,brave climbed out rheumatically from the canvas1 and gave his hand to ,queen ,radegonde2 and she also stepped from the triangular frame1 and entered into life as the mortal woman that ,radegonde had been in the old time4 #gg ,straightway she recollected her husband and her children and many of her lovers1 and the gilded domes of ,elphnor's seven proud cities1 where now not even a hut was1 and all the perfumed wasteful living which ,radegonde had known in the old time2 and straightway1 too1 she saw that ,holden was a tedious decrepit fellow1 well past the love of women4 ,and ,holden saw that his ,radegonde was a flighty and a rather silly barbarian wench1 sufficiently good-looking to be sure1 but in no way remarkable4 ,and the two gazed at each other rather forlornly4 ,the queen began to shiver and to whimper4 ,i never1 she said1 ,i never for one moment was so lonely in my ,delta as ,i am now4 ,avuncularly he patted her white shoulder4 ,do not give way1 my dear4 ,we have acted unwisely1 and nobody denies it3 but do you come out of this draught1 and ,i will get you some clothes and have you baptised2 and then ,i will present you to our young ,count ,emmerick1 and you can entertain yourself1 within ,christian limits1 by making a fool of him4 ,a vigorous and handsome count would be better than nothing1 the fair girl conceded4 ,so this presentation was arranged4 ,and tall ,emmerick was infatuated the moment he saw the queen's beguiling innocent young face4 ,forthwith the high ,count of ,poictesme proclaimed a banquet3 and when all were dancing1 ,holden returned to the void frame2 and he considered that lost tropic garden1 bereft now forever of the radiant and gray-eyed slip of womanhood whom he had loved1 and who would content his life no more4 ,guivric came with him3 and these two old men kept silence4 #gh ,we may deduce that the painter loved her thirteen centuries ago1 says ,guivric1--erecting loveliness where there was little to build upon4 ,thus it is that the brain of man creates women more desirable than may be created by other means3 and such women endure4 ,but the women children that have two parents1 may endure only a very little longer than may the scant delights a man can get in gardens that bear bitter fruit or else insipid fruit3 for these women have no such ,delta as had your lost ,radegonde1 no more than has that dispossessed lean ogling flirt of whom young ,emmerick will presently be tiring4 ,moreover ,guivric said3 ,the women who are born of man's brain have no flaw in them and no seed of death4 ,there was a ,radegonde conceived in ,camwy1 that walked the glittering pavements of ,lacre ,kai1 and wedded ,elphnor1 ,king of ,kings1 and trysted with many lovers1 and later trysted with small worms3 but in the artist's brain was conceived another ,radegonde1 a maid who walks the sun-paths of eternity1 and who is new-born with every ,april4 ,thus it was of old3 and this tale is not ended4 ,and ,guivric said also3 ,the women who are born of man's brain bear to their lovers no issue save dissatisfaction4 ,their ways are lovely1 but contentment does not abide in these ways3 and he that follows after the women who are born of man's brain is wounded subtilely with wounds which may not ever be quite healed4 ,so let no woman with two parents cosset him3 for she toils vainly and in large peril2 because it is upon her that he will requite his subtile wounding1 just as you1 poor ,holden1 were the destruction of that golden-haired young wife who loved you1 and whom you could not love4 #gi ,thus said ,guivric the ,sage2 and ,holden1 a spent man1 much hurt but very proud1 who now foreknew his fate1 replied with resolute smiling3 ,blessed above all men that live am ,i1 in that in the days of my folly ,i have been lord of the ,delta of ,radegonde4 ,i know this1 ,guivric1 as you may not ever know it1--not you1 who are as old as ,i1 and who have only wisdom to look back upon4 ,guivric the ,sage answered very soberly3 ,that is true4 ,for1 to have been wise throughout one's youth becomes by and by a taunt2 and to remember it is a disease4 ,and ,holden the ,brave said now1 with another sort of smiling3 ,there is in attendance upon everybody a physician that heals all disease4 ,pending his coming1 old friend1 ,i mean to beat you at one more game of chess4 ,whereon these aged men fell to such staid diversion as was suited to their remainder of life4 ,but slim gray-eyed ,radegonde danced merrily with her new lover4 ,,ix ,a ,,theme ,,with ,,variations ,i expose myself entire3 'tis a body where1 at one view1 the veins1 muscles and tendons are apparent1 every of them in its proper place2 here the effect of a cold2 there of the heart beating1 very dubiously4 ,i do not write my own acts1 but myself and my essence4444 ,because ,socrates had alone digested to purpose the precept of his god1 'to know himself1' and by that study had arrived at the perfection of setting himself at nought1 he only was reputed worthy the title of a sage4 #i4 ,a ,theme ,with ,variations #hj ,the literary artist plays1 ,i had said1 at the game of perpetuating1 not merely 7as did the painter of ,queen ,radegonde7 his personal notions1 but also his own personality4444 ,to me that seemed a secondary consideration4 ,yet that was1 ,i took it1 the main tenet of the ,economists and of the creed which ,john ,charteris had elsewhere expounded4 ,kings and prime ministers and admirals and czars and popes and bank-presidents all shrivelled with the passing of time1 as ,i had said earlier1 into some uncarnate quality1 uncertainly remembered4 ,but writers here and there did attain to a sort of terrestrial immortality as rounded1 actual human beings4 ,the lyric poet bequeaths to us like a legacy his personal emotion1 the familiar essayist makes the gossamer of his whims and fancies perdurable as diamonds4 ,the great egotists1 in particular1 such as ,pepys1 ,casanova1 ,montaigne1 ,cellini1 ,rousseau1 are generally conceded each to have immortalized himself and all his traits1 especially his frailties3 for each lounges into our libraries unreticently1 proclaiming1 in the words of ,montaigne1 ,i expose myself entire2 and each too has1 by lending to every peccadillo permanency1 kept letters healthily lewd1 with the lustiness of eternal youth4444 ,well6 that1 with just one reservation1 which ,i thought not unimportant1 seemed true enough4 ,for the great egotists do achieve very charming and tolerably permanent results1 in a fashion that ,i could best appraise1 ,i believed1 by pausing here to consider the triumphant outcome1 in our own era1 of the literary endeavors of ,mr4 ,george ,moore4 #ha ,no reasonably conceited author1 ,i said1--if for the moment one might imagine any of the tribe to merit the adverb1--would aspire to be perpetuated in a form more worthy than1 in the ,carra ,edition1 had lately been bestowed upon the ,collected ,works of ,george ,moore4 ,it was true that ,i spoke with1 of the promised twenty volumes1 only fourteen at hand3 but these ,i had found in every nicety of book-making to be wholly admirable4 ,paper and binding and printing were of the sort describable as luxurious4 ,the frontispieces most handsomely presented ,george ,moore in every imaginable phase of moustache and mental abstraction4 ,in fine1 it was the sort of ,collected ,edition which any victim of the ennervating habit of writing books could not but view a little wistfully4 ,and1 though for a while ,i had thought to lay finger upon one marked1 consolatory defect1--that the lack of running-heads to the pages creates some difficulty in locating at once the especial subdivision of the volume for which you happen to be looking1--yet reflection had made against such petty fault-finding1 by revealing that1 after all1 it was as remunerative to read in one place as another1 in this longish book which is devoted1 after all1 entirely to one topic4 ,for ,mr4 ,moore1 of course1 had nowhere written except incidentally about anything except ,george ,moore4 ,to some this might appear a dubious axiom1 in view of the circumstance that of these fourteen volumes no less than eight consisted of the earlier ,realistic ,novels1--as we used to hear them called1 only yesterday1 with a certain lowering of the voice1--wherein there is no explicit word as to ,george ,moore4 ,yet1 when seen in the entirety of the ,carra ,edition1 ,i thought1--as ,i still think1--and when appraised as component parts of the one longish book which every sincere literary artist perforce composes1 and of which his various publications are each a chapter1 then these novels fall into their proper niche4 ,george ,moore in youth was exposed to1 among other perils1 the corrupting influence of realism2 and here are some of the results1 directly valuable to letters1 in chief1 as the record of a phase through which passed1 long ago1 ,george ,moore4 ,these books1 to-day1 rank somewhat with the extracts which ,balzac gives you from the writings of his auctorial protagonists1--of ,lucien de ,rubempr1 of ,lousteau1 of ,canalis1--and which ,balzac very sensibly presents not as literature per se1 but as useful lights upon their partly taken from life and partly imagined author4 ,so here1 in depicting ,george ,moore1 does the compiler of the ,carra ,edition appear to illumine his subject with copious extracts from the novels of his hero1 who1 again1 is partly taken from life4 #hb ,i must at outset confess that ,i find these novels are quaint reading now4 ,they seem faded1 and somewhat pathetically droll1 and they a bit too aptly illustrate their writer's petted word surann1 the while that young ,george ,moore toils conscientiously at a ruthless exposition of the race-track1 or a depiction of the evils of drink1 or is daringly describing the temptations of stage life4 ,yes2 it really is rather quaint as long as ,george ,moore is playing up to his then current ,vizetellean advertisements1 and turning out studies of degradation mercilessly done1 or is endeavoring to convince the unwary that you are in a moral dissecting room1 watching the demonstration of a brilliant psychological surgeon4 ,but the first moment he spies a chance to let his characters1 at some breathing-spell between their disasters and their fornications1 fall into talk about academic or sthetic matters which interest ,george ,moore1 then the style quickens and fancy gallops4 ,and the puppets discourse for pages upon pages the heresies and petulancies and studied disrespects of ,george ,moore1 and all advances briskly1 undrugged by any narcotizing drops of story4 ,by and by1 to be sure1 the ghost of ,germinie ,lacerteux or of ,bel-,ami 7though the ,carra ,edition tactfully omits ,mike ,fletcher7 arises to coerce the apostle of candor--the whole-hearted devotee of candor1 even then1--with its gibbers about realism4 ,but in a while the young puppet-master is again playing truant from his art's imagined responsibilities1 and is contentedly expounding the notions of ,george ,moore4 ,so one must not take these realistic novels over-seriously4 ,that sort of realism--the realism of the human document and the selected corner of creation1 here to re-echo that far time's old-fangled catchwords1--was1 as they said1 the trend of that era4 ,and even to-day1 with the innate conservatism of youth1 still do the immature laboriously transcribe the insignificant1 in their exposures of the inadequacy of ,american standards and the loneliness of the budding artist in one or another parish of ,philistia4 ,these trends we1 willy-nilly1 must put up with4444 #hc ,of course1 there is not1 and never has been1 in any important sense1 any trend in literature4 ,one says1 in any important sense1 because of the so amply attested fact that the only books which ultimately count1 for their permitted season1 are adequate expressions1 not of any ideas just then in the air 7to employ that delightfully two-edged phrase71 but of the individual being who wrote that particular book4 ,and personality seems a remarkably haphazard affair4 ,you are born1 for one inexplicable reason or another1 as such and such a person1 as a person endowed with private and especial faults and hallucinations4 ,and if your book is ultimately to count1 however transiently1 you will in your book have managed to expose that person1 very much as ,mr4 ,moore came in the end to do1 without talking or thinking any nonsense about trends4 ,you will have contrived1 in fine1 your own particular method3 and in contriving it you will do well to remember that1 just as ,i pointed out at the beginning1 there must always be1 to the last digit1 precisely as many methods as there are novelists4 ,meanwhile1 to be sure1 the popular styles in books for the intelligentsia must always be varying1 somewhat as every season the styles a little alter in disbeliefs and neckwear1 and give room to some other method of irritating the conventional4 ,and all really competent manufacturers of reading-matter1 whether as publishers or authors1 must always stay upon the alert to cater to the latest hebetude of serious-minded persons sufficiently cultured to assume that whatever they cannot quite understand or read with reasonable pleasure is probably high art4 ,but the philosopher recalls that1 somewhat to emend the proverb1 every vogue has its day2 and that1 also1 all literary modes must pass1 pass very often with a hullabaloo1 but always with rapidity4 ,it seems1 in fact1 only yesterday that both the books and the decollet sport shirt of ,blasco ,ibez were the height of fashion1 and ,the ,young ,visiters was a perdurable production4 ,and now1 in really literary circles1 they tell me1 the sublimities of ,m4 ,maeterlinck are no longer spoken of in lowered tones1 but rather with raised eyebrows2 ,stevenson has become just a working model for writers upon the art of selling the short story2 and even ,mr4 ,kipling has passed into the gtterdmmerung of being praised by ,mrs4 ,gerould4#i ,thus suddenly their fame is made a vain and doubtful good1 and the shining gloss of all their glories is vaded1 in the bright prime of such impeccant prosateurs as ,herman ,melville and ,joseph ,conrad and ,marcel ,proust3 and it is salutary to reflect that ,sir ,rabindranath ,tagore and ,o4 ,henry1 they also1 were once upon a time immortal for several months4444 ,well1 and just so1 in the departed youth of this ,george ,moore1 in the perverse ,victorian 'eighties and 'nineties1--when1 as ,mr4 ,moore now puts it1 we were all cowed by the spell of realism1 external realism1--did many persons regard ,zola and ,flaubert and ,maupassant and ,huysmans with a seriousness which the considerate dare not wager that posterity will emulate1 when it comes to appraising us and our own literary idols4 --,all of which seems rather ,mooreishly digressive4 ,it would be perhaps a neater adhesion to the point succinctly to note here that1 with the addition of some peculiarly delightful prefaces1 the books which ,vizetelly ,co4 used to advertise as ,mr4 ,george ,moore's ,realistic ,novels--listing them1 one finds1 with an invidious separateness from those of the firm's publications which1 ,the ,sheffield ,independent was wont to guarantee1 may be safely left lying about where the ladies of the family can pick them up and read them1--have1 in preparing these books for this ,carra ,edition1 been rewritten throughout1 alike with a view of stylistic improvement and of1 as it is rather handsomely phrased1 returning from the conventions of ,vanity ,fair and ,the ,small ,house at ,allington to those that inspired the writing of ,shakespeare's plays and the ,bible4 ,mr4 ,moore1 at last at ease in the exclusive company of one thousand subscribers only1 can now speak freely without bothering about such finicking contemporaneous notions of delicacy and indelicacy as1 we now learn1 had until the printing of this ,carra ,edition somewhat hampered him4 ,and for the rest1 even in their most tedious passages of brilliant psychology1 ,mr4 ,george ,moore's ,realistic ,novels really do remain interesting1 as relics4 ,yet there perhaps ,i underrate these novels1 which may be taken as interesting from quite other points of view4 ,mr4 ,moore is1 for example1 so convincingly the great prose artist everywhere in manner and gesture that we are rather generally apt to overlook his frequent omission to be anything of the sort in his writing4444 #hd ,in fact ,i now recall that ,i once1 regretfully1 compiled my choice of the world's ten worst writers4 ,regretfully1 ,i say1 because ,i suspected that about every author in my list ,i was1 in all likelihood1 entirely wrong4 ,for ,i found that1 somehow1 ,i had listed only such writers as possessed their recognized cults of perfervid admirers1 and such writers as a respectable lapse of time had attested--perhaps--really to make some sort of mysterious appeal to a largish number of persons4 ,one might of course1 in private1 assume that sthetically these persons bemuse themselves with notions of their own superiority and refinement4 ,such ansthetic notions still enable self-complacency to pull through many pages that are perused with rather less admiration of the author than of the reader1--although1 for that matter1 the majority of generally acknowledged and most permanent literary reputations would seem to be based upon some similar innocuous self-deceit4 ,here1 in any event1 are the ten established authors endowed with cults whose masterpieces once appeared to me the most violently uninteresting and ill written3 ,jane ,austen1 ,george ,borrow1 ,miguel de ,cervantes1 ,henry ,james1 ,herman ,melville1 ,george ,meredith1 ,friedrich ,nietzsche1 ,thomas ,love ,peacock1 ,franois ,rabelais1 and ,walt ,whitman4 ,i submitted this list without any comment save that ,i had made all suitable endeavors toward ,melville since #aijg3 the antipathy was not new-born1 among the bleated idiocies of his later ovine1 or more robustiously arietin1 admirers4 ,and upon consideration1 ,peacock1 ,i admitted1 had not ever annoyed me with the relentless and deep tediousness of the others3 and ,i for a moment inclined to strike out his name in disfavor of ,marcel ,proust or of ,james ,g4 ,huneker or of ,w4,h4 ,hudson1 who were at the time regarded vociferously2 but refrained because that week's pother about any of these three might1 after all1 very well and speedily prove transient4 ,the ten ,i named1 though1 seemed actually established in one or another sort of enduringness1--which was1 to me1 a fact that roused wonder not unmingled with regret4 ,for there really must be something of enjoyment deep-hidden in the writings of these appalling persons4 ,and1 naturally1 one dislikes to miss it4 #he ,i repeat all this because to-day1 upon reflection1 and upon the strength of these ,realistic ,novels1 ,i somewhat incline to substitute for the name of ,thomas ,love ,peacock the name ,george ,moore4 ,the reputations of ,mr4 ,moore and of ,ananias1 in fact1 as masters of fictitious narrative1 stand high above almost equally slender pediments2 with no proof anywhere existent that ,ananias even attempted the difficult art wherein ,mr4 ,moore has certainly never succeeded4 ,i am now about to speak with all possible moderation4 ,for ,i very cordially admire the talent of ,mr4 ,moore4 ,that is one of the reasons why ,i must regret its occultation in these ,realistic ,novels4 ,it is not merely that these novels adhere to the nave and now senescent device of assuming for the author omniscience4 ,these stories have1 that is1 no stable point of view3 the thoughts and the emotions of each character are divulged just as these come into being2 and you are thus kept skipping1 with all the agility and considerably more than the penetration of the well-named genus pulex irritans1 from the inside of one imagined mind to the interior of another4 ,that convention1 ,i know1 is old1 it is1 in fact1 decrepit2 but it is also childish3 prose fiction really has advanced beyond such puerilities1 except of course in its more popular variants and in the prevailing balderdash of the imperishable classics of prose fiction3 and this convention1 for me at least1 destroys everywhere the illusion which ,i would willingly foster1 destroying it for the reason that ,i can imagine no existence wherein ,i would know1 even partially1 what everybody was thinking and feeling4 ,nor is it merely that these thin-blooded novels are broken out with a rash of descriptory passages4 ,i confess that1 for one1 the utmost ,i can do is to put up with the writer who formally and impersonally sets out to describe anything4 ,when ,i am in my more amiable moods1 then hurrying eyes glide by the solid stolid-looking paragraphs2 ,i incuriously accept on faith the probability that the description is being competently attended to3 and ,i1 unvexed1 pass on toward such portions of the book as may conceivably prove remunerative reading4444 ,but far oftener am ,i the prey of logic and of peevishness1 when ,i consider the malversation of time involved in every attempt to convey the true efficacy of a regarded vista1 or of any observed object1 by recording seriatim such attributes as1 in life1 we note simultaneously with plural senses4 ,the discrepancy is the really considerable difference between a row of canned vegetable tins1 howsoever painstakingly labeled1 and a vegetable soup4 ,and ,lessing did so long ago dispose of the whole topic1 among so many allied topics1 that one would whole-heartedly like to see the passing of an examination upon the ,laokon made preliminary to the securing of a license to write prose4444 ,no3 here again1 ,i must protest1 the conscientious novelist will assume a conscious point of view4 ,the utmost he will permit himself in the way of description is to note that which would be noted1 naturally1 from that point of view at that especial moment4 ,and all description will thus be converted into action1 in the form1 not necessarily stated outright1 that so-and-so observed such-and-such phenomena4 ,for ,i must here point out some obvious1 if disregarded1 truisms3 that no scene or object can display any qualities unless there is some one to notice them2 that1 even then1 these qualities stay undisplayed unless the potential observer have the needful interest and the time1 just then1 to notice them2 and that to present these qualities as existing impersonally--howsoever general in writing may be this insane practise1--is to present 7here again7 an existence which is inconceivable4 ,but1 passing over these grave common imbecilities1 it does seem to be somebody's duty to protest against the equally grave and common delusion that ,mr4 ,moore1 even in these ,realistic ,novels1 is a master of ,english prose4 ,the assertion is as a rule advanced1 ,i suspect1 by ordinarily well-balanced persons who have just seen or heard ,mr4 ,joseph ,conrad described as a master of ,english prose1 and have not utterly recovered3 the prose of ,mr4 ,moore1 in any event1--not here1 but in his embellished romancing about himself1--one may very often grant to be adequate4 ,yet ,mr4 ,moore's vocabulary is far from adequate1 for anyone who seeks distinction in an art of which the masters are omniverbarious4 ,here1 too1 variety appears a grace unthought-of2 and his employment 7in these ,realistic ,novels7 of the ready-made1 time-battered phrase amounts--where his clichs do not1 indeed1 effuse a perturbing aspect of feeble-mindedness1--to mere wallowing in the slovenly4 ,i am still speaking with all possible moderation1 as to a man whose writing1 in his major performances1 ,i admire4 ,and yet ,i fear that what ,i have just said may sound overstated4444 ,well1 ,i open the revised and final version of ,a ,mummer's ,wife1 as it chances1 at page #bbj2 and ,mr4 ,moore there tells me1 ,a word sufficed to set the whole gang recounting experiences and comparing notes4 ,i turn to page #bbi1 and1 still avoiding dialogue1 ,i find ,mr4 ,moore in the rle of narrator averring1 ,at the end of the act she received an ovation4 ,hastily ,i proceed to page #bcf1 where ,mr4 ,moore philosophises1--,as is generally the case1 there was right upon both sides4 ,even then do ,i afford him another chance2 ,i go on to the next chapter1 which1 upon page #bde1 ,i discover to begin1 ,it never rains but it pours4 ,and thereupon ,i close the book3 for really nobody1 no matter how widely he be acclaimed a master of vigorous and delightful prose1 is privileged to talk with me in just that flat and meagre tone4444 ,if1 for the rest1 you have an hour to waste1 not quite unedifyingly1 you might compare almost any one of the earlier versions of ,mr4 ,moore's more ambitious passages with its replacer in the ,carra ,edition1 and marvel over his faith in the stylistic thaumaturgy wrought by interjecting the word and4 ,and so will it become apparent to you that the haven of the artist's dream and the unfalteringly sought ideal of revising is not utterly inaccessible1 and can be won to by and by1 through steadily adhering to this bland and magic monosyllable1 and by employing it to link each sentence in the book with the sentence which precedes it and with the sentence which follows it1 and so to connect all the sentences into one single and sliding and ever slipping forward sentence1 and languidly to model all upon the tentative and wavering progression of a long and thin and frail and flesh-tinted angle-worm4444 ,but at this point ,i desist from tapping at the typewriter keys2 and ,i re-read what ,i have just said in--upon the whole--depreciation of ,mr4 ,moore4 ,and every word of it seems to me quite true4 ,yet it lacks that fine frank ring of amateurishness without which literary dicta are as nothing2 and ,i appear somehow to have lapsed into the professional accent of the luckless being who makes a business of reviewing books4 ,now1 this accent ,i can only describe as that of one speaking from an eminence1 which it is not at all necessary to have attained4 ,it is the accent which implies that you may by and by1 should other more important interests permit1 take a ,saturday afternoon off1 and write a literary masterpiece of the same genre in which the discussed writer has1 you benignantly allow1 done his poor best during the last year or so4 ,it is the accent with which the eunuch advocates birth control1 strongly every month in ,the ,dial1 and weekly in ,the ,new ,york ,times ,book ,review4#aj ,it is1 in fine1 an unlovable accent4 ,so ,i lament this accent1 even in the moment that ,i protest it voices here--rather sniffishly1 if you will1--the truth4 ,i have endeavored to speak1 ,i repeat1 with all possible moderation4 ,but that accent very certainly has crept in1--perhaps because ,i am here dealing with realism1 perhaps because of some occult underlying envy of these books' handsome physical appearance4 ,it may be ,i am thinking the ,biography ought to be issued thus1 instead of ,george ,moore's novels4 ,i am sure ,i do not know4444 ,in any event1 ,i reflect that ,balzac1 also1 does not always1 nor indeed as a rule1 ascribe to his auctorial heroes the gift of writing especially well2 that the samples which ,balzac1 also1 presents from the novels of an imaginary author do not pretend to be fine literature2 and that ,mr4 ,moore1 in preparing this ,carra ,edition1 had thus the shield of weighty precedent4444 #hf ,the going1 even so1 is immeasurably better when we come1 as now1 to the consistently important books1 to ,the ,confessions of a ,young ,man1 ,avowals1 ,memoirs of ,my ,dead ,life1 ,conversations in ,ebury ,street1 and to the ,hail and ,farewell trilogy4 ,for here ,mr4 ,moore is candidly1 and without any vain pretence of ascribing real weightiness to anything else1 expressing his own nervous reactions to painting and books and to the best examples of human thought and anatomy1 and here he has turned most potently to ensnaring us with nets woven of curious stuffs1--of a singer's corset-lace1 a forgotten dream1 a strand of honey-colored hair1 a phrase from ,walter ,pater1 moonlight on a pillow in ,orelay1 a scrap from the ,catechism translated by ,verlaine1 hopes1 and aspirations1 and1 here and there1 a faint and not too secret shame4 ,now1 it is in these books1 to my finding1 that ,mr4 ,moore has made perhaps his only but his ineffably interesting addition to creative literature2 and has caused to move like a corporeal1 breathing being of flesh and blood his one great character1 ,george ,moore4 ,how lavishly that character repays attention by the parodist was shown but yesterday when1 in ,heavens--that most trenchant of volumes from which ,i have just quoted1--,mr4 ,louis ,untermeyer wrote what is1 actually1 the very best and loveliest appreciation of ,george ,moore yet given us by anybody outside the pages of ,mr4 ,moore4 ,then1 too1 there is the ,beerbohm parody1 not anything like so good1 of course1 but still containing its really superb sentence1--,there are moments when one does not think of girls1 are there not1 dear reader8 ,this is the sentence which ,george ,moore has not ever1 quite1 dictated to his secretary3 but for some years now he has fluttered close to its perfection4444 ,yes1 certainly1 the character does lend itself to caricature4 ,yet ,i shall not here speak of the rle's component oddities1 nor prattle any word about the ,nouvelle ,athnes or the ,celtic ,renaissance4 ,nobody dare attempt in one chapter to sum up ,george ,moore after seeing a fine artist give over a lifetime to the task4 ,so ,i can but refer you to the ,carra ,edition1 as to a longish book which is devoted entirely to this topic1 with the rider that ,i have found nowhere volumes more engaging than are the best of these4 ,one's human taste for the irrelevant provokes1 of course1 some natural speculation as to how little of this perverse1 painstaking1 fleering and inconsequential personality is based upon truth8 ,what parsimonies in veracity1 how much of self-denial1 in short1 has ,mr4 ,moore at odd times woven into his scandal-mongering about ,george ,moore8 ,i grant that1 from the reader's selfish standpoint1 it does not matter2 and that our general pleasure in the performance ought not to be dashed by anybody's lugging in the refrain of ,edgar ,allan ,poe's most famous poem4 ,for ,casanova also1 you will recall1 indulged in the same sort of romancing2 and secured his most admirable effects through mixing in some revelatory fiction with etymologically pure truth4 ,nor did ,cellini write under affidavit4444 ,then too1 to me1 the ,george ,moore of the ,carra ,edition suggests--with1 to be sure1 a difference1--that ,thackeray who is really the main character of ,thackeray's ,collected ,works1 the ,thackeray who is always interrupting his puppets1 to edify you with the unaffected confidences of the author1 as a shrewd and tolerant and tender-hearted man of the great world who1 as we now know1 existed nowhere outside these books4 ,just so1 one tacitly assumes1 ,mr4 ,moore has given us ,george ,moore as he1 not wholly spurred by either moral or sthetic criteria1 would like to be3 and1 for one1 ,i find--upon the whole1 and if it a bit matters1--both his aspiration and his artistry to be commendable4 ,in that unending literary shadow-show wherein all passes except ,shakespeare and the ,bible1 ,george ,moore should stay for a long while one of the great characters of ,english fiction3 and in creating him1 ,mr4 ,moore has rendered everybody a considerable service at the price of condemning himself to eternal oblivion4 ,for these egotists who write perpetually about themselves are under no bond1 and under no temptation whatever1 to write the truth4 ,so do we come to the reservation which ,i said just now ,i thought not unimportant3 it is that in pretending to commemorate himself the self-respecting artist1 who is also an egoist1 substitutes an edited and a considerably embellished effigy4 ,he immortalizes1 in fine1 somebody else4 ,and it is indeed to-day a fairly open secret that ,mr4 ,moore in very little resembles the ,george ,moore of the confessional romances4 ,all persons who have known ,mr4 ,moore in the flesh seem here unanimous3 and in particular do those who have known in the flesh this historian of his own so many fleshly loves acclaim in him a beguiling tendency to rival the eremite ,st4 ,anthony in continence and imagination4 ,some men kiss and do not tell1--thus ,lady ,gregory has phrased it1 with perfection3--,george ,moore does not kiss2 but he tells4 ,yet the point is that he tells very charmingly2 and that therefore1 beyond any possible doubt1 posterity will rejoicingly accept ,george ,moore1 and1 with admirable good sense1 forget all about ,mr4 ,moore4 ,so ,mr4 ,moore has not hired perpetuity for himself1 but has prolonged the existence of quite another person1 through1 no doubt1 actual philanthropy4444 ,nor can ,i think of any conceivable reason why any author1 whether he be called ,moore or ,thackeray or ,casanova1--and no matter what be his notorious repute as an egoist where other writers have with lower cunning concealed their similarity to him1--should be at pains to immortalize himself4 ,in fact1 an egoist thinks too much of himself ever to let the truth get out4 ,and no one who has encountered and conversed with authors1 whether of marked or moderate ability1 can fail to note what superior persons and how much more desirable associates they are in their books4444 ,nor1 of course1 does that alter the truth ,i voiced just now3 your book1 if it is to count1 must express your personality3 but most assuredly not all of it naked4 ,rather1 should your book suggest what you would like to make of that personality when shaved1 and bathed1 and becomingly clothed1 and judiciously inspirited with alcohol1 before going out to be1 to the reach of one's ability1 agreeable company4 ,besides1 the literary artist1 ,i must here repeat1 labors primarily to divert himself4 ,a man can get many emotions from contemplating a quite candid portrait of the person he finds in his own mind and in the bathtub1 but pleasure1 ,i suspect1 is not one of them4 ,so when the artist takes as his ostensible theme himself1 he must take too the liberty to adorn that theme with such variations as may happen to strike his fancy4 ,otherwise1 his art might very well fail in its main purpose1 which--need ,i say again8--is to divert the artist4 #hg ,and ,i shall here claim the advantage of my own rulings1 ,i shall here divert myself by turning candidly to egotism1 without any beatings about the bush in search of even one fig-leaf4444 ,i have1 then1 always aimed to give my writings some quality of permanence3 but ,i am in smug accord with all the more unsympathetic of my critics in detecting in no one of my now numerous volumes any tendency to immortalize me4 ,that is a fault of which the ,biography1 ,i rejoicingly protest1 is innocent4 ,it would1 for one matter1 be unendurable to find myself portrayed in books which ,i so often am forced to read in the already depressing enough pursuit of misprints and blunders4 ,for no man--as ,molire and ,isaiah and ,william ,dean ,howells have all not improbably observed1 at some time or another1--cares quite to face the truth about himself4 ,looking back upon my own past1 ,i find it undiversified1 under howsoever many dappling clouds of legend1 by any very striking crimes3 but there is much of what to the first glance seems shirking and equivocation1 so much of petty treacheries1 of small lies1 and of responsibilities evaded1 that ,i am whole-heartedly glad to reflect my private observatory is not1 and never will be1 open to the public4 ,item by item1 ,i can explain away each one of the disfiguring features2 ,i can prove1 in my half-magnanimous and half-aggrieved meditations1 that in no one of these affairs was ,i really to blame2 and ,i can utterly extenuate myself from all fault and wrong-doing4 ,i do1 very often4 ,but1 at bottom1--even so1--somewhere1--lurks as if clouded with much ink the cuttlefish suspicion that ,i may not after all be endowed with the wholly blameless and1 indeed1 heroic character which mere logic assures me ,i possess4 ,i have the notion1 too1 that many of my most near associates would agree with the suspicion rather than the logic4 ,and when ,i talk about my own doings or my personal sentiments1 ,i momentarily detect myself in heightening1 softening1 or overcoloring the reality1 as if in an instinctive effort to conform with what my hearer will1 conceivably1 expect and approve4 ,certainly not much of me gets into my conversation4444 ,in writing1 ,i do wax1 as one might phrase it1 bolder4 ,this is largely fruit of my knowledge that to the persons among whom my physical existence is passed1 my writing means nothing1 or at most is visited now and then by an unardent glance1 as a highly problematic source of income3 the persons about whom alone ,i really care will never read whatever ,i may elect to publish1 nor ever1 if by some unforeseeable circumstances compelled to do so1 could they take my nonsense seriously4 ,i am thus at liberty to write1 without incurring any discomforts of actual weight1 whatever ,i may prefer4 ,i am nowadays even sure of getting it printed4 ,yet when ,i reflect how little ,i find1 in so much writing1 of any candid and fair expression of that person whom ,i with real regret accept as myself1--in my own thoughts' very privately issued version1 with so many unopened leaves and with such handsome margins of error1--why1 then1 ,i am somewhat astonished and vastly pleased4444 ,i marvel at1 for one thing1 the maniacal zeal with which ,i have transferred the credit for almost every line ,i have written1 to this or the other invented authority or narrator4 ,i seem from the first thus to have hidden myself as if instinctively4 ,and moreover1 in the few nooks thus unprotected1 ,i find ,i have1 throughout the whole ,biography1 enacted one who is rather wiser and more amiable1 and rather more clever and more sophisticatedly broad-minded and more freakish1 than ,i can on any terms believe myself4444 ,no3 ,i am not intimate with the author of the ,biography3 and now and then ,i suspect a certain condescension in his manner1 even toward me1 because of my persistency in working for him so hard4 ,and all these small deceits are benefactions for everybody concerned4 ,but the point is that every person whom egoism reduces to writing1 must aspire to1 and the more adroit do truly succeed in1 just this laborious form of suicide and self-interment1 under the effigy they find diverting4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote #i3 ,katherine ,fullerton ,gerould1 a writer of the day1 and the author of many stories so exactly in the best manner of ,henry ,james that they well might actually have been written during the latter years of his life by ,mrs4 ,edith ,wharton4 ,footnote #aj3 ,periodicals of the day1 which occasionally published articles dealing with literary matters4 ,x ,,flaws ,,in ,,the ,,spur ,exploits1 however splendidly achieved1 come1 by length of time1 to be less known to fame1 or even forgotten among posterity4 ,in this manner the renown of many kings has faded1 and their deeds have sunk with them into the grave where their bodies lie buried1--deeds that had been performed with great magnificence when unanimous applause set them up as models before the people4 ,the ancient ,greeks1 aware of this1 were wise enough to use the pen as a remedy against oblivion4 #aj4 ,flaws in the ,spur #hh ,the literary artist plays1 ,i had said1 not merely in such fashions as ,i had enumerated4 ,he plays1 even over and above all this1 with the notion that his self-diversions are altruistic and for the large benefit of posterity4 ,this idea is1 to the considerate1 inexplicable3 but nobody need seriously question its potency4 ,fame is the spur1 as ,milton some while since observed1 that very often rowels the artist into doing rather objectionably painstaking work4 ,for custom assumes that time deals very carefully with reading-matter1 omnisciently discarding the trash1 and preserving to outlast a kingdom or two that which is finest4 ,and probably the notion of this posthumous atonement for the current era's stupidity has heartened1 in every era1 the creative writer who viewed with a shared seriousness his craft and his income4 ,one may permissibly wonder1 none the less1 if time does right all unfailingly1 in quite this taken-for-granted fashion4 ,the present generation is the utmost that has thus far been produced in the way of posterity4 ,it seems1 at least1 remarkable that we who have made the ,saturday ,evening ,post a literary success second only to the ,telephone ,book should be the clear-eyed cognoscenti to whom dead poets appealed2 and that it was in our standards of criticism they invested their life's labor and confidence4 ,for ,les ,contes ,drolatiques were1 really1 written for the beguilement of ,dr4 ,brander ,matthews#aa and it was with an eye upon ,mr4 ,h4,l4 ,mencken that ,kempis compiled the ,imitation of ,christ4 #hi ,now1 not as that all-righting posterity do we approach1 of course1 the books we actually read4 ,nobody expects that our judgments of current literature be perennially brazen when two or three unbend in talk about that merchandise which is sold in the same department as stationery and string and glue4 ,the rub is1 rather1 that our chief classics appear to have been selected and handed down to fame by the long arm of coincidence4 ,that which remains to us of ,greek and ,roman literature composes by general consent our greatest treasure1 the treasure which time has most thoroughly tested and approved4 ,and it is precisely here that one finds least cause to suspect time of any entangling alliance with justice4 ,there is no vaguest reason to suppose that of the ,greek and ,roman writers we have preserved1 by any standards1 what was best worth keeping2 nor that of such authors as schylos and ,aristophanes of whom oblivion has spared more than the name we have retained the masterworks4 ,we cherish1 instead1 each scrap that accident has made peerless by the destruction of its betters4444 ,i might go on to speak1 even more tediously1 of ,sappho and ,petronius and ,plutarch1 and of ,virgil's foiled endeavors to destroy the latter part of his neid--and about the dream that revealed the hiding place of ,dante's lost cantos1 and about ,john ,warburton's cook1 and about how the ,bible came by its present contents1--to show through what queer accidents the world's chief classics1 the books which are likely always to remain in theory man's finest literary achievements1 have been made just what they are4 ,but the point is that they might quite as easily have been something else4 ,the point is that they have not earned their present and probably perpetual rank by their pre-eminence in special qualities1 nor by any sthetic principle whatever4 ,and if the supreme names and masterpieces of the world's literature have been tagged as such by justice1--which always remains just barely possible1--it was done without removing her bandage1 in the hazards of a game of blind man's buff4 ,but ,i refrain in charity from such pedantic considerations4 ,here is real need1 though1 to point out that before printing became pandemic the only way in which anybody's writing won a chance of survival was by some other person's finding its matter sufficiently congenial to be at pains to make a copy of it4 ,in nature1 that which most rapturously recorded the inane struck home to most bosoms1 upon the chronic principle that still procures admirers for the philosophy of ,dr4 ,frank ,crane1#ab and for the novels of ,floyd and ,ethel ,dell3#ac so1 from the first1 have long odds favored earnest mediocrity4444 ,to the vitality of the mediocre ,i shall return4 ,meanwhile that dangerous invention of ,gutenberg's has changed all2 and has ensured a fair chance of perpetuity for that which is excellent1 provided always this excellence be not swept away unnoted and hidden by the spume and froth of the torrential river it floats in1 that ever-passing deluge of the current books4 ,sometimes befalls a favoring miracle of salvage1 and such dissimilar lost argosies as those of ,samuel ,butler and ,herman ,melville return upstream with flying colors4 ,but who may say how deep1 how irretrievably1 their betters may not lie sunken8 or can gravely assert that literary permanence is in any very general demand among the buyers or publishers or writers of new books8444 ,indeed1 ,i know of no class of men which quite whole-heartedly desires the production and formal recognizing of any more classics3 since even those who care for fine literature cannot but obscurely feel that there is already a deal more of it existent than any human being can hope to assimilate2 and that already the literary pantheon of the self-respecting is thronged with gods whose virtues we are compelled1 in this limited lifetime1 to accept as an article of faith4 ,there is1 for example1 ,defoe or ,richardson--or1 of more recent hierarchs1 ,mr4 ,thomas ,hardy or ,mr4 ,joseph ,conrad1--before the shrine of each of whom many are zealous to pass with every form of respect which does not entail stopping4 ,and ,i suspect1 if the persons who cry up ,don ,quixote were afforded a choice between silence and reading every line of this world-famous classic1 there would no longer be any need to think an instant before you pronounce its name4 #ij ,but ,i spoke of the vitality of the mediocre4 ,the quality which makes for acknowledged greatness in a writer is--,i know not how many textbooks have assured us1--the universality of his appeal4 ,his ideas are1 in brief1 the ideas which the majority of persons find acceptable2 and ,shakespeare has been praised1 for once with absolute justice1 as the myriad-minded1 because myriads have always had just such a mind as his4 ,the writer of classics1 in short1 has need of quite honest and limited thinking1 and of an ability to utter platitudes with that wholesome belief in their importance which no hypocrisy nor art can ever mimic4444 ,of the letters of a foreign nation nobody can speak without some danger of magnifying his everyday folly4 ,but it appears safe here to point out that the main treasures of our national literature1 including its ,british tributaries1 really are1 when considered in the light of the ideas they express1 rather startlingly silly4 ,the ideas of ,chaucer and ,shakespeare and ,milton1 when once looked at without prejudice1 appear to wander sheepishly from the platitudinous to the imbecile1 the while that their stories rove1 in somewhat more the manner of the mountain goat1 about the heights of idiocy4 ,and when you compare the reality with the ideas which ,scott and ,thackeray and ,dickens quite gravely expressed about human existence1 the incongruity breathes more of pathos than of mirth3 for these novelists expressed the usual ideas4 ,most persons really do believe1 for example1 that complete and abiding happiness is to be won by marriage until they have tried it3 and1 for that matter1 widows have been known to carry this romanticism to the extreme of taking a second husband4 ,and most persons do honestly believe that1 in the outcome1 wickedness is punished and virtue is rewarded 7again7 with a complete and abiding happiness3 and in consequence of this belief most persons make it a point in social intercourse to check their natural1 not infrequent impulses toward rape and murder4 ,most persons do1 in fact1 for various reasons1 think it best to be good2 and do expect1 for equally various reasons1 to be happy by and by4 ,now1 with hardly an exception1 the concededly classic writers have1 without any detectable scepticism1 set forth such popular notions1 with every fit adornment of rhetoric and cunning diction3 and their ideas have endured for the plain reason that they were endurable4 #ia ,yet here again1 ,i am afraid1 the fool is answered according to his folly4 ,it is1 when you think of it1 a rather dreadful fate to become a classic4 ,once the writer is thus deified1 his private character is the first burnt offering4 ,he has well hidden himself beneath the effigy he found diverting2 he rests thereunder1 untroubled3 but about his tomb frisk commentators obviously raised1 by a superior education1 from that troglodytic race which enlivens the public privies with verse4 ,for his cult has need of a legend1 and prefers a highly colored epopee of lechery and sexual curiosa1 such as affords vicarious outlet to those desires which we imprison fearfully in ourselves1 and reveals the demigod to be no better than anybody else4 ,so ,mary ,fitton and ,georgina ,hogarth and ,mrs4 ,brookfield are dragged into the saga3 stout volumes are devoted to proving that ,wordsworth begot a bastard1 or that ,byron was caught in incest with his sister2 nobody appears able to write about ,molire without suggesting that his wife was also very probably his daughter3 and all our literary gossip becomes a whispered and sniggered ritual of phallic worship4 ,nor do many of the auctorially great escape calumny in the form of a ,complete ,edition1 wherein their self-confessed failures at writing1 and the chips and rubbish of the workshop1 and the rough draughts and notes designed for the waste-basket1 and the politic ephemer into which most writers are allured by kindness and advertising purposes1 are piddlingly amassed to be bound up1 in pompous scavengery1 with all the unsigned refuse from the back files of magazines which can be attributed to the victim4 ,none other of the dead has even his appointed executors combined to convict him of idiocy4 ,and of course those less put-upon immortals who are recollected1 however infrequently1 by virtue of one book alone are but too apt to get into some such collection as ,everyman's ,library1 and have the upshot of their existence identified with the twaddle and smug tediums of ,trollope and ,jane ,austen and ,mary ,cowden ,clarke4 ,and the writer who is raised to the peerage of the remembered dead is likewise granted an estate1 commensurate with his dignity1 in the fields of human aversion4 ,luckless typesetters have to read every word of his books2 in your library he usurps grudged shelfroom in the bright armor of a binding too handsome to be relegated to the dustheap of any married man2 the oppressed young have his loathed archaisms included in their parallel reading at school1 where also they are sometimes put to the peine dure et forte of parsing him2 in women's clubs he incurs the stigma of being quoted with approval from the platform1 by persons in the bankruptcy of mind appropriate to that deadly eminence2 and dear old bishops likewise quote him in their sermons1 utilizing his dreams as hypnotics4444 ,he becomes1 in fine1 a nuisance1 and is thought of with mingled condescension and haziness and dislike4 ,and it appears1 to the considerate1 a prodigality of currishness1 thus in so many ways to beat the bones of the buried because their outcast owner once voiced memorably the common beliefs and hopes1--the tonic fallacies1 the sustaining delusions1--which keep a vigorous heart in the ribs1 and marrow in the bones1 of all that are not buried1 not yet4 ,here is no need to assume1 however1 that every classic author has from the beginning been commonplace in absolutely everything4 ,it may happen1 indeed1 that a writer putting forth an unpopularly rational thought may have his heresy so generally assailed and so often controverted as to make it sufficiently hackneyed for wide acceptance3 but mediocrity1 even in daringness and unconventionality1 thrives from the first2 and is the firmlier assured of posterity's respectful reprinting4 ,and the display of uncommon mentality is1 as a rule1 as fatal to the literary life of a book as it is to the physical life of man4 #ib ,for there really does seem to be over all a force--to be labelled what you will1--that is hostile to the undue development1 in any direction1 of man's mind4 ,here death is not directly involved3 rather1 does it appear to be life which is resolute to use men within very inflexible limits4444 ,and so ,i now incline to dismiss those earlier notions as to nothing being apparent anywhere except the operation and products of death4 ,i begin to play with the fancy that life is indeed aiming at something quite definite2 and that the wise man's part therein is to be patient1 to cling to mediocrity1 and to get bread and children1 and presently to die1 with no more of active discomfort than may be unavoidable4 ,it well may be1 ,i reflect1 that all is not at loose ends2 and that some scheme of happenings is fore-ordained2 and that we serve in it1 somehow1 when we live tranquilly and propagate2 since1 certainly1 the desire to do just these two things is the one human desire encountered everywhere4 ,and perhaps--,i yet further speculate1--the phenomena called literary genius and artistic ability are vexatious little mishaps1 a trifle gone wrong1 in the broad working out of a plan which they minutely hamper4444 ,so the contretemps is remedied4 ,the person afflicted with genius is removed1 be it by his other diseases or by his fellows' natural dislike of him1 it hardly matters3 either way1 there is by ordinary in his removal a smack of haste3 and you will note that1 whether in polity or mercy1 it is somehow provided that his children do not inherit his affliction4444 ,so does life seem to keep her pawns from errancy4 ,so does she seem to restrict them1 with now and then some show of pettishness1 to the arena and service of her large and dim and patient gaming3 and wisdom bids us emulate this patience1 in the time that we get bread and children1 and strive to die with no more of active discomfort than may be unavoidable4 ,and yet1 even so1 in the bared teeth of outraged reason1 no one of us rests quite content to be a mere transmitter of semen1 and to serve as one of many millions of instruments in life's inexplicable labor1 used for a little while as such1 and then put by1 worn out and finished with forever4 ,we appeal against oblivion4 ,and not only does the shatter-pated artist appeal3 the ,pharaohs have filed pyramidic caveats1 the best-thought-of business-men yet enter demurrers in the form of public libraries3 there is no tomb-stone however modest but insanely appeals to posterity to keep in mind somebody's dates of birth and death and middle name4 ,for we will to continue here1 in the world known to us1 to continue if only as syllables4 ,we all will not to be forgotten utterly by those that must so soon inherit our familiar dear estate of tedium and muddle-headedness and fret and failure2 and that in our places will get bread and children2 and that after our going will in our beds be striving to die with no more of active discomfort than may be unavoidable4 ,yet here is an odd thing3 we can pretend to offer no example worth the following1 not even any salutary instance of just what to avoid2 nor can we1 in any of the limbos which have been divinely revealed1 thus far1 derive from being so remembered one minim of profit4 ,we are spurred by neither altruism nor self-seeking2 the counsellor that persuades to the appeal remains anonymous3 and it seems that1 here again1 some power which mocks at reason1 or at least at human reason1 is moving us to serve unknown but1 one suspects1 not unappointed ends4 ,for we do not know1 either here or elsewhere1 what ends may be appointed3 but we do know1 ,i think1 that every wise man will avoid too much of guesswork1 in the brief while that he gets bread and children1 and patiently foreplans to die with no more of active discomfort than is unavoidable4 #ic ,thus1 then1 ,i reflected1 now that ,i approached my summing up1 the writer who is sustained by the notion of his books' being perpetual things cannot1 after two minutes of honest thought1 believe himself to be sustained also by altruism1 nor by any faith in the superior discernment of posterity4 ,upon no ground perceptible to me could reason detect1 the instant that reason weighed the present rate and direction of man's progress1 any marked likelihood of posterity's being in anything more logical than is that contemporaneous1 so huge and so depressingly unimpressed audience which every artist must perforce contemn4 ,posterity in its approach to literary matters would probably muddle forward1 as man has always done1 upon humanity's time-tested crutches of hearsay and stupidity4 ,the men who after our departure inherited the gray tedium of man's daily living would keep some of our books 7but not really read them71 and others of our books they would destroy1 not in any haphazard fashion1 but acting always under the adamantean human compulsion to be illogical about everything4 ,not any art or painstaking1 nor certainly any accident of genius1 could enable a book to live4 ,chance alone appeared to do that1 and then only in a very limited sense4 ,and in this final1 frantic1 and yet optimistic appeal to posterity--here1 too1 man clung to his great racial custom of being illogical about everything2 and every serious author triumphantly attested himself to be1 after all1 quite human4 ,that seemed the conclusion of the matter4444 ,so ,i ran over my enlinked deductions4 ,man lived1 for the major part of his conceded time1 a meagre and monotonous and unsatisfying existence3 this he alleviated by endlessly concocting fictions which bedrugged and diverted him4 ,the artist1 and in particular the literary artist1 like every other person animate1 attempted to bedrug and divert primarily himself2 which end the literary artist gained1 as a rule1 by picturing himself as figuring enviably in unfamiliar surroundings1 and as making sport with the three martinets that he1 in common with all men at bottom1 most genuinely abhorred1--that is1 with common-sense and piety and death4 ,moreover1 he diverted himself by playing with such human ideas as he found entertaining3 and he played too with the notion of hoodwinking posterity into accepting and treasuring his highly imaginative portrait of himself4 ,and the outcome of his multifold playing--of that interminable self-diversion which he1 quite unsmilingly1 called his work1--was always unpredictable1 always chance-guided1 and1 in any case1 was of no benefit or hurt to him by and by1 and was never of grave importance to anybody else4 ,that seemed to be the whole truth about the literary artist4 ,that seemed the gist of the epilogue ,i had now evolved for the ,biography of ,dom ,manuel's life1 and was submitting to myself to-night as the explanation of why ,i had given over so many years to writing4 ,yes1 all my premises seemed true3 my deductions appeared to hold together4 ,my logic and its upshot1 in any event1 contented me4 ,what1 ,i had begun by asking1 does the author get out of it all8 ,well1 ,i had found that unknown quantity2 the equation now was solved2 and x amounted to1 exactly1 nothing4 ,that was the mathematics of it3 only1 as you may recall1 it had been revealed to me1 through the aid of my small son1 that mathematics too amounted to1 exactly1 nothing4 ,and1 besides1 here also1 in reaching this negation1 ,i had most gratifyingly attained1 in the same moment that ,i discredited1 the aim of every valid author4 ,for ,i had found1 ,i reflected1 even here1 some rather interesting ideas to play with4444 ,yes1 and my argument ended1 neatly1 with the day3 for the clock behind me was now striking midnight4444 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote #aa3 ,a prominent ,american littrateur of the period4 ,the titles of many of his books have been preserved1 such as ,his ,father's ,son1 ,the ,last ,meeting1 ,a ,secret of the ,sea1 c4 ,footnote #ab3 ,a newspaper writer of the day4 ,he specialized in very short editorials1 so notably preminent1 even in ,american journalism1 for feeble-mindedness that these were published1 simultaneously1 by some fifty of the leading papers of the ,united ,states1 and were read everywhere with edification4 ,footnote #ac3 ,novelists of the day2 authors of ,charles ,rex1 ,janet ,march1 ,greatheart1 c4 ,,the ,,author ,,of ,,the ,,eagle',s ,,shadow ,to the citizens and all the realm ,i make this proclamation3 for now have ,i moored my bark of life1 and so will own myself a happy man4 ,many are the shapes that fortune takes1 and oft the gods bring things to pass beyond our expectation4 ,that which we deemed so sure is not fulfilled1 while for that we never thought would be1 ,heaven finds out a way4 ,and such hath been the issue in the present case4 ,the ,author of ,the ,eagle's ,shadow #id ,would you advise me1 sir1 he was asking1 to become a regular writer--now8 ,for ,i had got just this far1 and1 as ,i have said1 the clock behind me was just striking midnight1 when ,i was interrupted by an unlooked-for visitor4 ,most writers1 for their sins1 are used to the incursions of the literarily-inclined young man 7with1 as a rule1 quite dreadful manuscripts hidden about his person7 who wants advice as to his life-work4 ,but that this especial young man should be calling upon me for that purpose1 or for any other purpose1 did1 ,i confess1 even on ,walburga's ,eve1 astonish me4444 ,for he undeniably sat there4 ,he was fat1 remarkably fat for a lad of twenty-two or thereabouts2 and he had1 as ,i noticed first of all1 most enviably thick hair1 sleeked down1 and parted on the side with some fanfaronade in the way of capillary flourishes4 ,he was rather curiously dressed1 too1 ,i considered3 the lapels of his coat were so small and stiff2 they were held in place1 ,i deduced1 by a coat-spring1 which would be to-day1 ,i could have no doubt1 the only coat-spring in existence4 ,and he wore a fawn-colored waistcoat1 and his rigorous collar towered1 incredible in height1 above a sky-blue ,ascot tie1 which was resplendently secured with a largish sword-hilt asparkle everywhere with diamonds4 ,and to describe the majestic rotundities of this boy's shoulders as due to padding would be through understatement to deceive you2 since these coat-shoulders could have been designed and builded 7,i reflected71 by no imaginable tailor1 but only by an upholsterer4444 ,it must have been1 in fine1 a good twenty years since ,i had seen anybody appareled quite as he was4444 ,you see1 ,i have just sold three stories to magazines1 he continued1 and ,i was wondering1 sir1 if you would advise me to become a regular writer now4 ,to that ,i gave my customary1 sage and carefully considered reply4 ,of course1 ,i informed him1 there is a great deal to be said upon both sides4 ,i wrote five1 you see3 and ,i mailed them all out together4 ,and ,the ,smart ,set took one2 and ,the ,argosy took the one ,i sent them1 too2 and ,mr4 ,alden wrote me a real nice letter about the one ,i sent ,harper's1 and said they would be very glad to use it if ,i would let them say 'paunch' where ,i had written 'belly'-- ,dear me6 and so you are already writing with offensive coarseness4 ,but don't mind me4 ,go on4 ,well1 but ,i was just going to say1 and that's all right1 of course1 though you do sort of think of ,falstaff as having one4 ,but the other two came back1 although ,i can't see why1 when you look at the stuff those very magazines--6 ,you will see1 by and by1 ,i assured him3 and then you will wonder about the stories that did not come back4 ,anyhow1 ,i got a hundred and five dollars for the lot of them4 ,yes1 sir1 not a cent less4 ,and to have three out of five stick1 the very first time1 is pretty unusual1 don't you think8 ,to that ,i assented4 ,it is the bait in the trap1 it is the stroke of doom1 it is the tasted pomegranate of ,persephone4 ,then ,i have the notion for a book1 too4 ,it's about a young man who is in love with a girl-- ,that now is a good idea4 ,it is an idea that has possibilities4 --,only1 he can't ask her to marry him1 because she has lots of money1 and he is poor4 ,of course1 though1 it all comes out all right in the end4 ,his uncle left another will1 you see4 ,now was that will1 by any chance1 ,i wondered1 discovered long years afterward1 in the secret drawer of an old desk8 and did it transform your high-minded but impoverished hero into a multi-millionaire8 ,and the young man asked1 ,why1 how did you know8 ,it is not always possible to explain these divinations4 ,such flashes of imaginative clairvoyance just incommunicably come to me sometimes4 ,he considered this4 ,he said1 with a droll sort of awe1 ,probably you do think of things quicker after you have been writing so long-- ,i shook my head morosely4 ,quite the contrary4 ,and of course you have written so many books that--,you see1 ,i naturally read them1 on account of our similarity in names-- ,you liked them1 ,i hope8 ,very rarely have ,i seen any young man counterfeit enthusiasm less convincingly4 ,why1 how can you ask that1 ,i wonder6 when everybody knows that your books1 sir--6 ,come1 come6 ,i heartened him1 ,i have been reviewed a great deal1 remember6 ,the production of articles as to my plagiarisms and obscenities ranks as a national industry4 ,very lately ,judge ,leonard ,doughty#ad exposed me to all ,texas as a chancre-laden rat whose ancestry had mixed and simmered in the devil's cauldron of ,middle ,europe4 ,and1 besides1 since ,professor ,fred ,l4 ,pattee#ae let the news get out1 in perfectly public print1 that ,i am dead and my soul is already in hell1 there does not seem much left for any moderately optimistic person to be afraid of4 ,well1 but1 the young man pointed out1 ,i'm not unbiased4 ,there is so much about me in your books1 you see1 sir2 and you do make me seem sort of funny4 ,you sort of keep poking fun at me4 ,i know4 ,but ,i cannot help it4 ,for you appear to me1 ,i confess1 the most ridiculous person save one that ,i have ever known4 ,i am the other person4 ,well1 ,i am afraid ,i don't entirely like your books1 sir1 he conceded4 ,and ,i sat looking at him1 both amused and saddened4 ,for never until to-night had it occurred to me how unutterably would this especial young man dislike my books if ever he could know of them4 ,and he was trying so hard1 too1 to be polite about it4 #ie ,why do you do it1 sir8 the boy asked now1 almost reproachfully4 ,you get a plenty of pleasure out of life1 don't you8 and what did you want1 anyhow1 that you never got8 ,yes3 and ,i don't know1 ,i admitted1 seriatim4 ,well1 then1 why don't you write some books that will make people see the world is a pretty good sort of place after all8 ,but surely it does not require two persons to point out such an obvious geographical feature8 ,cannot posterity rely upon you1 by and by1 to diffuse that truism single-handed8 ,i certainly do hope so1 he replied4 ,now his voice changed4 ,for ,i would like to write the very nicest sort of books1--like ,henry ,harland's and ,justus ,miles ,forman's and ,anthony ,hope's4 ,they would be about beautiful fine girls and really splendid young men1 and everything would come out all right in the end1 so they could get married1 and not be sort of bitter and smart-alecky and depress people the way--he coughed1--the way some people do4 ,young man1 ,i started out severely1 it is quite evident you are not married-- ,to which he countered1 now ,i think of it1 rather staggeringly4 ,but you1 sir1 are not in love4 ,you never will be1 sir1 not ever any more4 ,i said3 ,yes2 that does make a difference4 ,i remember4 ,then ,i said3 ,stop talking bosh6 and stop calling me 'sir'6 ,i'm not your grandfather4 ,it is rather the other way round4 ,and1 besides1 we were talking about books4 ,well1 you may try1 if you like1 to write the blithering kind of novel you describe4 ,but1 somehow1 ,i don't think you will ever succeed at it4 ,you ought to know best1 sir1 of course1 about my abilities4 ,and so1 if you would really and truly advise me--,still1 ,i would certainly like to be a real author-- ,he was looking at me now1 across that remarkable blue tie and shiny sword-hilt1 with very touching deference1 and with1 of all conceivable emotions1 envy4 ,i understood1 with the most quaint of shocks1 that ,i possessed every one of the things which this preposterous young fellow wanted4 ,i had written and published1 sometimes even with commercial extenuation1 at least as many magazine stories and books as he hoped by and by to have to his credit3 ,i could imagine how my comfortable-looking large home1 and my ownership of actual stocks and bonds1 and my acquaintance with a number of more or less distinguished persons1 would figure in his callow mild eyes3 and ,i had tasted1 too1 if not of fame1 most certainly of all the notoriety he ever aspired to4 ,why1 but what does it not seem to this pathetic boy1 ,i reflected1 actually to have one's picture in the papers6 ,for ,i could well remember certain ancient glancings toward that awesome pinnacle of being a celebrity4 ,i was1 in fine1 by this boy's standards1 a success4 ,i had to-day each one of the things he had ever consciously desired4 ,that really was a rather terrible reflection4444 #if ,but he was speaking4 ,then you would honestly advise me1 sir1 not to take up writing as a regular thing8 ,i don't see how ,i can advise you that1--not honestly1 at least4 ,for you will get out of the writing all--heaven help you6--that you hope to get4 ,why1 then-- ,he was abeam4 ,you simply wait until you have got it6 ,you can attend to your grinning then1 if you feel like it4 ,for you will get every one of the things you think you want4 ,only1 you will get them by the1 upon the whole1 most philanthropic process of not ever writing any of the mush which you now plan to write4 ,but ,i don't understand-- ,nor do ,i1 either1 quite4 ,but from the start will be tugging at your pen a pig-headed imp that will be guiding it his way instead of the way you intended4 ,and with each book he will be growing stronger and more importunate and more cunning1 and he will be stealing the pen away from you for longer and longer intervals4 ,and by and by that imp1 full grown now and the very devil of a taskmaster1 will be dictating your books from beginning to end1--not to speak here of his making you sweat blood when you revise1 at his orders1 all the earlier ones4 ,come1 now1--and the young fellow was looking at me rather like a troubled cow1--come1 now1 sir1 but you don't really mean ,i am going to be possessed by a devil8 ,some people will put it that way1 only a bit less politely4 ,but ,i would say1 by a dmon4 ,socrates had one1 you may remember4 ,yes1 but this one--8 ,you1 ,i replied1 will call him the desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings4 ,other persons will call him quite different things4 ,anyhow1 with time1 you will fall into a sort of bedrugging dmon-worship1 and you will go the way he commands you1 without resisting any longer4 ,it will be most deplorable4 ,so ,professor ,henry ,a4 ,beers#af will have1 after all1 to dismiss your literary claims from the pale of serious consideration1 because you are not of ,colonial stock-- ,the boy viewed this as urgent4 ,but1 sir1 my father's people came in #agbg1 and my mother's in #afai-- ,that will not matter4 ,facts are but reeds in the wind of moral indignation4 ,and ,maurice ,hewlett must become very cuttingly sarcastic about your being a ,jew brought up on the ,talmud-- ,me1 sir8 ,most certainly1 you4 ,and a transfigured ,richard ,le ,gallienne1#ag purified by his intellectual death and descent into the helotage of reviewing1 will be compelled to unmask you as a moral and spiritual hooligan with a diminutive and unkempt and unsavory ego4 ,and an enterprising young person named ,bierstadt#ah will1 on the strength of having twice had luncheon with you1 write out for ,the ,bookman a remarkably intimate account of how partial you are to provoking tragedies and throwing flesh-pots at people's heads4 ,and there will be others1--oh1 quite a number of others4444 ,so that1 altogether1 you perceive1 you will get1 through this dmon-worship1 into some trouble4 ,very rarely have ,i seen any young man more unaffectedly appalled4 ,but look here1 sir6 ,i don't want to get into any trouble4 ,i simply want to contribute to the best magazines1 and write some wholesome and nice entertaining books1 that will sell like ,the ,cardinal's ,snuff-,box and ,the ,prisoner of ,zenda4 ,i know4 ,it is rather funny that you should begin with just those goals in view4 ,you will not ever attain them4 ,that will not matter so much--after a while4 ,but what will very vitally matter--to you1 anyhow1--is that1 having once meddled with the desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings1 you will not ever be able to forswear your dmon4 ,and such folly is1 of course1 enough to set every really well-thought-of person in ,america braying4 ,so that in time--who knows--you too may come to be a chancre-laden rat1 and a ,german ,jew with a soul in hell and simmered ancestors and a notoriously unkempt ego1 and may otherwise help out with the week's literary gossip4 ,whereon the young man rose2 and he remarked1 with a perhaps not wholly unwarranted uncertainty1 ,then you advise me1 sir--8 ,i cannot advise you the one way or the other4 ,i am merely forewarning you that1 if you insist upon writing books1 you will get what you wanted4 ,he smiled now1 brightly1 intimately1 strangely4 ,i see3 but isn't that also in the one way which matters1 he demanded of me1 true8 ,and ,i smiled back at him4 ,yes1 ,i admitted1 it seems true in the one way which matters1 also4 ,why1 then1 said he1 ,i reckon ,i had better keep right on with ,the ,eagle's ,shadow4 ,and after that he went quite suddenly away4 ,he returned1 ,i imagine1 to #aijb or thereabouts4 ,i hope he did1 for his sake4 ,there was a rather nice girl awaiting him1 back there in #aijb4 ,then1 in addition to her1 he would have the facile1 false inspirations of ,the ,eagle's ,shadow to play with1 ,i reflected1 as ,i went back1 a little saddened somehow1 to concocting the needed epilogue for the long ,biography of ,dom ,manuel's life4444 #ig ,but that queer boy's brief visit had quite broken my train of thought4 ,his passing seemed1 indeed1 to have disproved my train of thought4 ,for the instant ,i had proved1 to my own satisfaction1 that what ,i1 in common with all creative writers1 got out of writing was1 exactly1 nothing1--at that same moment he had appeared with his mild1 bleated1 so respectful question1 ,would you advise me1 sir1 to become a writer--now8 ,and ,i had answered his question4 ,i had failed1 at least1 to advise him not to become a regular writer4 ,i had1 virtually1 admitted that were my youth restored to me1 as ,jurgen's was1 and had ,i my life to muddle through all over again1 ,i would1 still somewhat in the ,jurgenic manner1 repeat its unprofitable dedication4 ,i could not deny to him1 ,i could not truthfully deny to anybody1 that1 in the one way which really seemed to count1 ,i had in the end got what ,i wanted4 #ih ,no doubt it had been intermixed with a great deal which nobody could conceivably enjoy4 ,from the beginning my books had been strong irritants to many of their readers1--it might be that their manner was annoying1 indeed1 as ,dr4 ,canby put it1 to all warm-hearted people4 ,in any event there were my scrapbooks bulging with reviews by persons who appeared to have written in seizures of incoherent rage1 without ever having discovered precisely what they were angry about4 ,these chattered denunciations had begun with ,the ,eagle's ,shadow3 and no book by me had since failed to evoke them in respectable volume4444 ,the ,cords of ,vanity1 in fact1 had seemed to unhinge all power of self-control and self-expression in well-nigh everybody who wrote about it3 the scrapbooks which contained the press clippings relative to this novel suggested just the corybantics and mowings of a madhouse4 ,the people who had at most length and most bitterly denounced such a book as ,jurgen did at least base upon understandable ground their claims to be heard with respect1--this ground1 of course1 being that their judgment had been kept healthily uncontaminated by their abstention from reading ,jurgen4 ,nor was time outmoding this frenzy4 ,the ,high ,place seemed to have aroused in sundry quarters much the same quality of inexplicable or1 in any event1 of unexplained fury4 ,there was no doubt about it3 the instinctive reaction of many1 many persons everywhere to each one of my books--even1 as it seemed1 without reading them1--had been the instant1 unreasoning response of a reputable business-man or of a bull to the ,soviet flag4444 ,and that had not been pleasant4 ,apart from those who went about thus incommunicatively raging1 had been the pitilessly explicit4 ,these had1 indeed1 been tirelessly explicit in their exposure of my auctorial crimes and defects4 ,nobody could pretend to remember all the literary vices which ,i had practised nor all the contagions in which ,i had been detected1 but every one of these infamies had1 as ,i recalled it1 been competently exposed1 over and over again4 ,i was both knave and imbecile1 whose mannered writing was mere kleptomania2 ,i had1 indeed1 no sort of natural endowments once you excepted the singular nastiness of my feeble mind3 such were the facts that had been quite regularly deplored1 now ,i thought of it1 for the fifth part of a whole century4 ,and when the press clippings came in next week1 somebody would1 ,i knew1 still be regretting these facts4 ,i could have little doubt that for the rest of my life ,i would be continually encountering these regrets4444 ,and that1 too1 was not pleasant4 ,what the reviewers had said did not1 especially and eventually1 matter4 ,they were1 in fact1 to-day united in their abuse nowhere except in my scrapbooks3 ,i alone had--now for some twenty years1 and rather charitably1 ,i thought1--been at pains to preserve their utterances4 ,otherwise1 all of yesterday's ,olympians had loosed their thunderbolts and had passed sonorously2 and each demolishing of me was to-day as little remembered as was any other of that year's thunderstorms4 ,to-day--if with a lessened frequency1 from even loftier altitudes1--still now and then descended peltingly the onslaughts of young godlings4 ,yet to-day ,i still clung1 somehow1 to the belief that my intelligence and morals were not so markedly below the average as ,i was constantly assured4 ,and1 in the manner of those elder tempests1 so likewise1 ,i knew1 must pass away the reverberant condescensions of the young1 who were condemned as yet to appraise my book1 and all books1 in the light of their contrast with that masterpiece which youth is immemorially about to dash off on some vacant ,saturday afternoon4 ,for presently these godlings too would turn from the serious work of reviewing creative literature to the diversion of writing it4444 ,and whatever any other formally empowered or free-lance commentator might futurely say1 whether in print or conversation1 about my stupidity and crass plagiarisms and self-conceit and futile pruriencies1 would not1 ,i knew1 matter either1 in itself4 ,the one trouble was that all this maintained a clouded and sulphuric atmosphere in which ,i dubiously moved1 so far as went the thoughts of so many dear1 dull persons4444 ,meanwhile ,i had got the hearing which throughout eighteen years of unreason ,i had hoped to get1 and had always believed to be imminent2 and the book which ,i had written1 in the ,biography1 was finished1 more or less1 and would for its allotted season remain4 ,with the length1 or1 if you will1 with the extreme brevity of that season1 ,i had no concern3 it was enough to know that the ,biography was finished1 and would outlast me4 #ii ,for that infernal boy had drawn from me the truth3 ,i really had got out of life what ,i most wanted4 ,i had wanted to make the ,biography3 and ,i had made it1 in just the way which seemed good to me4 ,to do that had been1 no doubt1 my play and my diversion1 in the corridors where men must find diversion1 whether in trifling with bank notes or women1 whether in clutching at straws or prayer-books1 or else go mad3 and my enlinked deductions held as far as the chain stretched4 ,but one link more was needed4 ,for it seemed to me1 too1 that ,i had somehow fulfilled1 without unduly shirking1 an obligation which had been laid upon me to make the ,biography4 ,i was not1 heaven knew1 claiming for myself any heavenly inspiration or even any heavenly countenance4 ,rather1 it seemed to me that the ability and the body and the life which transiently were at my disposal had been really used3 with these lent implements which were not ever properly speaking mine1 and which presently would be taken away from me1 ,i had made something which was actually mine4 ,that something was the ,biography4444 #ajj ,and still1--with all the bright day gone1 and with the deepest gloom of midnight also an affair of the past1--still1 ,i seem not quite to have found that final link1 not wholly to have completed my epilogue4 ,some word1 as yet unthought of1 stays needed to round off all4444 ,here then1 upon this shelf1 in these brown volumes which make up the ,biography1 ,i can lay hand and eye upon just what precisely my life has amounted to3 the upshot of my existence is here before me1 a tangible and visible and entirely complete summing up1 within humiliatingly few inches4 ,and yet1 as ,i consider these inadequate brown volumes1 ,i suspect that the word ,i am looking for is gratitude4 ,it most certainly is not pride3 and1 as ,i hastily admit1 nobody else is called on to share in my suspicion4 ,but ,i at least1 who have found human living and this world not wholly admirable1 and who have here and there made formal admission of the fact1 feel that in honor one ought to acknowledge all courtesies too4 ,with life1 then1 ,i1 upon the whole1 have no personal quarrel3 she has mauled1 scratched and banged1 she has in all ways damaged me3 but she has permitted me to do that which ,i most wanted4 ,so that ,i must be1 ,i suppose1 grateful4 --,with which decision ,i very lightly pass my finger-tips across these fifteen book-backs2 and touch in this small gesture1 so didactically small1 the whole of that to which1 for good or ill1 ,i have amounted4 ,and thereafter 7with a continuing sense of wholesome allegory7 ,i go quietly to bed4 ,dumbarton ,grange1 #cj ,april1 #aibd4 ,,footnotes3 ,footnote #ad3 ,nothing is known of him4 ,footnote #ae3 ,dr4 ,pattee is stated to have lectured professionally1 at ,pennsylvania ,state ,college1 upon what patriotism described as ,american literature4 ,he is known to have edited ,shakespeare's ,macbeth1 and to have contributed to ,the ,american ,mercury4 ,footnote #af3 ,connected with ,yale ,university4 ,footnote #ag3 ,an ,english writer of some promise under the latter years of ,victoria's reign4 ,footnote #ah3 ,see note on ,judge ,leonard ,doughty1 page #bhh4 ,,explicit ,transcribers note3 ,text enclosed by underscores is in italics 7italics74