PROSE FANCIES

(SECOND SERIES)

BY

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

LONDON: JOHN LANE

CHICAGO: H. S. STONE AND CO. 

1896

TO

MAGGIE LE GALLIENNE

WITH LOVE

 Poor are the gifts of the poet-- Nothing but words! The gifts of kings are gold, Silver, and flocks and herds, Garments of strange soft silk, Feathers of wonderful birds, Jewels and precious stones, And horses white as the milk-- These are the gifts of kings: But the gifts that the poet brings Are nothing but words. 

 Forty thousand words! Take them--a gift of flies! Words that should have been birds, Words that should have been flowers, Words that should have been stars In the eternal skies. Forty thousand words! Forty thousand tears-- All out of two sad eyes. 

 CONTENTS PAGE

 A SEVENTH-STORY HEAVEN, 1 SPRING BY PARCEL POST, 20 THE GREAT MERRY-GO-ROUND, 27 THE BURIAL OF ROMEO AND JULIET, 39 VARIATIONS UPON WHITEBAIT, 49 THE ANSWER OF THE ROSE, 58 ABOUT THE SECURITIES, 67 THE BOOM IN YELLOW, 79 LETTER TO AN UNSUCCESSFUL LITERARY MAN, 90 A POET IN THE CITY, 98 BROWN ROSES, 108 THE DONKEY THAT LOVED A STAR, 112 ON LOVING ONE'S ENEMIES, 119 THE DRAMATIC ART OF LIFE, 125 THE ARBITRARY CLASSIFICATION OF SEX, 135 THE FALLACY OF A NATION, 145 THE GREATNESS OF MAN, 154 DEATH AND TWO FRIENDS, 171 A SEAPORT IN THE MOON, 187

A SEVENTH-STORY HEAVEN

At one end of the city that I love there is a tall, dingy pile ofoffices that has evidently seen more prosperous fortunes. It is not thearistocratic end. It is remote from the lordly street of the fine shopsof the fair women, where in the summer afternoons the gay bank clerksparade arm-in-arm in the wake of the tempestuous petticoat. It liesaside from the great exchange which looks like a scene from _Romeo andJuliet_ in the moonlight, from the town-hall from whose clocked andgilded cupola ring sweet chimes at midnight, and whence, throned abovethe city, a golden Britannia, in the sight of all men, is seen visiblyruling the waves--while in the square below the death of Nelson isplayed all day in stone, with a frieze of his noble words about thepedestal. England expects! What an influence that stirring challengehas yet upon the hearts of men may be seen by any one who will study thefaces of the busy, imaginative cotton-brokers, who, in the thronged andhumming mornings, sell what they have never seen to a customer they willnever see. 

In fact, the end I mean is just the very opposite end to that. It is theend where the cotton that everybody sells and nobody buys _is_ seen, piled in great white stacks, or swinging in the air from the necks ofmighty cranes, cranes that could nip up an elephant with as little ado, and set him down on the wharf, with a box on his ugly ears for hiscowardly trumpeting. It is the end that smells of tar, the domain of theharbourmasters, where the sailor finds a 'home, '--not too sweet, andwhere the wild sea is tamed in a maze of granite squares and basins; theend where the riggings and buildings rise side by side, and a clerkmight swing himself out upon the yards from his top-floor desk. Here isthe Custom House, and the conversation that shines is full of freightageand dock dues; here are the shops that sell nothing but oilskins, sextants, and parrots, and here the taverns do a mighty trade in rum. 

It was in this quarter, for a brief sweet time, that Love and Beautymade their strange home, as though a pair of halcyons should choose tonest in the masthead of a cattleship. Love and Beauty chose thisquarter, as, alas! Love and Beauty must choose so many things--for itscheapness. Love and Beauty were poor, and office rents in this quarterwere exceptionally low. But what should Love and Beauty do with anoffice? Love was a poor poet in need of a room for his bed and hisrhymes, and Beauty was a little blue-eyed girl who loved him. 

It was a shabby, forbidding place, gloomy and comfortless as a warehouseon the banks of Styx. No one but Love and Beauty would have dared tochoose it for their home. But Love and Beauty have a great confidence inthemselves--a confidence curiously supported by history, --and they neverhad a moment's doubt that this place was as good as another for anearthly Paradise. So Love signed an agreement for one great room at thevery top, the very masthead of the building, and Beauty made it prettywith muslin curtains, flowers, and dainty makeshifts of furniture, butchiefly with the light of her own heavenly face. A stroke of luck comingone day to the poet, the lovers, with that extravagance which the pooralone have the courage to enjoy, procured a piano on the kind-heartedhire-purchase system, a system specially conceived for lovers. Then, indeed, for many a wonderful night that room was not only on the seventhfloor, but in the seventh heaven; and as Beauty would sit at the piano, with her long hair flying loose, and her soul like a whirl of starlightabout her brows, a stranger peering in across the soft lamplight, seeingher face, hearing her voice, would deem that the long climb, flightafter flight of dreary stair, had been appropriately rewarded by aglimpse of heaven. 

Certainly it must have seemed a strange contrast from the life about andbelow it. The foot of that infernal stair plunged in the warmrum-and-thick-twist atmosphere of a sailor's tavern--and 'The JollyShipmates' was a house of entertainment by no means to be despised. Often have I sat there with the poet, drinking the whisky from whichScotland takes its name, among wondering sea-boots and sou'-westers, whocould make nothing of that wild hair and that still wilder talk. 

From the kingdom of rum and tar you mounted into a zone of commissionagents fund shipbrokers, a chill, unoccupied region, in which everysmall office bore the names of half a dozen different firms, and yetsomehow could not contrive to look busy. Finally came an airy echoinglanding, a region of empty rooms, which the landlords in vainrecommended as studios to a city that loved not art. Here dwelt thekeeper and his kind-hearted little wife, and no one besides save Loveand Beauty. There was thus a feeling of rarefaction in the atmosphere, as though at this height it was only the Alpine flora of humanity thatcould find root and breathing. But once along the bare passage andthrough a certain door, and what a sudden translation it was into agracious world of books and flowers and the peace they always bring. 

Once upon a time, in that enchanted past where dwell all the dreams welove best, precisely, with loving punctuality, at five in the afternoon, a pretty, girlish figure, like Persephone escaping from the shades, stole through the rough sailors at the foot of that sordid Jacob'sladder and made her way to the little heaven at the top. 

I shall not describe her, for the good reason that I cannot. Leonardo, ever curious of the beauty that was most strangely exquisite, once in aninspired hour painted such a face, a face wrought of the porcelain ofearth with the art of heaven. But, whoever should paint it, Godcertainly made it--must have been the comment of any one who caught aglimpse of that little figure vanishing heavenwards up that stair, likean Assumption of Fra Angelico's--that is, any one interested in art andangels. 

She had not long to wait outside the door she sought, for the poet, whohad listened all day for the sound, had ears for the whisper of herskirts as she came down the corridor, and before she had time to knockhad already folded her in his arms. The two babes in that thieves' woodof commission agents and shipbrokers stood silent together for amoment, in the deep security of a kiss such as the richest millionairecould never buy--and then they fell to comparing notes of their day'swork. The poet had had one of his rare good days. He had made no money, his post had been even more disappointing than usual, --but he hadwritten a poem, the best he had ever written, he said, as he always saidof his last new thing. He had been burning to read it to somebody allafternoon--had with difficulty refrained from reading it to theloquacious little keeper's wife as she brought him some coals--so it wasnot to be expected that he should wait a minute before reading it to herwhom indeed it strove to celebrate. With arms round each other's necks, they bent over the table littered with the new-born poem, all blots anddashes like the first draft of a composer's score, and the poet, deftlypicking his way among the erasures and interlineations, read aloud thebeautiful words--with a full sense of their beauty!--to ears that deemedthem more beautiful even than they were. The owners of this now valuablecopyright allow me to irradiate my prose with three of the verses. 

'Ah! what, ' half-chanted, half-crooned the poet--

 'Ah! what a garden is your hair!-- Such treasure as the kings of old, In coffers of the beaten gold, Laid up on earth--and left it there. '

So tender a reference to hair whose beauty others beside the poet hadloved must needs make a tender interruption--the only kind ofinterruption the poet could have forgiven--and 'Who, ' he continued--

 'Who was the artist of your mouth? What master out of old Japan Wrought it so dangerous to man . .. '

And here it was but natural that laughter and kisses should once moreinterrupt--

 'Those strange blue jewels of your eyes, Painting the lily of your face, What goldsmith set them in their place-- Forget-me-nots of Paradise?

 'And that blest river of your voice, Whose merry silver stirs the rest Of water-lilies in your breast . .. '

At last, in spite of more interruptions, the poem came to anend--whereupon, of course, the poet immediately read it through oncemore from the beginning, its personal and emotional elements, he felt, having been done more justice on a first reading than its artisticexcellences. 

'Why, darling, it is splendid, ' was his little sweetheart's comment;'you know how happy it makes me to think it was written for me, don'tyou?' And she took his hands and looked up at him with eyes like themorning sky. 

Romance in poetry is almost exclusively associated with very refinedethereal matters, stars and flowers and such like--happily, in actuallife it is often associated with much humbler objects. Lovers, likechildren, can make their paradises out of the quaintest materials. Indeed, our paradises, if we only knew, are always cheap enough; it isour hells that are so expensive. Now these lovers--like, if I mistakenot, many other true lovers before and since--when they wereparticularly happy, when some special piece of good luck had befallenthem, could think of no better paradise than a little dinner together intheir seventh-story heaven. 'Ah! wilderness were Paradise enow!'

To-night was obviously such an occasion. But, alas! where was the moneyto come from? They didn't need much--for it is wonderful how happy youcan be on five shillings, if you only know how. At the same time it isdifficult to be happy on ninepence--which was the entire fortune of thelovers at the moment. Beauty laughingly suggested that her celebratedhair might prove worth the price of their dinner. The poet thought apawnbroker might surely be found to advance ten shillings on hispoem--the original MS. Too, --else had they nothing to pawn, save a fewgold and silver dreams which they couldn't spare. What was to be done?Sell some books, of course! It made them shudder to think how many poetsthey had eaten in this fashion. It was sheer cannibalism--but what wasto be done? Their slender stock of books had been reduced entirely topoetry. If there had only been a philosopher or a modern novelist, thesacrifice wouldn't have seemed so unnatural. And then Beauty's eyes fellupon a very fat informing-looking volume on the poet's desk. 

'Wouldn't this do?' she said. 

'Why, of course!' he exclaimed; 'the very thing. A new history ofsocialism just sent me for review. Hang the review; we want our dinner, don't we, little one? And then I've read the preface, and looked throughthe index--quite enough to make a column of, with a plentiful supply ofgeneral principles thrown in! Why, of course, there's our dinner forcertain, dull and indigestible as it looks. It's worth fifty minor poetsat old Moser's. Come along. .. . '

So off went the happy pair--ah! how much happier was Beauty than ever somany fine ladies one knows who have only, so to say, to rub theirwedding-rings for a banquet to rise out of the ground, with the mostdistinguished guests around the table, champagne of the best, andconversation of the worst. 

Old Moser found histories of socialism profitable, more profitableperhaps than socialism, and he actually gave five-and-sixpence for thevolume. With the ninepence already in their pockets, you will see thatthey were now possessors of quite a small fortune. Six-and-threepence!It wouldn't pay for one's lunch nowadays. Ah! but that is because thepoor alone know the art of dining. 

You needn't wish to be happier and merrier than those two lovers, asthey gaily hastened to that bright and cosy corner of the town wherethose lovely ham-and-beef shops make glad the faces of the passers-by. Othose hams with their honest shining faces, polished like mahogany--andthe man inside so happy all day slicing them with those wonderful longknives (which, of course, the superior class of reader has never seen)worn away to a veritable thread, a mere wire, but keen as Excalibur. Beauty used to calculate in her quaint way how much steel was worn awaywith each pound of ham, and how much therefore went to the sandwich. Andwhat an artist was the carver! What a true eye! what a firm, flexiblewrist! never a shaving of fat too much--he was too great an artist forthat. Then there were those dear little cream cheeses, and those littlebrown jugs of yellow cream come all the way from Devonshire--you couldhear the cows lowing across the rich pasture, and hear the milkmaidssinging and the milk whizzing into the pail, as you looked at them. 

And then those perfectly lovely sausages--I beg the reader's pardon! Iforgot that the very mention of the word smacks of vulgarity. Yet, allthe same, I venture to think that a secret taste for sausages among theupper classes is more widespread than we have any idea of. I confessthat Beauty and her poet were at first ashamed of admitting their vulgarfrailty to each other. They needed to know each other very well first. Yet there is nothing, when once confessed, that brings two people soclose as--a taste for sausages. 

'You darling!' exclaimed Beauty, with something like tears in her voice, when her poet first admitted this touch of nature--and then next momentthey were in fits of laughter that a common taste for a very 'low' foodshould bring tears to their eyes! But such are the vagaries of love--asyou will know, if you know anything about it--'vulgar, ' no doubt, thoughonly the vulgar would so describe them--for it is only vulgarity thatis always 'refined. '

Then there was the florist's to visit. What beautiful trades some peopleply! To sell flowers is surely like dealing in fairies. Beautiful mustgrow the hands that wire them, and sweet the flower-girl's everythought!

There remained but the wine merchant's, or, had we not better say atonce, the grocer's, for our lovers could afford no rarer vintages thanTintara or the golden burgundy of Australia; and it is wonderful tothink what a sense of festivity one of those portly colonial flagonslent to their little dining-table. Sometimes, I may confide, when theywanted to feel very dissipated, and were _very_ rich, they would allowthemselves a small bottle of Benedictine--and you should have seenBeauty's eyes as she luxuriously sipped at her green little liqueurglass; for, like most innocent people, she enjoyed to the full thedelight of feeling occasionally wicked. However, these were rareoccasions, and this night was not one of them. 

Half a pound of black grapes completed their shopping, and then, withtheir arms full of their purchases, they made their way home again, thetwo happiest people in what is, after all, a not unhappy world. 

Then came the cooking and the laying of the table. For all her Leonardoface, Beauty was a great cook--like all good women, she was as earthlyin some respects as she was heavenly in others, which I hold to be awise combination--and, indeed, both were excellent cooks; and the poetwas unrivalled at 'washing up, ' which, I may say, is the only skeletonat these Bohemian feasts. 

You should have seen the gusto with which Beauty pricked thosesausages--I had better explain to the un-Bohemian reader that to attemptto cook a sausage without first pricking it vigorously with a fork, toallow for the expansion of its juicy gases, is like trying to smoke acigar without first cutting off the end--and oh! to hear again theirmerry song as they writhed in torment in the hissing pan, like Christianmartyrs raising hymns of praise from the very core of Smithfield fires. 

Meanwhile, the poet would be surpassing himself in the setting-out ofthe little table, cutting up the bread reverently as though it were foran altar--as indeed it was, --studying the effect of the dish oftomatoes, now at this corner, now at that, arranging the flowers withmuch more care than he arranged the adjectives in his sonnets, andmaking ever so sumptuous an effect with that half a pound of grapes. 

And then at last the little feast would begin, with a long grace of eyesmeeting and hands clasping: true eyes that said, 'How good it is tobehold you, to be awake together in this dream of life!' true hands thatsaid, 'I will hold you fast for ever--not death even shall pluck youfrom my hand, shall loose this bond of you and me'; true eyes, truehands, that had immortal meanings far beyond the speech of mortal words. 

And it had all come out of that dull history of socialism, and had costlittle more than a crown! What lovely things can be made out of money!Strange to think that a little silver coin of no possible use or beautyin itself can be exchanged for so much tangible, beautiful pleasure. Apiece of money is like a piece of opium, for in it lie locked up themost wonderful dreams--if you have only the brains and hearts to dreamthem. 

When at last the little feast grew near its end, Love and Beauty wouldsmoke their cigarettes together; and it was a favourite trick of theirsto lower the lamp a moment, so that they might see the stars rush downupon them through the skylight which hung above their table. It gavethem a sense of great sentinels, far away out in the lonely universe, standing guard over them, seemed to say that their love was safe in thetender keeping of great forces. They were poor, but then they had thestars and the flowers and the great poets for their servants andfriends; and, best of all, they had each other. Do you call that beingpoor?

And then, in the corner, stood that magical box with the ivory keys, whose strings waited ready night and day--strange media through whichthe myriad voices, the inner-sweet thoughts, of the great world-soulfound speech, messengers of the stars to the heart, and of the heart tothe stars. 

Beauty's songs were very simple. She got little practice, for her poetonly cared to have her sing over and over again the same sweet songs;and perhaps if you had heard her sing 'Ask nothing more of me, sweet, 'or 'Darby and Joan, ' you would have understood his indifference tovariety. 

At last the little feast is quite, quite finished. Beauty has gone home;her lover still carries her face in his heart as she waved and waved andwaved to him from the rattling lighted tramcar; long he sits and sitsthinking of her, gazing up at those lonely ancient stars; the air isstill bright with her presence, sweet with her thoughts, warm with herkisses, and as he turns to the shut piano, he can still see her whitehands on the keys and her girlish face raised in an ecstasy--BeataBeatrix--above the music. 

 'O love, my love! if I no more should see Thyself, nor on the earth the shadow of thee, Nor image of thine eyes in any spring-- How then should sound upon Life's darkening slope The ground-whirl of the perished leaves of Hope, The wind of Death's imperishable wing!'

And then . .. He would throw himself upon his bed, and burst into tears. 

 * * * * *

 'And they are gone: aye, ages long ago These lovers fled away into the storm. '

That seventh-story heaven once more leads a dull life as the office of aship-chandler, and harsh voices grate the air where Beauty sang. Thebooks and the flowers and the lovers' faces are gone for ever. I supposethe stars are the same, and perhaps they sometimes look down throughthat roof-window, and wonder what has become of those two lovers whoused to look up at them so fearlessly long ago. 

But friends of mine who believe in God say that He has given His angelscharge concerning that dingy old seventh-floor heaven, and that, forthose who have eyes to see, there is no place where a great dream hasbeen dreamed that is not thus watched over by the guardian angels ofmemory. 

_For M. Le G. , 25 September 1895. _

SPRING BY PARCEL POST

 They've taken all the spring from the country to the town-- Like the butter and the eggs, and the milk from the cow. .. . 

So began to jig and jingle my thoughts as in my letters and newspapersthis morning I read, buried alive among the solitary fastnesses of theSurrey hills, the last news from town. The news I envied most was thatspring had already reached London. 'Now, ' ran a pretty article on springfashions, 'the sunshine makes bright the streets, and theflower-baskets, like huge bouquets, announce the gay arrival of spring. 'I looked up and out through my hillside window. The black ridge on theother side of the valley stood a grim wall of burnt heather against thesky--which sky, like the bullets in the nursery rhyme, was madeunmistakably of lead; a close rain was falling methodically, and, generally speaking, the world looked like a soaked mackintosh. It wasn'tmuch like the gay arrival of spring, and grimly I mused on theadvantages of life in town. 

Certainly, it did seem hard, I reflected, that town should be ahead ofus even in such a country matter as spring. Flower-baskets indeed! Why, we haven't as much as a daisy for miles around. It is true that on theterrace there the crocuses blaze like a street on fire, that theprimroses thicken into clumps, lying among their green leaves likepounds of country butter; it is true that the blue cones of the littlegrape hyacinth are there, quaintly formal as a child's toy-flowers; yes!and the big Dutch hyacinths are already shamelessly _enceinte_ withtheir buxom waxen blooms, so fat and fragrant--(one is already deliveredof a fine blossom. Well, that is a fine baby, to be sure! say the otherhyacinths, with babes no less bonny under their own green aprons--allwaiting for the doctor sun). Then among the blue-green blades of thenarcissus, here and there you see a stem topped with a creamishchrysalis-like envelope, from which will soon emerge a beautiful eye, rayed round with white wings, looking as though it were meant to fly, but remaining rooted--a butterfly on a stalk; while all the beds arecrowded with indeterminate beak and blade, pushing and elbowing eachother for a look at the sun, which, however, sulkily declines to look atthem. It is true there is spring on the terrace, but even so it isspring imported from the town--spring bought in Holborn, springdelivered free by parcel post; for where would the terrace have been butfor the city seedsman--that magician who sends you strangely spottedbeans and mysterious bulbs in shrivelled cerements, weird littleflower-mummies that suggest centuries of forgotten silence in paintedEgyptian tombs. This strange and shrivelled thing can surely never liveagain, we say, as we hold it in our hands, seeing not the glowingcircles of colour, tiny rings of Saturn, packed so carefully inside thisflower-egg, the folds of green and silver silk wound round and round theprecious life within. 

But, of course, this is all the seedsman's cunning, and no credit toNature; and I repeat, that were it not for railways and the parcelpost--goodness knows whether we should ever get any spring at all in thecountry! Think of the days when it had to travel down by stage-coach. For, left to herself, what is the best Nature can do for you with Marchwell on the way? Personally, I find the face of the country practicallyunchanged. It is, to all intents and purposes, the same as it has beenfor the last three or four months--as grim, as unadorned, as bleak, asdraughty, and generally as comfortless as ever. There isn't a flower tobe seen, hardly a bird worth listening to, not a tree that is notwinter-naked, and not a chair to sit down upon. If you want flowers onyour walks you must bring them with you; songs, you must take a poetunder your arm; and if you want to rest, lean laboriously on yourstick--or take your chance of rheumatism. 

Of course your specialists, your botanists, your nature-detectives, willtell you otherwise. They have surprised a violet in the act ofblossoming; after long and excited chase have discovered a clump ofprimroses in their wild state; seen one butterfly, heard one cuckoo. Butas one swallow does not make a summer, it takes more than one cuckoo tomake a spring. I confess that only yesterday I saw three sulphurbutterflies, with my own eyes; I admit the catkins, and thesilver-notched palm; and I am told on good colour-authority that thereis a lovely purplish bloom, almost like plum-bloom, over certain copsesin the valley; by taking thought, I have observed the long horizontalarms of the beech growing spurred with little forked branches ofspear-shaped buds, and I see little green nipples pushing out throughthe wolf-coloured rind of the dwarf fir-trees. Spring is arming insecret to attack the winter--that is sure enough, but spring in secretis no spring for me. I want to see her marching gaily with greenpennons, and flashing sun-blades, and a good band. 

I want butterflies as they have them at the Lyceum--'butterflies allwhite, ' 'butterflies all blue, ' 'butterflies of gold, ' and I shouldparticularly fancy 'butterflies all black. ' But there, again, yousee, --you must go to town, within hearing of Mrs. Patrick Campbell's_voix d'or_. I want the meadows thickly inlaid with buttercups anddaisies; I want the trees thick with green leaves, the sky all larks andsunshine; I want hawthorn and wild roses--both at once; I want some go, some colour, some warmth in the world. Oh, where are the pipes of Pan?

The pipes of Pan are in town, playing at street corners and in thecentres of crowded circuses, piled high with flower-baskets blazing withrefulgent flowery masses of white and gold. Here are the flowers you canonly buy in town; simple flowers enough, but only to be had in town. Here are fragrant banks of violets every few yards, conflagrations ofdaffodils at every crossing, and narcissus in scented starry garlandsfor your hair. 

You wander through the Strand, or along Regent Street, as through themeadows of Enna--sweet scents, sweet sounds, sweet shapes, are all aboutyou; the town-butterflies, white, blue, and gold, 'wheel and shine' andflutter from shop to shop, suddenly resurgent from their winterwardrobes as from a chrysalis; bright eyes flash and flirt along themerry, jostling street, while the sun pours out his golden wineoverhead, splashing it about from gilded domes and bright-facedwindows--and ever are the voices at the corners and the crossingscalling out the sweet flower-names of the spring!

 * * * * *

But here in the country it is still all rain and iron. I am tired ofwaiting for this slow-moving provincial spring. Let us to the town tomeet the spring--for:

 They've taken all the spring from the country to the town-- Like the butter and the eggs, and the milk from the cow; And if you want a primrose, you write to London now, And if you need a nightingale, well, --Whiteley sends it down. 

THE GREAT MERRY-GO-ROUND

In an age curious of new pleasures, the merry-go-round seems still tomaintain its ancient popularity. I was the other day the delighted, indeed the fascinated, spectator of one in full swing in an oldThames-side town. It was a very superior example, with a central musicalengine of extraordinary splendour, and horses that actually curveted, asthey swirled maddeningly round to the strains of 'The Man that Broke theBank at Monte Carlo. ' How I longed to join the wild riders! But though Iam a brave man, I confess that to ride a merry-go-round in front of alaughter-loving Cockney public is more than I can dare. I had to contentmyself with watching the faces of the riders. I noticed particularly onebright-eyed little girl, whose whole passionate young soul seemed to beon fire with ecstasy, and for whom it was not difficult to prophesytrouble when time should bring her within reach of more dangerousexcitements. Then there was a stolid little boy, dull and unmoved inexpression, as though he were in church. Life, one felt sure, would besafe enough, and stupid enough, for him; the world would have no musicto stir or draw him. The fifes would go down the street with a sweetsound of marching feet, and the eyes of other men would brighten andtheir blood be all glancing spears and streaming banners, but he wouldremain behind his counter; from the strange hill beyond the town thedear, unholy music, so lovely in the ears of other men and maids, wouldcall to him in vain, and morning and evening the stars would sing abovehis draper's shop, but he never hear a word. 

What particularly struck me was the number of quite grown-up, evenelderly, people who came and had their pennyworth of horse-exercise. Nowit was a grave young workman quietly smoking his pipe as he revolved;now it was a stout middle-aged woman returning from marketing, on whomthe Zulu music and the whirling horses laid their irresistible spells. Unless ye become as little children!

Is the Kingdom of Heaven really at hand? For, indeed, men and women, andperhaps particularly literary men and women, are once more becoming aslittle children in their pleasures. 

Seriously, one of the most curious and significant of recent literaryphenomena is the sudden return of the literary man to physical, andso-called 'Philistine, ' pleasures and modes of recreation. PerhapsStevenson set the fashion with his canoe and his donkey. But at themoment that he was valiantly daring any one to tell him whether therewas anything better worth doing 'than fooling among boats, ' EdwardFitzgerald, all unconscious and careless of literary fashions, wasgiving still more practical expression to the physical faith that was inhim, by going shares in a Lowestoft herring-lugger, and throwing hisheart as well as his money into the fortunes of its noble skipper'Posh. ' A literary man _par excellence_, Mr. Lang reproaches his siresfor his present way of life--

 'Why lay your gipsy freedom down And doom your child to pen and ink?'

and by steady and persistent golfing, and writing about angling andcricket, comes as near to the noble savage as is possible to soincorrigibly civilised a man. Mr. Henley--that Berserker of thepen--sings the sword with a vigour that makes one curious to see himusing it, and we all know Mr. Kipling's views on the matter. Then Mr. Bernard Shaw rides a bicycle!

Those men of letters whose inclinations or opportunities do not leadthem to these out-of-door, and more or less ferocious, pleasures seek toforget themselves at the music-hall, the Aquarium, or the numerousEarl's Court exhibitions. They become amateurs of foreign dancing, connoisseurs of the trapeze, or they leave their great minds at home andgo up the Great Wheel. Earl's Court, particularly, is becoming quite amodern Vauxhall--Tan-ta-ra-ra! Earl's Court! Earl's Court!--and Mr. ImreKiralfy, with his conceptions and designs, is to our generation whatAlbert Smith was to the age of Dickens and Edmund Yates. 

It takes some experience of life to realise how right this is; torealise that, after all our fine philosophies and cocksure sciences, there is no better answer to the riddle of things than a good game ofcricket or an exciting spin on one's 'bike. ' The real inner significanceof Earl's Court--Mr. Kiralfy will no doubt be prepared to hear--is thefailure of science as an answer to life. We give up the riddle, andenjoy ourselves with our wiser children. Simple pleasures, no doubt, forthe profound! But what is simple, and what is profound?

The simple joy we get from 'fooling among boats' on a summer day, thethrill of a well-hit ball, the rapture of a skilful dive, are no moreeasy to explain than the more complicated pleasures of literature, orart, or religion. And why is it--to come closer to our theme--that theround or the whirling have such attraction for us? What is the secret ofthe fascination of the circle? Why is it that the turning of anything, be it but a barrel-organ or a phrase, holds one as with an hypnoticpower? I confess that I can never genuinely pity a knife-grinder, however needy. Think of the pleasure of driving that wheel all day, themerry chirp of the knife on the stone, and the crisp, bright spray ofthe flying sparks! Why, he does 'what some men dream of all theirlives'! Wheels of all kinds have the same strange charm; mill-wheels, colliery-wheels, spinning-wheels, water-wheels, and wheeling waters:there may--who knows?--have been a certain pleasure in being broken onthe wheel, and, at all events, that hideous punishment is anothercurious example of the fascination of the circle. It would take a wholevolume to illustrate the prevalence of the circle in external nature, inhistory, and, even more significant, in language. We all know, or thinkwe know, that the world is round--

 'This orb--this round Of sight and sound, '

as Mr. Quiller Couch sings--though I remember a porter at school who wassure that it was flat, and who used to say that Hamlet's

 'How weary, stale, _flat_, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this _world_!'

was a cryptic reference to Shakespeare's secret belief in his theory. Many of the things we love most are round. Is not money, according tothe proverb, made round that it may go round, and are not the men mostin demand described as 'all-round men'? Nor are all-round women withouttheir admirers. Events, we know, move in a circle, as time moves incycles--though, alas! not on them. The ballet and the bicycle arepopular forms of the circle, and it is the charm of the essay to be'roundabout. '

Again, how is it that that which on a small scale does not impress us atall, when on a large scale impresses us so much? What is the secret ofthe impressiveness of size, bulk, height, depth, speed, and mileage?Philosophically, a mountain is no more wonderful than a molehill, yet noman is knighted for climbing a molehill. One little drop of water andone little grain of sand are essentially as wonderful as 'the mightyocean' or 'the beauteous land' to which they contribute. A balloon isno more wonderful than an air-bubble, and were you to build an Atlanticliner as big as the Isle of Wight it would really be no more remarkablethan an average steam-launch. Nobody marvels at the speed of a snail, yet, given a snail's pace to start with, an express train follows as amatter of course. Movement, not the rate of movement, is the mystery. Precisely the same materials, the same forces, the same methods, areemployed in the little as in the big of these examples. Why should mereaccumulation, reiteration, and magnification make the difference? We mayask why? But it does, for all that. If we answer that these mammothmultiplications impress us because they are so much bigger, taller, fatter, faster, etc. , than we are, the question arises--How many timesbigger than a man must a mountain be before it impresses us? Perhaps theproblem has already been tackled by the schoolman who pondered how manyangels could dance on the point of a needle. 

However, these and similar first principles, it will readily be seen, are far from being irrelevant for the visitor at the Earl's CourtExhibition. No doubt they are continually discussed by the thousands whodaily and nightly throng that very charming dream-world which Mr. Kiralfy has built 'midmost the beating' of our 'steely sea. '

To an age that is over-read and over-fed Mr. Kiralfy brings the message:'Leave your great minds at home, and go up the Great Wheel!' and I heardhis voice and obeyed. The sensation is, I should say, something betweengoing up in a balloon and being upon shipboard--a sensation compounded, maybe, of the creaking of the circular rigging, the pleasure of risingin the air, the freshening of the air as you ascend, the strange feelingof the earth receding and spreading out beneath you, the curiousdiminution of the people below--to their proper size. You will hearoriginal minds all about you comparing them to ants, and it is curiousto notice the involuntary feeling of contempt that possesses you as youwatch them. I believe one has a half-defined illusion that we aregrowing greater as they are growing smaller. Ants and flies! ants andflies! with here and there a fiery centipede in the shape of a Districttrain dashing in and out amongst them. We lose the power ofunderstanding their motions, and their throngs and movements do indeedseem as purposeless at this height as the hurry-scurrying about ananthill. At this height, indeed, one seems to understand how small amatter a bank smash may seem to the Almighty; though, as a lady said tome--as we clung tightly together in terror 'a-top of the topmostbough'--it must be gratifying to see so many churches. 

Those who would keep their illusions about the beauty of London hadbetter stay below, at least in the daytime, for it makes one's heartsink to look on those miles and miles of sordid grey roofs huddled inmeaningless rows and crescents, just for all the world like a hugechild's box of wooden bricks waiting to be arranged into someintelligible pattern. Of course, this is not London proper. Were theGreat Wheel set up in Trafalgar Square, one is fain to hope that theview from it would be less disheartening--though it might be better notto try. 

By night, except for the bright oases of the Indian Exhibition, the viewis little more than a black blank, a great inky plain with faint sparksand rows of light here and there, as though the world had been made ofsaltpetre paper, and had lately been set fire to. Were you a travellerfrom Mars you would say that the world was very badly lighted. But, forall that, night is the time for the Great Wheel, for the conflagrationof pleasure at our feet makes us forget the void dark beyond. Then theWheel seems like a great revolving spider's web, with firefliesentangled in it at every turn, and the little engine-house at thecentre, with its two electric lights, seems like the great lord spider, with monstrous pearls for his eyes. And, as in the daytime the heightrobs the depth of its significance, strips poor humanity of anysemblance of impressive or attractive meaning, at night the effect isjust the reverse. What a fairy-world is this opening out beneath ourfeet, with its golden glowing squares and circles and palaces, with itslamplit gardens and pagodas! and who are these gay and beautiful beingsflitting hither and thither, and passing from one bright garden toanother on the stream of pleasure? If this many-coloured, passionatedream be really human life, let us hasten to be down amongst it oncemore! And, after all, is not this flattering night aspect of the worldmore true than that disheartening countenance of it in the daylight?Those golden squares and glowing gardens and flashing waters are, ofcourse, an illusion of the magician Kiralfy's, yet what power could theillusion have upon us without the realities of beauty and love andpleasure it attracts there?

THE BURIAL OF ROMEO AND JULIET

One morning of all mornings the citizens of Verona were startled bystrange news. Tragic forces, to which they had been accustomed to paylittle heed, had been at work in their city during the dark hours, andyoung Romeo of the Montagues, handsome, devil-may-care lad as they hadknown him, and little Juliet of the Capulets, that madcap, merry, gentleyoung mistress, lay dead, side by side in the church of Santa Maria. 

Death! surely they were used to death! and Love, flower of the clove!they were used to _love_. But here were love and death, that somehowthey could not understand. So they hurried in wondering groups to SantaMaria, that they might gaze at the dead lovers, and thus perhaps come tounderstand. 

Romeo and Juliet lay receiving their guests in the vault of theCapulets, with a strange smile of welcome for all who came. And theirpresence-chamber was bright with candles and flowers, and sweet withthe sweet smell of death. The air that had drunk in their wild wordsand their last long looks of heavenly love still hung about the darkcorners, as the air where a rose has been holds a little while thememory of its breath. Yes! that morning, in that dank but shiningtomb, you might draw into you the very breath of love. The air youbreathed had passed through the sweet lungs of Juliet, it had beenetherealised with her holy passion, and washed clean with her lovelywords. And now, for a little while yet, it feasted on the fair peaceof their glad young faces. To-morrow, or the next day, or the nextweek, they would belong to the unvisited treasure-house of the past, but now this morning of all mornings, this day that could never comeagain, they still belonged to the real and radiant present. 

Flowers there are that bloom but once in a hundred years, but here inthis tomb had blossomed one of those marvellous flowers that bloom butonce throughout eternity. Poets and kings in after-times, O men ofVerona, will yearn to have seen what you look upon to-day. For you, youthick and greasy citizens, are chosen out of all time to behold thisbeauty. There were once in the world thousands of men and women who hadheard the very words of Christ as they fell from His lips, words that wemay only read. There have been men, actual living, foolish men, who havelooked on at the valour of Horatius, men who from the crowded banks ofthe Nile have watched the living body of Cleopatra step into her gildedbarge, men who, standing idle in the streets of Florence, have seen thelove-light start in the great Dante's eyes, seen his hand move to hisladen heart, as the little Beatrice passed him by among her maidens. Base men of the past, by the indulgent accident of time, have beengranted to behold these wonders, and now for you, O men of Verona, alike wonder has been born. 

 * * * * *

Romeo and Juliet lay receiving their guests in the vault of theCapulets, with a strange smile of welcome for all who came. 

It had been an innocent little desire, yet had all the world comeagainst it. It had been a simple little desire, yet too strong for allthe world to break. 

Strange this enmity of the world to love, as though men should take armsagainst the song of a bird, or plot against the opening of a flower. 

But now, what was this strange homage to a love that a few hours ago hadno friend in all the daylight, a fearful bliss beneath the secret moon?But yesterday a stupid old nurse, a herb-gathering friar, a rascallyapothecary, had been their only friends, and now was all the world comehere to do their bidding. 

No need to steal again beneath the shade of orchard walls, no need againto heed if lark or nightingale sang in the reddening east. For the worldhad grown all warm to love, warm and kind as June to the rose. 

 * * * * *

Three days lay Romeo and Juliet receiving their guests in the vault ofthe Capulets, with that strange smile of welcome for all who came. Three days the world worshipped the love it could not understand, butstill came dense and denser throngs to worship. For the news of thewonderful flower that had blossomed in Verona had gone far and wide, andtravellers from distant cities kept pouring in to look at those strangeyoung lovers, who had deemed the world well lost so that they mightleave it together. 

Then the governor of the city decreed, as the time drew near when thetwo lovers must be left to their peace, and it was ill that any shouldlose the sight of this marvel, that on the fourth day they should becarried through the streets in the eyes of all the people, and then beburied together in the vault of the Capulets--for by this burial in thesame tomb, says the old chronicler who was first honoured with thetelling of their sweet story, the governor hoped to bring about a peacebetween the Montagues and Capulets, at least for a little while. 

Meanwhile, though Verona was a city of many trades and professions, andlove and death were idle things, yet was there little said of businessall these days, and little else done but talk of the two lovers, ofwhom, indeed, it was true, as it has seldom been true out of Holy Writ, that death was swallowed up in victory. During these days also therestole a strange sweetness over the city, as though the very spirit oflove had nested there, and was filling the air with its softbreathing--as when in the first days of spring the birds sing so sweetlythat broken hearts must hide away, and hard hearts grow a little kind. Men once more spoke kindly to their wives, and even coarse faces wore agentle light, --just as sometimes at evening the setting sun will turn totenderness even black rocks and frowning towers. 

There were many wild stories afloat about the end of the lovers. Somesaid one way and some another. By some the story went that Romeo wasalready dead before Juliet had awakened from her swoon, but othersdeclared that the poison had not worked upon him until Juliet'sawakening had made him awhile forget that he was to die. There werethose who professed to know the very words of their wild farewell, andin fact there had been several witnesses of Juliet's agony over the bodyof her lord. These had told how first she had raved and clung to him, and called him 'Romeo, ' 'Sweet Sir Romeo, ' 'Husband, ' and manyflower-like names, and had petted him and wooed him to come back. Thenon a sudden she had cried, God-a-mercy--how cold thou art!' and lookedat him long and strangely. Then had she grown stern, and anon soft. 'Canst thou not come back, my love? Then must I follow thee. Not so farart thou on the way of death, but that I shall overtake thee, andtogether shall we go to Pluto's realm, and seek a kinder world. '

Thereat she had plunged Romeo's dagger into her side, though some saidshe had stopped her heart's beating by the strong will of her greatlove. Yea--such were the distracted rumours--some averred that at thelast she had curst Christ and His saints, and called upon Venus, who, itwas rumoured in awestruck whispers, was being worshipped once more insecret corners of the world. 

It was strong noon when, on the fourth day, Romeo and Juliet werecarried through the bright and solemn streets, that the world might besaved; saved as ever by the spectacle and the worship of a mysteriousnobility, [comma added by transcriber] an uncomprehended greatness, abeauty which haunts not its daily dreams, lifted up by the humble gazeof devout eyes into the empyrean of greater souls, stirred to anunfamiliar passion, and fired with glimpses of a strange unworldlytruth. 

In the light of the sun the faces of the two lovers, as they lay amidtheir flowers, seemed to have grown a little weary, but they still woretheir sweet and royal smile, and their laurelled brows were very whiteand proud. 

And in the faces that looked upon them, as they moved slowly by, withsweet death music, and the hushed marching of feet, and the wafted odourof lilies, there was to be seen strangely blent a great pity for theirtragedy and a heavenly tenderness for their love. It was like a dreampassing down the streets of a dream, so deep and tender was the silence, for only the hearts of men were speaking; though here and there a girlsobbed, or a young man buried his face in his sleeve, and the sternesteyes were dashed with the holy water of tears. And with the pity andtenderness, who shall say but that in all that silent heart-speech therewas no little envy of the two who had loved so truly and died in thespringtide of their love, before the ways of love had grown dusty withits summer, or dreary with its autumn, before its dreams had petrifiedinto duties, and its passion deadened into use?

'Would it were thou and I, ' said many wedded eyes one to the other, delusively warm and soft for a moment, but all cold and hard again onthe morrow. 

And maybe some poet would say in his heart--

'If you loved her living, my Romeo, what were your love could you butsee her dead!' for indeed life has no beauty so wonderful as the beautyof death. 

And, as in all places and times, there was a base remnant that gaped andworshipped not, and in their hearts resented all this distinction paidto a nobility they could not recognise, as the like had grumbled whenCimabue's Madonna had been carried through the streets in glory. But ofthese there is no need that we should take account, any more than of thebeasts that moved head down amid the pastures outside the town, knowingnot of the wonder that was passing within. For the ass will munch histhistles though the Son of Man be his rider, nor will the sheep lookaside from his grazing though Apollo be the herdsman. 

 * * * * *

At length the sacred pageant was ended, gone like the passing of anaerial music, and the people went to their homes silent, with hauntedeyes; while the Earth, which had given this beauty, took it back toherself, and one more Persephone of human loveliness was shut within thegates of the forgetful grave. 

VARIATIONS UPON WHITEBAIT

A very Pre-Raphaelite friend of mine came to me one day and said _àpropos_ of his having designed a very Early English chair: 'After all, if one has anything to say one might as well put it into a chair!'

I thought the remark rather delicious, as also his other remark when oneday in a curiosity-shop we were looking at another chair, which thedealer declared to be Norman. My friend seated himself in it verygravely, and after softly moving about from side to side, testing it, itwould appear, by the sensation it imparted to the sitting portion of hislimbs, he solemnly decided: 'I don't think the _flavour_ of this chairis Norman!'

I thought of this Pre-Raphaelite brother as the Sphinx and I were seateda few evenings ago at our usual little dinner, in our usual littlesheltered corner, on the Lover's Gallery of one of the great Londonrestaurants. The Sphinx says that there is only one place in Europewhere one can really dine, but as it is impossible to be always withinreasonable train service of that Montsalvat of cookery, she consents toeat with me--she cannot call it dine--at the restaurant of which Ispeak. I being very simple-minded, untravelled, and unlanguaged, thinkit, in my Cockney heart, a very fine place indeed, with its white marblepillars surrounding the spacious peristyle, and flashing with a thousandbrilliant lights and colours; with its stately cooks, clothed in whitesamite, mystic, wonderful, ranged behind a great altar loaded with bigsilver dishes, and the sacred musicians of the temple ranged behindthem--while in and out go the waiters, clothed in white and black, waiters so good and kind that I am compelled to think of Elijah beingwaited on by angels. 

They have such an eye for a romance, too, and really take it personallyto heart if it should befall that our little table is usurped by othersthat know not love. I like them, too, because they really seem to havean eye for the strange beauty and charm of the Sphinx, quite anunexpected taste for Botticelli. They ill conceal their envy of my lot, and sometimes, in the meditative pauses between the courses, I see themromantically reckoning how it might be possible by desperately savingup, by prodigious windfalls of tips, from unexampled despatch andsweetness in their ministrations, how it might be possible in ten years'time, perhaps even in five--the lady would wait five years! and herpresent lover could be artistically poisoned meanwhile!--how it might bepossible to come and sue for her beautiful hand. Then a harsh Britishcry for 'waiter' comes like a rattle and scares away that beautifuldream-bird, though, as the poor dreamer speeds on the quest of roastbeef for four, you can see it still circling with its wonderful bluefeathers around his pomatumed head. 

Ah, yes, the waiters know that the Sphinx is no ordinary woman. Shecannot conceal even from them the mystical star of her face, they toocatch far echoes of the strange music of her brain, they too growdreamy with dropped hints of fragrance from the rose of her wonderfulheart. 

How reverently do they help her doff her little cloak of silk and lace!with what a worshipful inclination of the head, as in the presence of adeity, do they await her verdict of choice between rival soups--shall itbe 'clear or thick'? And when she decides on 'thick, ' how relieved theyseem to be, as if--well, some few matters remain undecided in theuniverse, but never mind, this is settled for ever--no more doubtspossible on one portentous issue, at any rate--Madame will take her soup'thick. '

'On such a night' our talk fell upon whitebait. 

As the Sphinx's silver fork rustled among the withered silver upon herplate, she turned to me and said:

'Have you ever thought what beautiful little things these whitebaitare?'

'Oh, yes, ' I replied, 'they are the daisies of the deep sea, thethreepenny-pieces of the ocean. '

'You dear!' said the Sphinx, who is alone in the world in thinking meawfully clever. 'Go on, say something else, something pretty aboutwhitebait--there's a subject for you!'

Then it was that, fortunately, I remembered my Pre-Raphaelite friend, and I sententiously remarked: 'Of course, if one has anything to say onecannot do better than say it about whitebait. .. . Well, whitebait. .. . '

But here, providentially, the band of the beef--that is, the band behindthe beef; that is, the band that nightly hymns the beef (the phrase isto be had in three qualities)--struck up the overture from _Tannhäuser_, which is not the only music that makes the Sphinx forget my existence;and thus, forgetting me, she momentarily forgot the whitebait. But Iremembered, remembered hard--worked at pretty things, as metal-workerspunch out their flowers of brass and copper. The music swirled about uslike golden waves, in which swam myriad whitebait, like showers of tinystars, like falling snow. To me it was one grand processional ofwhitebait, silver ripples upon streams of gold. 

The music stopped. The Sphinx turned to me with the soul of Wagner inher eyes, and then she turned to the waiter: 'Would it be possible, ' shesaid, 'to persuade the bandmaster to play that wonderful thing overagain?'

The waiter seemed a little doubtful, even for the Sphinx, but he wentoff to the bandmaster with the air of a man who has at last anopportunity to show that he can dare all for love. Personally, I have asuspicion that he poured his month's savings at the bandmaster's feet, and begged him to do this thing for the most wonderful lady in theworld; or perhaps the bandmaster was really a musician, and hismusician's heart was touched--lonely there amid the beef--to think thatthere was really some one, invisible though she were to him, someshrouded silver presence, up there among the beefeaters, who reallyloved to hear great music. Perhaps it was thus made a night he has neverforgotten; perhaps it changed the whole course of his life--who knows?The sweet reassuring request may have come to him at a moment when, sickat heart, he was deciding to abandon real music for ever, and settledown amid the beef and the beef-music of Old England. 

Well, however it was, the waiter came back radiant with a 'Yes' on everyshining part of him, and if the _Tannhäuser_ had been played well atfirst, certainly the orchestra surpassed themselves this second time. 

When the great jinnee of music had once more swept out of the hall, theSphinx turned with shining eyes to the waiter:

'Take, ' she said, 'take these tears to the bandmaster. He has indeedearned them. '

'Tears, little one!' I said. 'See how they swim like whitebait in thefishpools of your eyes!'

'Oh, yes, the whitebait, ' rejoined the Sphinx, glad of a subject to hideher emotion. 'Now tell me something nice about them, though the poorlittle things have long since disappeared. Tell me, for instance, howthey get their beautiful little silver waterproofs?'

'Electric Light of the World, ' I said, 'it is like this. While they arestill quite young and full of dreams, their mother takes them out inpicnic parties of a billion or so at a time to where the spring moon isshining, scattering silver from its purse of pearl far over the widewaters, --silver, silver, for every little whitebait that cares to swimand pick it up. The mother, who has a contract with some such bigrestaurateur as ours, chooses a convenient area of moonlight, and thenat a given sign they all turn over on their sides, and bask and bask inthe rays, little fin pressed lovingly against little fin--for this isthe happiest time in the young whitebait's life: it is at thesesilvering parties that matches are made and future consignments ofwhitebait arranged for. Well, night after night, they thus lie in themoonlight, first on one side, then on the other, till by degrees, tinyscale by scale, they have become completely lunar-plated. Ah! how sadthey are when the end of that happy time has come!'

'And what happens to them after that?' asked the Sphinx. 

'One night when the moon is hidden their mother comes to them withtreacherous wile, and suggests that they should go off on a holidayagain to seek the moon--the moon that for a moment seems captured by thepearl-fishers of the sky. And so off they go merrily, but, alas! no moonappears; and presently they are aware of unwieldy bumping presences uponthe surface of the sea, presences as of huge dolphins; and rough voicescall across the water, till, scared, the little whitebaits turn home inflight--to find themselves somehow meshed in an invisible prison, a netas fine and strong as air, into which, O agony! they are presentlyhauled, lovely banks of silver, shining like opened coffers beneath thecoarse and ragged flares of yellow torches. The rest is silence. '

'What sad little lives! and what a cruel world it is!' said theSphinx--as she crunched with her knife through the body of a lark, thatbut yesterday had been singing in the blue sky. Its spirit sang justabove our heads as she ate, and the air was thick with the grey ghostsof all the whitebait she had eaten that night. 

But there were no longer any tears in her eyes. 

THE ANSWER OF THE ROSE

The Sphinx and I sat in our little box at _Romeo and Juliet_. It was thefirst time she had seen that fairy-tale of passion upon the stage. I hadseen it played once before--in Paradise. Therefore, I rather trembled tosee it again in an earthly play-house, and as much as possible kept myeyes from the stage. All I knew of the performance--but how much wasthat!--was two lovely voices making love like angels; and when therewere no words, the music told me what was going on. Love speaks so manylanguages. 

One might as well look. It was as clear as moonlight to the tragic eyewithin the heart. The Sphinx was gazing on it all with those eyes thatwill never grow old, neither for years nor tears; but though I seemed tobe seeing nothing but an advertisement of Paderewski pianos on theprogramme, I saw it--oh, didn't I see it?--all. The house had growndark, and the music low and passionate, and for a moment no one wasspeaking. Only, deep in the thickets of my heart there sang a tragicnightingale that, happily, only I could hear; and I said to myself, 'Nowthe young fool is climbing the orchard wall! Yes, there go Benvolio andMercutio calling him; and now, --"he jests at scars who never felt awound"--the other young fool is coming out on to the balcony. God helpthem both! They have no eyes--no eyes--or surely they would see theshadow that sings "Love! Love! Love!" like a fountain in the moonlight, and then shrinks away to chuckle "Death! Death! Death!" in thedarkness!'

But, soft, what light from yonder window breaks!

The Sphinx turned to me for sympathy--this time it was the soul ofShakespeare in her eyes. 

'Yes!' I whispered, 'it is the Opening of the Eternal Rose, sung by theEternal Nightingale!'

She pressed my hand approvingly; and while the lovely voices made theirheavenly love, I slipped out my silver-bound pocket-book of ivory andpressed within it the rose which had just fallen from my lips. 

The worst of a great play is that one is so dull between the acts. Witis sacrilege, and sentiment is bathos. Not another rose fell from mylips during the performance, though that I minded little, as I was themore able to count the pearls that fell from the Sphinx's eyes. 

It took quite half a bottle of champagne to pull us up to our usualspirits, as we sat at supper at a window where we could see Londonspread out beneath us like a huge black velvet flower, dotted with fieryembroideries, sudden flaring stamens, and rows of ant-like firefliesmoving in slow zig-zag processions along and across its petals. 

'How strange it seems, ' said the Sphinx, 'to think that for every two ofthose moving double-lights, which we know to be the eyes of hansoms, butwhich seem up here nothing but gold dots in a very barbaric pattern ofblack and gold, there are two human beings, no doubt at this time ofnight two lovers, throbbing with the joy of life, and dreaming, heavenknows what dreams!'

'Yes, ' I rejoined;' and to them I'm afraid we are even more impersonal. From their little Piccadilly coracles our watch-tower in the skies ismerely a radiant facade of glowing windows, and no one of all who glideby realises that the spirited illumination is every bit due to youreyes. You have but to close them, and every one will be asking what hasgone wrong with the electric light. '

A little nonsense is a great healer of the heart, and by means of suchnonsense as this we grew merry again. And anon we grew sentimental andpoetic, but--thank heaven! we were no longer tragic. 

Presently I had news for the Sphinx. 'The rose-tree that grows in thegarden of my mind, ' I said, 'desires to blossom. '

'May it blossom indeed, ' she replied; 'for it has been flowerless allthis long evening; and bring me a rose fresh with all the dews ofinspiration--no florist's flower, wired and artificially scented, nobloom of yesterday's hard-driven brains. '

'I was only thinking, ' I said, '_à propos_ of nightingales and roses, that though all the world has heard the song of the nightingale to therose, only the nightingale has heard the answer of the rose. You knowwhat I mean?'

'Know what you mean! Of course, that's always easy enough, ' retorted theSphinx, who knows well how to be hard on me. 

'I'm so glad, ' I ventured to thrust back; 'for lucidity is the firstsuccess of expression: to make others see clearly what we ourselves arestruggling to see, believe with all their hearts what we are just daringto hope, is--well, the religion of a literary man!'

'Yes! it's a pretty idea, ' said the Sphinx, once more pressing the roseof my thought to her brain; 'and indeed it's more than pretty . .. '

'Thank you!' I said humbly. 

'Yes, it's _true_--and many a humble little rose will thank you for it. For, your nightingale is a self-advertising bird. He never sings a songwithout an eye on the critics, sitting up there in their stalls amongthe stars. He never, or seldom, sings a song for pure love, justbecause he must sing it or die. Indeed, he has a great fear of death, unless--you will guarantee him immortality. But the rose, the trustinglittle earth-born rose, that must stay all her life rooted in one spottill some nightingale comes to choose her--some nightingale whose songmaybe has been inspired and perfected by a hundred other roses, whichare at the moment pot-pourri--ah, the shy bosom-song of the rose . .. '

Here the Sphinx paused, and added abruptly--

'Well--there is no nightingale worthy to hear it!'

'It is true, ' I agreed, 'O trusting little earth-born rose!'

'Do you know why the rose has thorns?' suddenly asked the Sphinx. Ofcourse I knew, but I always respect a joke, particularly when it is buthalf-born--humourists always prefer to deliver themselves--so I shook myhead. 

'To keep off the nightingales, of course, ' said the Sphinx, the tone ofher voice holding in mocking solution the words 'Donkey' and'Stupid, '--which I recognised and meekly bore. 

'What an excellent idea!' I said. 'I never thought of it before. Butdon't you think it's a little unkind? For, after all, if there were nonightingales, one shouldn't hear so much about the rose; and there isalways the danger that if the rose continues too painfully thorny, thenightingale may go off and seek, say, a more accommodating lily. '

'I have no opinion of lilies, ' said the Sphinx. 

'Nor have I, ' I answered soothingly; 'I much prefer roses--but . .. But. .. . '

'But what?'

'But--well, I much prefer roses. Indeed I do. '

'Rose of the World, ' I continued with sentiment, 'draw in your thorns. Icannot bear them. '

'Ah!' she answered eagerly, 'that is just it. The nightingale that isworthy of the rose will not only bear, but positively love, her thorns. It is for that reason she wears them. The thorns of the rose properlyunderstood are but the tests of the nightingale. The nightingale thatis frightened of the thorns is not worthy of the rose--of that you maybe sure. .. . '

'I am not frightened of the thorns, ' I managed to interject. 

'Sing then once more, ' she cried, 'the Song of the Nightingale. '

And it was thus I sang:--

 O Rose of the World, a nightingale, A Bird of the World, am I, I have loved all the world and sung all the world, But I come to your side to die. 

 Tired of the world, as the world of me, I plead for your quiet breast, I have loved all the world and sung all the world-- But--where is the nightingale's nest?

 In a hundred gardens I sung the rose, Rose of the World, I confess-- But for every rose I have sung before I love you the more, not less. 

 Perfect it grew by each rose that died, Each rose that has died for you, The song that I sing--yea, 'tis no new song, It is tried--and so it is true. 

 Petal or thorn, yea! I have no care, So that I here abide; Pierce me, my love, or kiss me, my love, But keep me close to your side. 

 I know not your kiss from your scorn, my love, Your breast from your thorn, my rose, And if you must kill me, well, kill me, my love! But--say 'twas the death I chose. 

'Is it true?' asked the Rose. 

'As I am a nightingale, ' I replied; and as we bade each othergood-night, I whispered:

'When may I expect the Answer of the Rose?'

ABOUT THE SECURITIES

When I say that my friend Matthew lay dying, I want you so far aspossible to dissociate the statement from any conventional, andcertainly from any pictorial, conceptions of death which you may haveacquired. Death sometimes shows himself one of those impersonal artistswho conceal their art, and, unless you had been told, you could hardlyhave guessed that Matthew was dying, dying indeed sixty miles an hour, dying of consumption, dying because some one else had died four yearsbefore, dying too of debt. 

Connoisseurs, of course, would have understood; at a glance would havenamed the sculptor who was silently chiselling those noble hollows inthe finely modelled face, --that Pygmalion who turns all flesh tostone, --at a glance would have named the painter who was cunninglyweighting the brows with darkness that the eyes might shine the morewith an unaccustomed light. Matthew and I had long been students of thestrange wandering artist, had begun by hating his art (it is ever sowith an art unfamiliar to us), and had ended by loving it. 

'Let us see what the artist has added to the picture since yesterday, 'said Matthew, signing to me to hand him the mirror. 

'H'm, ' he murmured, 'he's had one of his lazy days, I'm afraid. He'shardly added a touch--just a little heightened the chiaroscuro, sharpened the nose a trifle, deepened some little the shadows round theeyes. .. . 

'O why, ' he presently sighed, 'does he not work a little overtime andget it done? He's been paid handsomely enough. .. . 

'Paid, ' he continued, 'by a life that is so much undeveloped gold-mine, paid by all my uncashed hopes and dreams. .. . '

'He works fast enough for me, old fellow, ' I interrupted; 'there was atime, was there not, when he worked too fast for you and me?'

There are moments, for certain people, when such fantastic unreality asthis is the truest realism. Matthew and I talked like this with ourbrains, because we hadn't the courage to allow our hearts to break inupon the conversation. Had I dared to say some real emotional thing, what effect would it have had but to set poor tired Matthew a-coughing?and it was our aim that he should die with as little to-do aspracticable. The emotional in such situations is merely the obvious. There was no need for either of us to state the elementary feelings ofour love. I knew that Matthew was going to die, and he knew that--I wasgoing to live, and we pitied each other accordingly; though I confess myfeeling for him was rather one of envy, --when it was not congratulation. 

Thus, to tell the truth, we never mentioned 'the hereafter. ' I don'tbelieve it even occurred to us. Indeed, we spent the few hours thatremained of our friendship in retailing the latest gathered of thosegood stories with which we had been accustomed to salt our intercourse. 

One of Matthew's anecdotes was, no doubt, somewhat suggested by theoccasion, and I should add that he had always somewhat of anecclesiastical bias--would, I believe, have ended some day as aMonsignor, a notable 'Bishop Blougram. '

His story was of an evangelistic preacher who desired to impress hiscongregation with the unmistakable reality of hell-fire. 'You know theBlack Country, my friends, ' he had declaimed, ' you have seen it, atnight, flaring with a thousand furnaces, in the lurid incandescence ofwhich myriads of unhappy beings, our fellow-creatures (God forbid!), snatch a precarious existence--you have seen them silhouetted againstthe yellow glare, running hither and thither, as it seemed from afar, inthe very jaws of the awful fire. Have you realised that the burdens withwhich they thus run hither and thither are molten iron, iron to whichsuch a stupendous heat has been applied that it has melted, melted asthough it had been sugar in the sun?--well! returning to hell-fire, letme tell you this, that in hell they eat this fiery molten metal forice-cream!--yes! and are glad to get anything so cool. '

It was thus we talked while Matthew lay dying, for why should we nottalk as we had lived? We both laughed long and heartily over this story;perhaps it would have amused us less had Matthew not been dying; andthen his kind old nurse brought in our lunch. We had both excellentappetites, and were far from indifferent to the dainty little meal whichwas to be our last but one together. I brought my table as close toMatthew's pillow as was possible, and he stroked my hand with tendernessin which there was a touch of gratitude. 

'You are not frightened of the bacteria!' he laughed sadly; and then hetold me, with huge amusement, how a friend (and a true, dear friend forall that) had come to see him a day or two before, and had hung over theend of the bed to say farewell, daring to approach no nearer, moppinghis fear-perspiring brows with a handkerchief soaked in 'Eucalyptus'!

'He had brought an anticipatory elegy too, ' said my friend, 'writtenagainst my burial. I wish you'd read it for me, ' and he fidgeted for itin the nervous manner of the dying. Finding it among his pillows, hehanded it to me saying, 'You needn't be frightened of it. It is welldosed with Eucalyptus. '

We laughed even more over this poem than over our stories, and then wediscussed the terms of three cremation societies to which, at theexpress request of my friend, I had written a day or two before. 

Then having smoked a cigar and drunk a glass of port together (for theassured dying are allowed to 'live well'), Matthew grew sleepy, and, tucking him beneath the counterpane, I left him, for, after all, he wasnot to die that day. 

Circumstances prevented my seeing him again for a week. When I did so, entering the room poignantly redolent of the strange sweet odour ofantiseptics, I saw that the great artist had been busy in my absence. Indeed, his work was nearly at an end. Yet to one unfamiliar with hismethods there was still little to alarm in Matthew's face. In fact, withthe exception of his brain, and his ice-cold feet, he was alive as ever. And even to his brain had come a certain unnatural activity, a life asof the grave, a sort of vampire vitality, which would assuredly havedeceived any who had not known him. He still told his stories, laughedand talked with the same unconquerable humour, was in every way alertand practical, with this difference, that he had forgotten he was goingto die, that the world in which he exercised his various faculties wasanother world to that in which, in spite of his delirium, we ate ourlast boiled fowl, drank our last wine, smoked our last cigar together. His talk was so convincingly rational, dealt with such unreal matters inso every-day a fashion, that you were ready to think that surely it wasyou and not he whose mind was wandering. 

'You might reach that pocket-book, and ring for Mrs. Davies, ' he wouldsay in so casual a way that of course you would ring. On Mrs. Davies'sappearance he would be fumbling about among the papers in hispocket-book, and presently he would say, with a look of frustration thatwent to one's heart--'I've got a ten-pound note somewhere here for you, Mrs. Davies, to pay you up till Saturday, but somehow I seem to havelost it. Yet it must be somewhere about. Perhaps you'll find it as youmake the bed in the morning. I'm so sorry to have troubled you. .. . '

And then he would grow tired and doze a little on his pillow. 

Suddenly he would be alert again, and with a startling vividness tell mestrange stories from the dreamland into which he was now passing. 

I had promised to see him on Monday, but had been prevented, and hadwired to him accordingly. This was Tuesday. 

'You needn't have troubled to wire, ' he said. 'Didn't you know I was inLondon from Saturday to Monday?'

'The doctor and Mrs. Davies didn't know, ' he continued with the creepycunning of the dying: 'I managed to slip away to look at a house I thinkof taking--in fact I've taken it. It's in--in--now, where is it? Nowisn't that silly? I can see it as plain as anything--yet I cannot, forthe life of me, remember where it is, or the number. .. . It was somewhereSt. John's Wood way . .. Never mind, you must come and see me there, whenwe get in. .. . '

I said he was dying in debt, and thus the heaven that lay about hisdeathbed was one of fantastic Eldorados, sudden colossal legacies, andmiraculous windfalls. 

'I haven't told you, ' he said presently, 'of the piece of good luck thathas befallen me. You are not the only person in luck. I can hardlyexpect you to believe me, it sounds so like the Arabian Nights. However, it's true for all that. Well, one of the little sisters was playing inthe garden a few afternoons ago, making mud-pies or something of thatsort, and she suddenly scraped up a sovereign. Presently she found twoor three more, and our curiosity becoming aroused, a turn or two withthe spade revealed quite a bed of gold; and the end of it was, that onfurther excavating, the whole garden proved to be one mass ofsovereigns. Sixty thousand pounds we counted . .. And then, what do youthink?--it suddenly melted away. .. . '

He paused for a moment, and continued, more in amusement than regret--

'Yes--the Government got wind of it, and claimed the whole lot astreasure-trove!

'But not, ' he added slyly, 'before I'd paid off two or three of mybiggest bills. Yes--and--you'll keep it quiet, of course, --there'sanother lot been discovered in the garden, but we shall take good carethe Government doesn't get hold of it this time, you bet. '

He told this wild story with such an air of simple conviction that, oddas it may seem, one believed every word of it. But the tale of hissudden good-fortune was not ended. 

'You've heard of old Lord Osterley, ' he presently began again. 'Well, congratulate me, old man: he has just died and left everything to me. You know what a splendid library he had--to think that that will all bemine--and that grand old park through which we've so often wandered, youand I! Well, we shall need fear no gamekeeper now, and of course, dearold fellow, you'll come and live with me--like a prince--and just writeyour own books and say farewell to journalism for ever. Of course I canhardly believe it's true yet. It seems too much of a dream, and yetthere's no doubt about it. I had a letter from my solicitors thismorning, saying that they were engaged in going through the securities, and--and--but the letter's somewhere over there; you might read it. No?can't you find it? It's there somewhere about, I know. Never mind, youcan see it again. .. . ' he finished wearily. 

'Yes!' he presently said, half to himself, 'it will be a wonderfulchange! a wonderful change!'

 * * * * *

At length the time came to say good-bye, a good-bye I knew must be thelast, for my affairs were taking me so far away from him that I couldnot hope to see him for some days. 

'I'm afraid, old man, ' I said, 'that I mayn't be able to see you foranother week. '

'O never mind, old fellow, don't worry about me. I'm much betternow--and by the time you come again we shall know all about thesecurities. '

The securities! My heart had seemed like a stone, incapable of feeling, all those last unreal hours together; but the pathos of that sad phrase, so curiously symbolic, suddenly smote it with overwhelming pity, and thetears sprang to my eyes for the first time. As I bent over him to kisshis poor damp forehead, and press his hand for the last farewell, Imurmured--

'Yes--dear, dear old friend. We shall know all about the securities. .. . '

THE BOOM IN YELLOW

Green must always have a large following among artists and art lovers;for, as has been pointed out, an appreciation of it is a sure sign of asubtle artistic temperament. There is something not quite good, something almost sinister, about it--at least, in its more complexforms, though in its simple form, as we find it in outdoor nature, it isinnocent enough; and, indeed, is it not used in colloquial metaphor asan adjective for innocence itself? Innocence has but two colours, whiteor green. But Becky Sharp's eyes also were green, and the green of theaesthete does not suggest innocence. There will always be wearers of thegreen carnation; but the popular vogue which green has enjoyed for thelast ten or fifteen years is probably passing. Even the aesthete himselfwould seem to be growing a little weary of its indefinitely dividedtones, and to be anxious for a colour sensation somewhat more positivethan those to be gained from almost imperceptible _nuances_, of green. Jaded with over-refinements and super-subtleties, we seem in manydirections to be harking back to the primary colours of life. Blue, crude and unsoftened, and a form of magenta, have recently had a shortinnings; and now the triumph of yellow is imminent. Of course, a lovefor green implies some regard for yellow, and in our so-called aestheticrenaissance the sunflower went before the green carnation--which is, indeed, the badge of but a small schism of aesthetes, and not worn bythe great body of the more catholic lovers of beauty. 

Yellow is becoming more and more dominant in decoration--in wall-papers, and flowers cultivated with decorative intention, such aschrysanthemums. And one can easily understand why: seeing that, afterwhite, yellow reflects more light than any other colour, and thusministers to the growing preference for light and joyous rooms. A fewyellow chrysanthemums will make a small room look twice its size, andwhen the sun comes out upon a yellow wall-paper the whole room seemssuddenly to expand, to open like a flower. When it falls upon the pot ofyellow chrysanthemums, and sets them ablaze, it seems as though one hadan angel in the room. Bill-posters are beginning to discover theattractive qualities of the colour. Who can ever forget meeting for thefirst time upon a hoarding Mr. Dudley Hardy's wonderful Yellow Girl, thepretty advance-guard of _To-Day_? But I suppose the honour of thediscovery of the colour for advertising purposes rests with Mr. Colman;though its recent boom comes from the publishers, and particularly fromthe Bodley Head. _The Yellow Book_ with any other colour would hardlyhave sold as well--the first private edition of Mr. Arthur Benson'spoems, by the way, came caparisoned in yellow, and with the identicalname, _Le Cahier Jaune_; and no doubt it was largely its title that madethe success of _The Yellow Aster_. In literature, indeed, yellow haslong been the colour of romance. The word 'yellow-back' witnesses itsclose association with fiction; and in France, as we know, it is theall but universal custom to bind books in yellow paper. Mr. Heinemannand Mr. Unwin have endeavoured to naturalise the custom here; but, though in cloth yellow has emphatically 'caught on, ' in paper it stillhangs fire. The ABC Railway Guide is probably the only exception, andthat, it is to be hoped, is not fiction. Mr. Lang has recently followedthe fashion with his _Yellow Fairy Book_; and, indeed, one of the bestknown figures in fairydom is yellow--namely, the Yellow Dwarf. Yellow, always a prominent Oriental colour, was but lately of peculiarsignificance in the Far East; for were not the sorrows of a certain highChinese official intimately connected with the fatal colour? The YellowBook, the Yellow Aster, the Yellow Jacket!--and the Yellow Fever, like'Orion' Home's sunshine, is always with us' somewhere in the world. ' Thesame applies also, I suppose, to the Yellow Sea. 

Till one comes to think of it, one hardly realises how many importantand pleasant things in life are yellow. Blue and green, no doubt, contract for the colouring of vast departments of the physical world. 'Blue!' sings Keats, in a fine but too little known sonnet--

 '. .. 'Tis the life of heaven--the domain Of Cynthia--the wide palace of the sun-- The tent of Hesperus, and all his train-- The bosomer of clouds, gold, grey, and dun. Blue! 'Tis the life of waters . .. Blue! Gentle cousin of the forest green, Married to green in all the sweetest flowers. '

Yellow might retort by quoting Mr. Grant Allen, in his book on _TheColour Sense_, to the effect that the blueness of sea and sky is mainlypoetical illusion or inaccuracy, and that sea and sky are found blueonly in one experiment out of fourteen. At morning and evening they areusually in great part stained golden. Blue certainly has one advantageover yellow, in that it has the privilege of colouring some of theprettiest eyes in the world. Yellow has a chance only in cases ofjaundice and liver complaint, and his colour scheme in such cases isseldom appreciated. Again, green has the contract for the greater bulkof the vegetable life of the globe; but his is a monotonous business, like the painting of miles and miles of palings: grass, grass, grass, trees, trees, trees, _ad infinitum_; whereas yellow leads a roving, versatile life, and is seldom called upon for such monotonous labour. The sands of Sahara are probably the only conspicuous instance of yellowthus working by the piece. It is in the quality, in the diversity of thethings it colours, rather than in their mileage or tonnage, that yellowis distinguished; though, for that matter, we suppose, the sun is as bigand heavy as most things, and that is yellow. Of course, when we sayyellow we include golden, and all varieties of the colour--saffron, orange, flaxen, tawny, blonde, topaz, citron, etc. 

If the sun may reasonably be described as the most important object inthe world, surely money is the next. That, as we know, is, in its mostpotent metallic form, yellow also. The 'yellow gold' is a favouritephrase in certain forms of poetry; and 'yellow-boys' is a term ofnatural affection among sailors. Following the example of their lord thesun, most fires and lights are yellow or golden, and it is only intimes of danger or superstition that they burn red or blue. And, ifyellow be denied entrance to beautiful eyes, it enjoys a privilegewhich--except in the case of certain indigo-staining African tribes, whocannot be said to count--blue has never claimed: that of colouringperhaps the loveliest thing in the world, the hair of woman. Hair isnaturally golden--unnaturally also. When Browning sings pathetically of'dear dead women--with such hair too!' he continues:--

 'What's become of all the _gold_ Used to hang and brush their bosoms'--

not 'all the blue' or 'all the brown, ' though some of us, it is true, are condemned to wear our hair brown or blue-black. But such are onlyunhappy exceptions. Yellow or gold is the rule. The bravest men and thefairest women have had golden hair, and, we may add, in reference toanother distinction of the colour we are celebrating, golden hearts. Hair at the present time is doing its best to conform to its normalconditions of colour. Numerous instances might be adduced of itschanging from black to gold, in obedience to chemical law. 'Peroxide ofhydrogen!' says the cynic. 'Beauty!' says the lover of art. 

And it might be argued, in a world of inevitable compromise, that thedamage done to the physical health and texture of the hair thus playingthe chameleon may well be overbalanced by the happiness, and consequentincreased effectiveness, of the person thus dyeing for the sake ofbeauty. Thaumaturgists lay much stress on the mystic influence ofcolours; and who knows but that, if we were only allowed to dye our hairwhat colour we chose, we might be different men and women? Strangethings are told of women who have dyed their hair the colour of blood orof wine, and we know from Christina Rossetti that golden hair isnegotiable in fairyland--

 '"You have much gold upon your head, " They answered all together: "Buy from us with a golden curl. "'

Whether Laura could have done business with the goblin merchantmen withan oxidised curl is a difficult point, for fairies have sharp eyes; and, though it be impossible for a mortal to tell the real gold from thefalse gold hair, the fairies may be able to do so, and might reject thecurl as counterfeit. 

Again, if in the vegetable world green almost universally colours theleaves, yellow has more to do with the flowers. The flowers we love bestare yellow: the cowslip, the daffodil, the crocus, the buttercup, halfthe daisy, the honeysuckle, and the loveliest rose. Yellow, too, has itsturn even with the leaves; and what an artist he shows himself when, inautumn, he 'lays his fiery finger' upon them, lighting up the forlornwoodland with splashes--pure palette-colour of audacious gold! He hangsthe mulberry with heart-shaped yellow shields--which reminds one of theheraldic importance of 'or, '--and he lines the banks of the Seine withphantasmal yellow poplars. And other leaves still dearer to the heartare yellow likewise; leaves of those sweet old poets whose thoughts seemto have turned the pages gold. Let us dream of this: a maid with yellowhair, clad in a yellow gown, seated in a yellow room, at the window ayellow sunset, in the grate a yellow fire, at her side a yellowlamplight, on her knee a Yellow Book. And the letters we love best toread--when we dare--are they not yellow too? No doubt some disagreeablethings are reported of yellow. We have had the yellow-fever, and we havehad pea-soup. The eyes of lions are said to be yellow, and the ugliestcats--the cats that infest one's garden--are always yellow. Somemedicines are yellow, and no doubt there are many other yellowdisagreeables; but we prefer to dwell upon the yellow blessings. I hadalmost forgotten that the gayest wines are yellow. Nor has religionforgotten yellow. It is to be hoped yellow will not forget religion. Thesacred robe of the second greatest religion of the world is yellow, 'theyellow robe' of the Buddhist friar; and when the sacred harlots ofHindustan walk in lovely procession through the streets, they too, likethe friars, are clad in yellow. Amber is yellow; so is the orange; andso were stage-coaches and many dashing things of the old time; and pinkis yellow by lamplight. But gold-mines, it has been proved, are not soyellow as is popularly supposed. Hymen's robe is Miltonically 'saffron, 'and the dearest petticoat in all literature--not forgetting the'tempestuous' garment of Herrick's Julia--was 'yaller. ' Yes!--

 ''Er petticoat was yaller an' 'er little cap was green, An' er name was Supi-yaw-lat, jes' the same as Theebaw's Queen. '

Is it possible to say anything prettier for yellow than that?

LETTER TO AN UNSUCCESSFUL LITERARY MAN

My Dear Sir, --I agree with every word you say. You have my entiresympathy. The world is indeed hard, hard to the sad--particularly hardto the unsuccessful. A sure five hundred a year covers a multitude ofsorrows. It is ever an ill wind for the shorn lamb. If it be true thatnothing succeeds like success, it is no less sadly true that nothingfails like failure. And when one thinks of it, it is only natural, forevery failure is an obstruction in the stream of life. Metaphoricalwriters are fond of saying that the successful ride to success on theback of the failures. It is true that many rise on stepping-stones oftheir dead relations--but that is because their relations have beenfinancial successes. In truth, instead of the failure making thefortune of the successful, it is just the reverse. A very successful manwould be the more successful were it not for the failures--on whom hehas either to spend his money to support, or his time to advise. Thestrong are said to be impatient towards the weak--and is it to bewondered at, in a world where even the strongest need all theirstrength, in a sea where the best swimmer needs all his wind and muscleand skill to keep afloat? If success is sometimes 'unfeeling' towardsfailure, failure is often unfair to success. Of course, 'it is He thathath made us and not we ourselves, ' but that is a text that cuts bothways; and when all is said and done, the failure detracts from the forcein the universe; he is the clog on the wheel of fortune. To say that thesuccessful man benefits by the failure of others is as true as it wouldbe to say that the ratepayer benefits by the poor-rates. You use theword 'charlatan' somewhat profusely of several successful writers, andno doubt you are right. But you must remember that it is a favouritecharge against the gifted and the fortunate. Because we have failed byfair means, we are sure the other fellows have succeeded by foul. And, moreover, one is apt to forget how much talent is needed to be acharlatan. Never look down upon a charlatan. Courage, skill, personalforce or charm, great knowledge of human nature, dramatic instinct, andindustry--few charlatans succeed (and no one is called a charlatan tillhe _does_ succeed, be his success as low or high as you please) withoutpossessing a majority of these qualities; how many of which--it would beinteresting to know--do you possess?

Indeed, it would seem to need more gifts to be a rogue than an honestman, and there is a sense in which every great man may be described as acharlatan--_plus_ greatness; greatness being an almost indefinablequality, a quality, at any rate, on which there is a bewilderingdiversity of opinion. 

You seem a little cross with publishers and editors. They have notproved the distinguished, brilliant, and sympathetic beings you imaginedthem in your boyish dreams. No doubt, publishers and editors enterhardly into the kingdom of heaven. But then, you see, they don't care somuch about that; they are much more interested in the next election atcertain fashionable clubs. It is really a little hard on them that theyshould suffer from the ignorant misconception of the literary amateur. It is only those who have had no dealings with them who would be unfairenough to expect publishers or editors to be literary men. They arebusiness men--business men _par excellence_--and a good thing, too, fortheir papers and their authors. You lament their mercenary view of life;but, judging by your letter, even you are not disposed to regard moneyas the root of all evil. 

You cannot understand why you have failed where others have succeeded. You have far more Greek than Keats, more history than Scott, and youknow nineteen languages--ten of them to speak. With so manyaccomplishments, it must indeed be hard to fail--though you do not seemto have found it difficult. You have travelled too--have been twiceround the world, and have a thorough knowledge of the worst hotels. Certainly, it is singular. Nevertheless, I must confess that the dullestmen I have ever met have been professors of history; the worst poetshave not only known Greek, but French as well; and, generally speakingthe most tiresome of my acquaintances have more degrees than I haveLatin to name them in. Alas! it is not experience, or travel, orlanguage, but the use we make of them, that makes literary success, which, one may add, is particularly dependent--perhaps notunnaturally--on the use we make of language. A book may be a book, although there is neither Latin nor Greek, nor travel, norexperience--in fact 'nothing' in it; and though, like myself, you maypay an Oxford professor a thousand a year to correct your proofs, youmay still miss immortality. 

To these intellectual and general equipments you add goodness of heart, sincerity of conviction, and martyrdom for your opinions; you are, itwould seem, like many others of us, the best fellow and greatest man ofyour acquaintance. Permit me to remind you that we are not talking ofgoodness of heart, of strength or beauty of character, but of success, which is a thing apart, a fine art in itself. 

You confess that you are somewhat unpractical: you expectothers--hard-worked journalists who never met you--to tell you what toread, how to form your style, and how 'to get into the magazines. ' Youare, you say, with something of pride, but a poor business man. That isa pity, for nearly every successful literary man of the day, andparticularly the novelists, are excellent business men. Indeed, thehistory of literature all round has proved that the men who have beenmasters of words have also been masters of things--masters of the factsof life for which those words stand. Many writers have mismanaged theiraffairs from idleness and indifference, but few from incapacity. LeighHunt boasted that he could never master the multiplication-table. Perhaps that accounts for his comparative failure as a writer. Incompetence in one art is far from being a guarantee of competency inanother, and a man is all the more likely to make a name if he is ableto make a living--though, judging from Coleridge, it seems a good planto let another hard-worked man support one's wife and children. On theother hand, though business faculty is a great deal, it is noteverything: for a man may be as punctual and methodical as Southey, andyet miss the prize of his high calling, or as generally 'impossible' asBlake, and yet win his place among the immortals. 

In fact, after all, success in literature has something to do withwriting. In temporary success, industry and business faculty, and anunworked field--be it Scotland, Ireland, or the Isle of Man (any placebut plain England!)--are the chief factors. For that more lastingsuccess which we call fame other qualities are needed, such qualities asimagination, fancy, and magic and force in the use of words. Can youhonestly say, O beloved, though tiresome, correspondent, that thesegreat gifts are yours? Judging from your letter--but Heaven forbid thatI should be unkind! For, need I say I love you with a fellow-feeling? Doyou think that you are the only unappreciated genius on the planet--notto speak of all the other unappreciated geniuses on all the otherplanets? Thank goodness, the postal arrangements with the latter are asyet defective! Others there are with hearts as warm, minds as profound, and style at least as attractive, who languish in unmeritedneglect--Miltons inglorious indeed, though far from mute. 

Believe me, you are not alone. In fact, there are so many like you thatit would be quite easy for you to find society without worrying me. And, for all of us, there is the consolation that, though we fail as writers, we may still succeed as citizens, as husbands and fathers and friends. As Whitman would say--because you are not Editor of _The Times_, do yougive in that you are less than a man? There are poets that have neverentered into the Bodley Head, and great prose-writers who have never satin an editorial chair. Be satisfied with your heavenly crowns, O youwhining unsuccessful, and leave to your inferiors the earthlyfive-shilling pieces. 

A POET IN THE CITY

 'In the midway of this our mortal life, I found me in a gloomy wood, astray. '

I (and when I say I, I must be understood to be speaking dramatically)only venture into the City once a year, for the very pleasant purpose ofdrawing that twelve-pound-ten by which the English nation, ever sogenerously sensitive to the necessities, not to say luxuries, of theartist, endeavours to express its pride and delight in me. It would be avery graceful exercise of gratitude for me here to stop and parenthesisethe reader on the subject of all that twelve-pound-ten has been to me, how it has quite changed the course of my life, given me thatlong-desired opportunity of doing my best work in peace, for which sooften I vainly sighed in Fleet Street, and even allowed me an indulgencein minor luxuries which I could not have dreamed of enjoying before thedays of that twelve-pound-ten. Now not only peace and plenty, butleisure and luxury are mine. There is nothing goes so far as--Governmentmoney. 

Usually on these literally State occasions, I drive up in state, that isin a hansom. There is only one other day in the year on which I am sosplendid, but that is another beautiful story. It, too, is a day and anhour too joyous to be approached otherwise than on winged wheels, toostately to be approached in merely pedestrian fashion. To go on foot todraw one's pension seems a sort of slight on the great nation that doesone honour, as though a Lord Mayor should make his appearance in theprocession in his office coat. 

So I say it is my custom to go gaily, and withal stately, to meet mytwelve-pound-ten in a hansom. For many reasons the occasion always seemssomething of an adventure, and I confess I always feel a little excitedabout it--indeed, to tell the truth, a little nervous. As I glide alongin my state barge (which seems a much more proper and impressive imagefor a hansom than 'gondola, ' with its reminiscences of Earl's Court) Ifeel like some fragile country flower torn from its roots, andbewilderingly hurried along upon the turbid, swollen stream of Londonlife. 

The stream glides sweetly with a pleasant trotting tinkle of bells bythe green parkside of Piccadilly, and sweet is it to hear the sirenssinging, and to see them combing their gilded locks, on the yellow sandsof Piccadilly Circus--so called, no doubt, from the number of horses andthe skill of their drivers. Here are the whirling pools of pleasure, merry wheels of laughing waters, where your hansom glides along with agolden ease--it is only when you enter the First Cataract of the Strandthat you become aware of the far-distant terrible roar of the Falls!They are yet nearly two miles away, but already, like Niagara, thouhearest the sound thereof--the fateful sound of that human Niagara, where all the great rivers of London converge: the dark, strong floodssurging out from the gloomy fastnesses of the East End, thequick-running streams from the palaces of the West, the East with itswagons, the West with its hansoms, the four winds with their omnibuses, the horses and carriages under the earth jetting up their companies ofgrimy passengers, the very air busy with a million errands. 

You are in the rapids--metaphorically speaking--as you crawl downCheapside; and here where the Bank of England and the Mansion House risesheer and awful from, shall we say, this boiling caldron, this 'hell' ofangry meeting waters--Threadneedle Street and Cornhill, Queen VictoriaStreet and Cheapside, each 'running, ' again metaphorically, 'like amill-race'--here in this wild maelstrom of human life and humanconveyances, here is the true 'Niagara in London, ' here are the mostwonderful falls in the world--the London Falls. 

'Yes!' I said softly to myself, and I could see the sly sad smile on theface of the dead poet, at the thought of whose serene wisdom a silencelike snow seemed momentarily to cover up the turmoil--'Yes!' I saidsoftly, 'there is still the same old crush at the corner of FenchurchStreet!'

By this time I had disbursed one of my two annual cab-fares, and wasstanding a little forlorn at that very corner. It was a March afternoon, bitter and gloomy; lamps were already popping alight in a desolate way, and the east wind whistled mournfully through the ribs of thepassers-by. A very unflowerlike man was dejectedly calling out'daffadowndillies' close by. The sound of the pretty old word, thusquaintly spoken, brightened the air better than the electric lightswhich suddenly shot rows of wintry moonlight along the streets. I boughta bunch of the poor pinched flowers, and asked the man how he came tocall them 'daffadowndillies. '

'D'vunshur, ' he said, in anything but a Devonshire accent, and then theeast wind took him and he was gone--doubtless to a neighbouring tavern;and no wonder, poor soul! Flowers certainly fall into strange hands herein London. 

Well, it was nearing four, and if I wanted a grateful country'stwelve-pound-ten, I must make haste; so presently I found myself in agreat hall, of which I have no clearer impression than that there weresoft little lights all about me, and a soft chime of falling gold, likethe rippling of Pactolus. I have a sort of idea, too, of a great numberof young men with most beautiful moustaches, playing with goldenshovels; and as I thus stood among the soft lights and listened to themost beautiful sound in the world, I thought that thus must Danæ havefelt as she stood amid the falling shower. But I took care to see thatmy twelve sovereigns and a half were right number and weight for allthat. 

Once more in the street, I lingered a while to take a last look at theFalls. What a masterful alien life it all seemed to me! No singlepersonality could hope to stand alone amid all that stress of ponderous, bullying forces. Only public companies, and such great impersonalities, could hope to hold their own, to swim in such a whirlpool--and eventhey, I had heard it whispered, far away in my quiet starlit garret, sometimes went down. 'How, ' I cried, 'would--

 '. .. My tiny spark of being wholly vanish in your deeps and heights . .. Rush of suns, and roll of systems, and your fiery clash of meteorites, '

again quoting poetry. I always quote poetry in the City, as aprotest--moreover, it clears the air. 

The more people buffeted against me the more I felt the crushing senseof almost cosmic forces. Everybody was so plainly an atom in a publiccompany, a drop of water in a tyrannous stream of humanenergy--companies that cared nothing for their individual atoms, streamsthat cared nothing for their component drops; such atoms and drops, forthe most part, to be had for thirty shillings a week. These people aboutme seemed no more like individual men and women than individual puffs ina mighty rushing wind, or the notes in a great scheme of music, are menand women--to the banker so many pens with ears whereon to perch them, to the capitalist so many 'hands, ' and to the City man generally so many'helpless pieces of the game he plays' up there in spidery nooks andcorners of the City. 

As I listened to the throbbing of the great human engines in thebuildings about me, a rising and a falling there seemed as of thosegreat steel-limbed monsters, weird contortionists of metal, that jet upand down, and writhe and wrestle this way and that, behind the longglass windows of great water-towers, or toil like Vulcan in the bowelsof mighty ships. An expression of frenzy seems to come up even from thedumb tossing steel; sometimes it seems to be shaking great knuckledfists at one and brandishing threatening arms, as it strains and sweatsbeneath the lash of the compulsive steam. As one watches it, there seemssomething of human agony about its panic-stricken labours, and somethinglike a sense of pity surprises one--a sense of pity that anything in theworld should have to work like that, even steel, even, as we say, senseless steel. What, then, of these great human engine-houses! Willthe engines always consent to rise and fall, night and day, like that?or will there some day be a mighty convulsion, and this blind Samson oflabour pull down the whole engine-house upon his oppressors? Who knows?These are questions for great politicians and thinkers to decide, notfor a poet, who is too much terrified by such forces to be able calmlyto estimate and prophesy concerning them. 

Yes! if you want to realise Tennyson's picture of 'one poor poet'sscroll' ruling the world, take your poet's scroll down to FenchurchStreet and try it there. Ah, what a powerless little 'private interest'seems poetry there, poetry 'whose action is no stronger than a flower. 'In days of peace it ventures even into the morning papers; but, let onlya rumour of war be heard, and it vanishes like a dream on doomsdaymorning. A County Council election passeth over it and it is gone. 

Yet it was near this very spot that Keats dug up the buried beauty ofGreece, lying hidden beneath Finsbury Pavement! and in the deserted Citychurches great dramatists lie about us. Maybe I have wronged theCity--and at this thought I remembered a little bookshop but a few yardsaway, blossoming like a rose right in the heart of the wilderness. 

Here, after all, in spite of all my whirlpools and engine-houses, wasfor me the greatest danger in the City. Need I say, therefore, that Ipromptly sought it, hovered about it a moment--and entered? How much ofthat grateful governmental twelve-pound-ten came out alive, I dare nottell my dearest friend. 

At all events I came out somehow reassured, more rich in faith. Therewas a might of poesy after all. There were words in the littleyellow-leaved garland, nestling like a bird in my hand, that wouldoutlast the bank yonder, and outlive us all. I held it up. How tiny itseemed, how frail amid all this stone and iron! A mere flower--a flowerfrom the seventeenth century--long-lived for a flower! Yes, an_immortelle_. 

BROWN ROSES

'Well, I never thought to see this day, sir, ' said Gibbs, with somethinglike tears in his voice, as he reluctantly plied his scissors uponHyacinth Rondel's distinguished curls. 

'Nor I, Gibbs--nor I!' said Rondel sadly, relapsing into silence again, with his head meekly bent over the white sheet spread to catch his shornbeauty. 

'To think of the times, sir, that I have dressed your head, ' continuedGibbs, whose grief bore so marked an emphasis, 'and to think that afterto-day . .. '

'But you forget, my dear Gibbs, that I shall now be a more constantcustomer than ever!'

'Ah, sir, but that will be different. It will be mere machine-cutting, lawn-mowing, steam-reaping, if you understand me; there'll be nopleasure in it, no artistic pleasure, I mean. '

'Yes, Gibbs, and you are an artist--I have often told you that. '

'Ah, sir, but I am coming to the conclusion that it is better not to bean artist, better to be born just like every one else. In these days onesuffers too much. Why, sir, I haven't in the whole of my business sixheads like yours, and I go on cutting all the rest week in and week out, just for the pleasure of dressing those six--and now there'll only befive. '

 * * * * *

'It looks like a winding-sheet, ' mused Rondel presently, after a longsilence, broken only by the soft crunch and click of the fatal scissors, as they feasted on the beautiful brown silk. 

'It do indeed, sir, ' said Gibbs, with a shudder, as another little globeof golden brown rolled down into Rondel's lap. 

'Poor brown roses!' sighed the poet, after another silence; 'they arejust like brown roses, aren't they, Gibbs?'

'They are indeed, sir!'

'Brown roses scattered over the winding-sheet of one's youth--eh, Gibbs?'

'They are indeed, sir. '

'That's rather a pretty image, don't you think, Gibbs?'

'Indeed I do, sir!'

'Well, well, they have bloomed their last; and when Juliet's white handscome seeking with their silver fingers, white maidens lost in the brownenchanted forest, there will not be a rose left for her to gather. '

'Believe me, sir, I would more gladly have cut off your head than yourhair--that is, figuratively speaking, ' sobbed the artist-in-hair-oils. 

'Yes, my head would hardly be missed--you are quite right, Gibbs; but myhair! What will they do without it at first nights and private views? Itwas worth five shillings a week to many a poor paragraph-writer. Well, Imust try and make up for it by my beard!'

'Your beard, sir?' exclaimed Gibbs in horror. 

'Yes, Gibbs; for some years I have been a Nazarene--that is, a Nazarite, with the top half of my head; now I am going to change about and be aNazarite with the lower. The razor has kissed my cheeks and my chin andthe fluted column of my throat for the last time. '

'You cannot mean it, sir!' said Gibbs, suspending his murderous task amoment. 

'It's quite true, Gibbs. '

'Does she wish that too, sir?'

'Yes, that too. '

'Well, sir, I have heard of men making sacrifices for their wives, butof all the cruel. .. . '

'Please don't, Gibbs. It does no good. And Mrs. Rondel's motive is agood one. '

'Of course, sir, I cannot presume--and yet, if it wouldn't be presuming, I should like to know why you are making this great, I may say thisnoble, sacrifice?'

'Well, Gibbs, we're old friends, and I'll tell you some day, but Ihardly feel up to it to-day. '

'Of course not, sir, of course not--it's only natural, ' said Gibbstenderly, while the scissors once more took up the conversation. 

THE DONKEY THAT LOVED A STAR

'That is how the donkey tells his love!' I said one day, with intent tobe funny, as the prolonged love-whoop of a distant donkey was heard inthe land. 

'Don't be too ready to laugh at donkeys, ' said my friend. 'For, ' hecontinued, 'even donkeys have their dreams. Perhaps, indeed, the mostbeautiful dreams are dreamed by donkeys. '

'Indeed, ' I said, 'and now that I think of it, I remember to have saidthat most dreamers are donkeys, though I never expected so scientific acorroboration of a fleeting jest. '

Now, my friend is an eminent scientist and poet in one, a seriouscombination; and he took my remarks with seriousness at once scientificand poetic. 

'Yes, ' he went on, 'that is where you clever people make a mistake. Youthink that because a donkey has only two vowel-sounds wherewith toexpress his emotions, he has no emotions to express. But let me tellyou, sir . .. '

But here we both burst out laughing--

'You Golden Ass!' I said, 'take a munch of these roses; perhaps they willrestore you. '

'No, ' he resumed, 'I am quite serious. I have for many years past made astudy of donkeys--high-stepping critics call it the study of HumanNature--however, it's the same thing--and I must say that the more Istudy them the more I love them. There is nothing so well worth studyingas the misunderstood, for the very reason that everybody thinks heunderstands it. Now, to take another instance, most people think theyhave said the last word on a goose when they have called it "agoose"!--but let me tell you, sir . .. '

But here again we burst out laughing--

'Dear goose of the golden eggs, ' I said, 'pray leave to discourse ongeese to-night--though lovely and pleasant would the discoursebe;--to-night I am all agog for donkeys. '

'So be it, ' said my friend, ' and if that be so, I cannot do better thantell you the story of the donkey that loved a star--keeping for anotherday the no less fascinating story of the goose that loved an angel. '

By this time I was, appropriately, all ears. 

'Well, ' he once more began, 'there was once a donkey, quite an intimatefriend of mine--and I have no friend of whom I am prouder--who wasunpractically fond of looking up at the stars. He could go a whole daywithout thistles, if night would only bring him stars. Of course hesuffered no little from his fellow-donkeys for this curious passion ofhis. They said well that it did not become him, for indeed it was nolittle laughable to see him gazing so sentimentally at the remote andpitiless heavens. Donkeys who belonged to Shakespeare Societies recalledthe fate of Bottom, the donkey who had loved a fairy; but our donkeypaid little heed. There is perhaps only one advantage in being adonkey--namely, a hide impervious to criticism. In our donkey's case itwas rather a dream that made him forget his hide--a dream that drew upall the sensitiveness from every part, from hoof, and hide, and ears, sothat all the feeling in his whole body was centred in his eyes andbrain, and those, as we have said, were centred on a star. He took itfor granted that his fellows should sneer and kick-out at him--it wasever so with genius among the donkeys, and he had very soon grown usedto these attentions of his brethren, which were powerless to withdrawhis gaze from the star he loved. For though he loved all the stars, asevery individual man loves all women, there was one star he loved morethan any other; and standing one midnight among his thistles, he prayeda prayer, a prayer that some day it might be granted him to carry thatstar upon his back--which, he recalled, had been sanctified by the holysign--were it but for ever so short a journey. Just to carry it a littleway, and then to die. This to him was a dream beyond the dreams ofdonkeys. 

'Now, one night, ' continued my friend, taking breath for himself andme, 'our poor donkey looked up to the sky, and lo! the star was nowhereto be seen. He had heard it said that stars sometimes fall. Evidentlyhis star had fallen. Fallen! but what if it had fallen upon the earth?Being a donkey, the wildest dreams seemed possible to him. And, strangeas it may seem, there came a day when a poet came to his master andbought our donkey to carry his little child. Now, the very first day hehad her upon his back, the donkey knew that his prayer had beenanswered, and that the little swaddled babe he carried was the star hehad prayed for. And, indeed, so it was; for so long as donkeys ask nomore than to fetch and carry for their beloved, they may be sure ofbeauty upon their backs. Now, so long as this little girl that was astar remained a little girl, our donkey was happy. For many pretty yearsshe would kiss his ugly muzzle and feed his mouth with sugar--and thusour donkey's thoughts sweetened day by day, till from a naturalpessimist he blossomed into a perfectly absurd optimist, and dreamed thedonkiest of dreams. But, one day, as he carried the girl who was reallya star through the spring lanes, a young man walked beside her, andthough our donkey thought very little of his talk--in fact, felt hisplain "hee-haw" to be worth all its smart chirping and twittering--yetit evidently pleased the maiden. It included quite a number ofvowel-sounds--though, if the maiden had only known, it didn't mean halfso much as the donkey's plain monotonous declaration. 

'Well, our donkey soon began to realise that his dream was nearing itsend; and, indeed, one day his little mistress came bringing him thesweetest of kisses, the very best sugar in the very best shops, but forall that our donkey knew that it meant good-bye. It is the charmingmanner of English girls to be at their sweetest when they say good-bye. 

'Our dreamer-donkey went into exile as servant to a woodcutter, and hislife was lenient if dull, for the woodcutter had no sticks to waste uponhis back; and next day his young mistress who was once a star took apony for her love, whom some time after she discarded for a talentedhunter, and, one fine day, like many of her sex, she pitched heraffections upon a man--he too being a talented hunter. To their weddingcame all the countryside. And with the countryside came the donkey. Hecarried a great bundle of firewood for the servants' hall, and as hewaited outside, gazing up at his old loves the stars, while his masterdrank deeper and deeper within, he revolved many thoughts. But he isonly known to have made one remark--in the nature, one may think, of agrim jest--

'"After all!" he was heard to say, "she has married a donkey--afterall!"

'No doubt it was feeble; but then our donkey was growing old and bitter, and hope deferred had made him a cynic. '

ON LOVING ONE'S ENEMIES

Like all people who live apart from it, the Founder of the Christianreligion was possessed of a profound knowledge of the world. As, according to the proverb, the woodlander sees nothing of the wood forits trees, so those who live in the world know nothing of it. They knowits gaudy, glittering surface, its Crystal Palace fireworks, and thepaste-diamonds with which it bedecks itself; they know its music-hallsand its night clubs, its Piccadillys and its politics, its restaurantsand its salons; but of the bad--or good?--heart of it all they knownothing. In more meanings than one, it takes a saint to catch a sinner;and Christ certainly knew as well as saved the sinner. 

But none of His precepts show a truer knowledge of life and itsconditions than His commandment that we should love our enemies. Herealised--can we doubt?--that, without enemies, the Church He bade Hisfollowers build could not hope to be established. He knew that thespiritual fire He strove to kindle would spread but little, unless thefour winds of the world blew against it. Well, indeed, may the ChristianChurch love its enemies, for it is they who have made it. 

Indeed, for a man, or a cause, that wants to get on, there is nothinglike a few hearty, zealous enemies. Most of us would never be heard ofif it were not for our enemies. The unsuccessful man counts up hisfriends, but the successful man numbers his enemies. A friend of minewas lamenting, the other day, that he could not find twelve people todisbelieve in him. He had been seeking them for years, he sighed, andcould not get beyond eleven. But, even so, with only eleven he was avery successful man. In these kind-hearted days enemies are becoming sorare that one has to go out of one's way to make them. The trueinterpretation, therefore, of the easiest of the commandments is--makeyour enemies, and your enemies will make you. 

So soon as the armed men begin to spring up in our fields, we may besure that we have not sown in vain. 

Properly understood, an enemy is but a negative embodiment of ourpersonalities or ideas. He is an involuntary witness to our vitality. Much as he despises us, greatly as he may injure us, he is none the lessa creature of our making. It was we who put into him the breath of hismalignity, and inspired the activity of his malice. Therefore, with hisvery existence so tremendous a tribute, we can afford to smile at hisself-conscious disclaimers of our significance. Though he slay us, we_made_ him--to 'make an enemy, ' is not that the phrase?

Indeed, the fact that he is our enemy is his one _raison d'être_. Thatalone should make us charitable to him. Live and let live. Without usour enemy has no occupation, for to hate us is his profession. Think ofhis wives and families!

The friendship of the little for the great is an old-establishedprofession; there is but one older--namely, the hatred of the littlefor the great; and, though it is perhaps less officially recognised, itis without doubt the more lucrative. It is one of the shortest roads tofame. Why is the name of Pontius Pilate an uneasy ghost of history?Think what fame it would have meant to be an enemy of Socrates orShakespeare! _Blackwood's Magazine_ and _The Quarterly Review_ onlysurvive to-day because they once did their best to strangle the geniusof Keats and Tennyson. Two or three journals of our own time, by thesame unfailing method, seek that circulation from posterity which isdenied them in the present. 

This is particularly true in literature, where the literary enemy is asorganised a tradesman as the literary agent. Like the literary agent, henaturally does his best to secure the biggest men. No doubt the timewill come when the literary cut-throat--shall we call him?--will publishdainty little books of testimonials from authors, full of effusivegratitude for the manner in which they have been slashed and bludgeonedinto fame. 'Butcher to Mr. Grant Allen' may then become a familiarlegend over literary shop-fronts:--

 'Ah! did you stab at Shelley's heart With silly sneer and cruel lie? And Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Keats, To murder did you nobly try?

 You failed, 'tis true; but what of that? The world remembers still your name-- 'Tis fame, _for you_, to be the cur That barks behind the heels of Fame. '

Any one who is fortunate enough to have enemies will know that all thisis far from being fanciful. If one's enemies have any other _raisond'être_ beyond the fact of their being our enemies--what is it? They areneither beautiful nor clever, wise nor good, famous nor, indeed, passably distinguished. Were they any of these, they would not havetaken to so humble a means of getting their living. Instead of being ourenemies, they could then have afforded to employ enemies on their ownaccount. 

Who, indeed, are our enemies? Broadly speaking, they are all thosepeople who lack what we possess. 

If you are rich, every poor man is necessarily your enemy. If you arebeautiful, the great democracy of the plain and ugly will mock you inthe streets. It will be the same with everything you possess. Thebrainless will never forgive you for possessing brains, the weak willhate you for your strength, and the evil for your good heart. If you canwrite, all the bad writers are at once your foes. If you can paint, thebad painters will talk you down. But more than any talent or charm youmay possess, the pearl of price for which you will be most bitterlyhated will be your success. You can be the most wonderful person thatever existed, so long as you don't succeed, and nobody will mind. 'It isthe sunshine, ' says some one, 'that brings out the adder. ' So powerful, indeed, is success that it has been known to turn a friend into a foe. Those, then, who wish to engage a few trusty enemies out of place needonly advertise among the unsuccessful. 

_P. S. _--For one service we should be particularly thankful to ourenemies--they save us so much in stimulants. Their unbelief so helps ourbelief, their negatives make us so positive. 

THE DRAMATIC ART OF LIFE

It is a curious truth that, whereas in every other art deliberate choiceof method and careful calculation of effect are expected from theartist, in the greatest and most difficult art of all, the art of life, this is not so. In literature, painting, or sculpture you first evolveyour conception, and then, after long study of it, as it glows andshimmers in your imagination, you set about the reverent selection ofthat form which shall be its most truthful incarnation, in words, inpaint, in marble. Now life, as has been said many times, is an art too. Sententious morality from time past has told us that we are each given apart to play, evidently implying, with involuntary cynicism, that theart of life is--the art of acting. 

As with the actor, we are each given a certain dramatic conception forthe expression of which we have precisely the same artisticmaterials--namely, our own bodies, sometimes including heart and brains. One has often heard the complaint of a certain actor that he actshimself. On the metaphorical stage of life the complaint and the implieddemand are just the reverse. How much more interesting life would be ifonly more people had the courage and skill to act themselves, instead ofabjectly understudying some one else! Of course, there are supers on thestage of life as on the real stage. It is proper that these should dressand speak and think alike. These one courteously excepts from thegeneralisation that the composer of the play, as Marcus Aurelius callshim, has given each of us a certain part to play--that part simplyoneself: a part, need one say, by no means as easy as it seems; a partmost difficult to study, and requiring daily rehearsal. So difficult isit, indeed, that most people throw up the part, and join the ranks ofthe supers--who, curiously enough, are paid much more handsomely thanthe principals. They enter one of the learned or idle professions, jointhe army or take to trade, and so speedily rid themselves of the irksomenecessity of being anything more individual than 'the learned counsel, ''the learned judge, ' 'my lord bishop, ' or 'the colonel, ' namesimpersonal in application as the dignity of 'Pharaoh, ' whereof the nameand not the man was alone important. Henceforth they are the Church, theLaw, the Army, the City, or that vaguer profession Society. Entering oneof these, they become as lost to the really living world as the monk whovoluntarily surrenders all will and character of his own at thethreshold of his monastery: bricks in a prison wall, privates in theline, peas in a row. But, as I say, these are the parts that pay. Forplaying the others, indeed, you are not paid, but expected topay--dearly. 

It is full time we turned to those on whom falls the burden of thosereal parts. Such, when quite young, if they be conscientious artists, will carefully consider themselves, their gifts and possibilities, studyto discover their artistic _raison d'être_ and how best to fulfil it. He or she will say: Here am I, a creature of great gifts and exquisitesensibilities, drawn by great dreams, and vibrating to great emotions;yet this potent and exquisite self is as yet, I know, but unwroughtmaterial of the perfect work of art it is intended that I should make ofit--but the marble wherefrom, with patient chisel, I must liberate theperfect and triumphant ME! As a poet listening with trembling ear to thevoice of his inspiration, so I tremulously ask myself--what is thedivine conception that is to become embodied in me, what is the divinemeaning of ME? How best shall I express it in look, in word, in deed, till my outer self becomes the truthful symbol of my inner self--till, in fact, I have successfully placed the best of myself on the outside--for others besides myself to see, and know and love?

What is my part, and how am I to play it?

Returning to the latter image, there are two difficulties that beset onein playing a part on the stage of life, right at the outset. You are notallowed to 'look' it, or 'dress' it! What would an actor think, who, asked to play Hamlet, found that he would be expected to play itwithout make-up and in nineteenth-century costume? Yet many of us are ina like dilemma with similar parts. Actors and audience must all wear thesame drab clothes and the same immobile expression. It is in vain youprotest that you do not really belong to this absurd and vulgarnineteenth century, that you have been spirited into it by a cruelmistake, that you really belong to mediæval Florence, to Elizabethan, Caroline, or at latest Queen Anne England, and that you would like to beallowed to look and dress as like it as possible. It is no use; if youdare to look or dress like anything but your own tradesmen--and othercritics--it is at your peril. If you are beautiful, you are expected todisguise a fact that is an open insult to every other person you lookat; and you must, as a general rule, never look, wear, feel, or say whateverybody else is not also looking, wearing, feeling, or saying. 

Thus you get some hint of the difficulty of playing the part of yourselfon this stage of life. 

In these matters of dressing and looking your part musicians seemgranted an immunity denied to all their fellow-artists. Perhaps it istaken for granted that the musician is a fool--the British public is sointuitive. Yet it takes the same view of the poet, without allowing hima like immunity. And, by the way, what a fine conception of his part hadTennyson--of the dignity, the mystery, the picturesqueness of it!Tennyson would have felt it an artistic crime to look like hispublisher; yet what poet is there left us to-day half sodistinguished-looking as his publisher?

Indeed, curiously enough, among no set of men does the desire to look ascommonplace as the rest of the world seem so strong as among men ofletters. Perhaps it is out of consideration for the rest of the world;but, whatever the reason, immobility of expression and generalmediocrity of style are more characteristic of them at present than eventhe military. 

It is surely a strange paradox that we should pride ourselves onschooling to foolish insensibility, on eliminating from them every markof individual character, the faces that were intended subtly andeloquently to image our moods--to look glad when we are glad, sorry whenwe are sorry, angry in anger, and lovely in love. 

The impassivity of the modern young man is indeed a weird and wonderfulthing. Is it a mark to hide from us the appalling sins he none the lessopenly affects? Is it meant to conceal that once in his life he paid awild visit to 'The Empire'--by kind indulgence of the County Council?that he once chucked a barmaid under the chin, that he once nearly gotdrunk, that he once spoke to a young lady he did not know--and then ranaway?

One sighs for the young men of the days of Gautier and Hugo, the youngmen with red waistcoats who made asses of themselves at first nights andon the barricades, young men with romance in their hearts and passion intheir blood, fearlessly sentimental and picturesquely everything. 

The lover then was not ashamed that you should catch radiant glimpses ofhis love in his eyes--nay! if you smiled kindly on him, he would takeyou by the arm and insist on your breaking a bottle with him in honourof his mistress. Joy and sorrow then wore their appropriate colours, according, so to say, to the natural sumptuary laws of the emotions--oneof which is that the right place for the heart is the sleeve. 

It is the duty of those who are great, or to whom great destinies of joyor sorrow have been dealt, to wear their distinctions for the world tosee. It is good for the world, which in its crude way indicates therudiments of this dramatic art of life, when it decrees that the brideshall walk radiant in orange blossom, and the mourner sadden our streetswith black--symbols ever passing before us of the moving vicissitudes oflife. 

The mourner cannot always be sad, or the bride merry; the bride indeedsometimes weeps at the altar, and the mourner laughs a savage cynicallaugh at the grave; but for those moments in which they awhile forgetparts more important than themselves, the tailor and the dressmaker haveprovided symbolical garments, just as military decorations have beenprovided for heroes without the gift of looking heroic, and sacerdotalvestments for the priest, who, like a policeman, is not always on duty. 

In playing his part the conscientious artist in life, like any otheractor, must often seem to feel more than he really feels at a givenmoment, say more than he means. In this he is far from beinginsincere--though he must make up his mind to be accused daily ofinsincerity and affectation. On the contrary, it will be his verysincerity that necessitates his make-believe. With his great part everbefore him in its inspiring completeness, he must be careful to allow nomerely personal accident of momentary feeling or action to jeopardisethe general effect. There are moments, for example, when a really truelover, owing to such masterful natural facts as indigestion, a cold, orextreme sleepiness, is unable to feel all that he knows he really feels. To 'tell the truth, ' as it is called, under such circumstances, wouldsimply be a most dangerous form of lying. There is no duty we owe totruth more imperative than that of lying stoutly on occasion--for, indeed, there is often no other way of conveying the whole truth thanby telling the part-lie. 

A watchful sincerity to our great conception of ourselves is the firstand last condition, of our creating that finest work of art--apersonality; for a personality, like a poet, is not only born but made. 

THE ARBITRARY CLASSIFICATION OF SEX

In an essay on Vauvenargues Mr. John Morley speaks with characteristiccausticity of those epigrammatists 'who persist in thinking of man andwoman as two different species, ' and who make verbal capital out of thefancied distinction in the form of smart epigrams beginning '_Lesfemmes_. ' It is one of Shakespeare's cardinal characteristics that _heunderstood woman_. Mr. Meredith's fame as a novelist is largely due tothe fact that he too _understands women_. The one spot on the sun ofRobert Louis Stevenson's fame, so we are told, is that he could _neverdraw a woman_. His capacity for drawing men counted for nothing, apparently, beside this failure. Evidently the Sphinx has not the faceof a woman for nothing. That is why no one has read her riddle, translated her mystic smile. Yet many people smile mysteriously, without any profound meanings behind their smile, with no other reasonthan a desire to mystify. Perhaps the Sphinx smiles to herself just forthe fun of seeing us take her smile so seriously. And surely women mustso smile as they hear their psychology so gravely discussed. Of course, the superstition is invaluable to them, and it is only natural that theyshould make the most of it. Man is supposed to be a complete ignoramusin regard to all the specialised female 'departments'--from the suprememystery of the female heart to the humble domestic mysteries of ahousehold. Similarly, men are supposed to have no taste in women'sdress, yet for whom do women clothe themselves in the rainbow and thesea-foam, if not to please men? And was not the high-priest of thatdelicious and fascinating mystery a man--if it be proper to call thelate M. Worth a man, --as the best cooks are men, and the best waiters?

It would seem to be assumed from all this mystification that men arebeings clear as daylight, both to themselves and to women. Poor, simple, manageable souls, their wants are easily satisfied, theirpsychology--which, it is implied, differs little from theirphysiology--long since mapped out. 

It may be so, but it is the opinion of some that men's simplicity is noless a fiction than women's mysterious complexity, and that humancharacter is made up of much the same qualities in men and women, irrespective of a merely rudimentary sexual distinction, which has, ofcourse, its proper importance, and which the present writer would be thelast to wish away. From that quaint distinction of sex springs, ofcourse, all that makes life in the smallest degree worth living, fromgreat religions to tiny flowers. Love and beauty and poetry;Shakespeare's plays, Burne-Jones's pictures, and Wagner's operas--allsuch moving expressions of human life, as science has shown us, springfrom the all-important fact that 'male and female created He them. '

This everybody knows, and few are fools enough to deny. Many people, however, confuse this organic distinction of sex with its time-wornconventional symbols; just as religion is commonly confused with itsexternal rites and ceremonies. The comparison naturally continues itselffurther; for, as in religion, so soon as some traditional garment of thefaith has become outworn or otherwise unsuitable, and the proposal ismade to dispense with or substitute it, an outcry immediately is raisedthat religion itself is in danger--so with sex, no sooner does one orthe other sex propose to discard its arbitrary conventionalcharacteristics, or to supplement them by others borrowed from itsfellow-sex, than an outcry immediately is raised that sex itself is indanger. 

Sex--the most potent force in the universe--in danger because womenwear knickerbockers instead of petticoats, or military men take tocorsets and cosmetics!

That parallel with religion may be pursued profitably one step further. In religion, the conventional test of your faith is not how you live, not in your kindness of heart or purity of mind, but how you believe--inthe Trinity, in the Atonement; and do you turn to the East during therecital of the Apostles' Creed? These and such, as every one knows, arethe vital matters of religion. And it is even so with sex. You are notasked for the realities of manliness or womanliness, but for theshadows, the arbitrary externalities, the fashions of which change fromgeneration to generation. 

To be truly womanly you must never wear your hair short; to be trulymanly you must never wear it long. To be truly womanly you must dress asdaintily as possible, however uncomfortably; to be truly manly you mustwear the most hideous gear ever invented by the servility of tailors--astrange succession of cylinders from head to heel; cylinder on head, cylinder round your body, cylinders on arms and cylinders on legs. To betruly womanly you must be shrinking and clinging in manner and trivialin conversation; you must have no ideas, and rejoice that you wish fornone; you must thank Heaven that you have never ridden a bicycle orsmoked a cigarette; and you must be prepared to do a thousand otherabsurd and ridiculous things. To be truly manly you must be and do theopposite of all these things, with this exception--that with you thepossession of ideas is optional. The finest specimens of British manhoodare without ideas; but that, I say, is, generally speaking, a matter foryourself. It is indeed the only matter in which you have any choice. More important matters, such as the cut of your clothes and hair, theshape of your face, the length of your moustache and the pattern of yourcane--all these are very properly regulated for you by laws of fashion, which you could never dream of breaking. You may break every moral lawthere is--or rather, was--and still remain a man. You may be a bully, acad, a coward and a fool, in the poor heart and brains of you; but solong as you wear the mock regimentals of contemporary manhood, and areabove all things plain and undistinguished enough, your reputation formanhood will be secure. There is nothing so dangerous to a reputationfor manhood as brains or beauty. 

In short, to be a true woman you have only to be pretty and an idiot, and to be a true man you have only to be brutal and a fool. 

From these misconceptions of manliness and womanliness, thesesuperstitions of sex, many curious confusions have come about. They soto say, professional differentiation between the sexes had at one timegone so far that men were credited with the entire monopoly of a certainset of human qualities, and women with the monopoly of a certain otherset of human qualities; yet every one of these are qualities which onewould have thought were proper to, and necessary for, all human beingsalike, male and female. 

In a dictionary of a date (1856) when everything on earth and in heavenwas settled and written in penny cyclopædias and books of deportment, Ifind these delicious definitions--

_Manly_: becoming a man; firm; brave; undaunted; dignified; noble;stately; not boyish or womanish. 

_Womanly_: becoming a woman; feminine; as _womanly_ behaviour. 

Under _Woman_ we find the adjectives--soft, mild, pitiful and flexible, kind, civil, obliging, humane, tender, timorous, modest. 

Who can doubt that the dictionary maker defined and distributed hisadjectives aright for the year 1856? Since then, however, many alarmingheresies have taken root in our land, and some are heard to declare thatboth these sets of adjectives apply to men and women alike, and are, infact, necessities of any decent human outfit. Otherwise the conclusionis obvious, that no one desirous of the adjective 'manly' must everbe--soft, mild, pitiful and flexible, kind, civil, obliging, humane, tender, timorous, or modest; and no one desirous of the adjective'womanly' be--firm, brave, undaunted, dignified, noble, or stately. 

But surely the essentials of 'manliness' and 'womanliness' belong to manand woman alike--the externals are purely artistic considerations, andsubject to the vagaries of fashion. In art no one would think ofallowing fashion any serious artistic opinion. It is usually the artwhich is out of fashion that is most truly art. Similarly, fashions inmanliness or womanliness have nothing to do with real manliness orwomanliness. Moreover, the adjectives 'manly' or 'womanly, ' applied toworks of art, or the artistic surfaces of men and women, areirrelevant--that is to say, impertinent. You have no right to ask apoem or a picture to look manly or womanly, any more than you have anyright to ask a man or a woman to look manly or womanly. There is no suchthing as looking manly or womanly. There is looking beautiful or ugly, distinguished or commonplace, individual or insignificant. The one lawof externals is beauty in all its various manifestations. To ask the sexof a beautiful person is as absurd as it would be to ask the publisherthe sex of a beautiful book. Such questions are for midwives anddoctors. 

It was once the fashion for heroes to shed tears on the smallestoccasion, and it does not appear that they fought the worse for it; someof the firmest, bravest, most undaunted, most dignified, most noble, most stately human beings have been women; as some of the softest, mildest, most pitiful and flexible, most kind, civil, obliging, humane, tender, timorous and modest human beings have been men. Indeed, some ofthe bravest men that ever trod this planet have worn corsets, and itneeds more courage nowadays for a man to wear his hair long than tomachine-gun a whole African nation. Moreover, quite the nicest women oneknows ride bicycles--in the rational costume. 

THE FALLACY OF A NATION

It is, I am given to understand, a familiar axiom of mathematics that nonumber of ciphers placed in front of significant units, or tens orhundreds of units, adds in the smallest degree to the numerical value ofthose units. The figure one becomes of no more importance however manynoughts are marshalled in front of it--though, indeed, in themathematics of human nature this is not so. Is not a man or womanconsidered great in proportion to the number of ciphers that walk infront of him, from a humble brace of domestics to guards of honour andimperial armies?

A parallel profound truth of mathematics is that a nought, however manytimes it be multiplied, remains nought; but again we find the reverseobtain in the mathematics of human nature. One might have supposed thatthe result of one nobody multiplied even fifty million times would stillbe nobody. However, such is far from being the case. Fifty millionnobodies make--a nation. Of course, there is no need for so many. I amreckoning as a British subject, and speak of fifty million merely as anillustration of the general fact that it is the multiplication ofnobodies that makes a nation. 'Increase and multiply' was, it will beremembered, the recipe for the Jewish nation. 

Nobodies of the same colour, tongue, and prejudices have but tocongregate together in a crowd sufficiently big for other similar crowdsto recognise them, and then they are given a name of their own, andbecome recognised as a nation--one of the 'Great Powers. '

Beyond those differences in colour, tongue, and prejudices there isreally no difference between the component units--or rather ciphers--ofall these several national crowds. You have seen a procession of varioustrades-unions filing toward Hyde Park, each section with its particularbanner with a strange device: 'The United Guild of Paperhangers, ' 'TheAncient Order of Plumbers, ' and so on. And you may have marvelled tonotice how alike the members of the various carefully differentiatedcompanies were. So to say, they each and all might have been plumbers;and you couldn't help feeling that it wouldn't have mattered much ifsome of the paper-hangers had by mistake got walking amongst theplumbers, or _vice versa_. 

So the great trades-unions of the world file past, one with the odd word'Russia' on its banner; another boasting itself 'Germany'--this with aparticularly bumptious and self-important young man walking backward infront of it, in the manner of a Salvation Army captain, and imperiouslywaving an iron wand; still another 'nation' calling itself 'France'; andyet another boasting the biggest brass band, and called 'England. ' Othersmaller bodies of nobodies, that is, smaller nations, file past withhumbler tread--though there is really no need for their doing so. For, as we have said, they are in every particular like to those haughtiernations who take precedence of them. In fact, one or two of them, suchas Norway and Denmark--were a truer system of human mathematics toobtain--are really of more importance than the so-called greaternations, in that among their nobodies they include a larger percentageof intellectual somebodies. 

Remembering that percentage of wise men, the formula of a nation wereperhaps more truly stated in our first mathematical image. The wise menin a nation are as the units with the noughts in front of them. And whenI say wise men I do not, indeed, mean merely the literary men or theartists, but all those somebodies with some real force of character, people with brains and hearts, fighters and lovers, saints and thinkers, and the patient, industrious workers. Such, if you consider, are reallyno integral part of the nation among which they are cast. They have nopart in what are grandiloquently called national interests--war, politics, and horse-racing to wit. A change of Government leaves them asunmoved as an election for the board of guardians. They would as soonthink of entering Parliament or the County Council, as of yearning tomanage the gasworks, or to go about with one of those carts bearing thelegend 'Aldermen and Burgesses of the City of London' conspicuously uponits front. Their main concern in political changes is the rise and fallof the income-tax, and, be the Cabinet Tory or Liberal, their ratepapers come in for the same amount. It is likely that national changeswould affect them but little more. What more would a foreign invasionmean than that we should pay our taxes to French, Russian, or Germanofficials, instead of to English ones? French and Italians do ourcooking, Germans manage our music, Jews control our money markets;surely it would make little difference to us for France, Russia, orGermany to undertake our government. The worst of being conquered byRussia would be the necessity of learning Russian; whereas a littlerubbing up of our French would make us comfortable with France. Besides, to be conquered by France would save us crossing the Channel to Paris, and then we might hope for cafés in Regent Street, and an emancipatedliterature. As a matter of fact, so-called national interests are merelycertain private interests on a large scale, the private interests offinanciers, ambitious politicians, soldiers, and great merchants. Broadly speaking, there are no rival nations--there are rival markets;and it is its Board of Trade and its Stock Exchange rather than itsHouses of Parliament that virtually govern a country. Thus one seaportgoes down and another comes up, industries forsake one country to blessanother, the military and naval strengths of nations fluctuate this wayand that; and to those whom these changes affect they are undoubtedlyimportant matters--the great capitalist, the soldier, and thepolitician; but to the quiet man at home with his wife, his children, his books, and his flowers, to the artist busied with brave translunarymatters, to the saint with his eyes filled with 'the white radiance ofeternity, ' to the shepherd on the hillside, the milkmaid in love, or theangler at his sport--what are these pompous commotions, these busy, bustling mimicries of reality? England will be just as good to live inthough men some day call her France. Let the big busybodies divide heramongst them as they like, so that they leave one alone with one's fairshare of the sky and the grass, and an occasional, not too vociferous, nightingale. 

The reader will perhaps forgive the hackneyed references to Sir ThomasBrowne peacefully writing his _Religio Medici_ amid all the commotionsof the Civil War, and to Gautier calmly correcting the proofs of his newpoems during the siege of Paris. The milkman goes his rounds amid thecrash of empires. It is not his business to fight. His business is todistribute his milk--as much after half-past seven as may beinconvenient. Similarly, the business of the thinker is with histhought, the poet with his poetry. It is the business of politicians tomake national quarrels, and the business of the soldier to fight them. But as for the poet--let him correct his proofs, or beware the printer. 

The idea, then, of a nation is a grandiloquent fallacy in the interestsof commerce and ambition, political and military. All the great andgood, clever and charming people belong to one secret nation, for whichthere is no name unless it be the Chosen People. These are the losttribes of love, art, and religion, lost and swamped amid alien peoples, but ever dreaming of a time when they shall meet once more in Jerusalem. 

Yet though they are thus aliens, taking and wishing no part in theorganisation of the 'nations' among which they dwell, this does notprevent those nations taking part and credit in them. And whenever abrave soldier wins a battle, or an intrepid traveller discovers a newland, his particular nation flatters itself, as though it--the millionnobodies--had done it. With a profound indifference to, indeed an activedislike of, art and poetry, there is nothing on which a nation pridesitself so much as upon its artists and poets, whom, invariably, itstarves, neglects, and even insults, as long as it is not too silly todo so. 

Thus the average Englishman talks of Shakespeare--as though he himselfhad written the plays; of India--as though he himself had conquered it. And thus grow up such fictions as 'national greatness' and 'publicopinion. '

For what is 'national greatness' but the glory reflected from thememories of a few great individuals? and what is 'public opinion' butthe blustering echoes of the opinion of a few clever young men on themorning papers?

For how can people in themselves little become great by merelycongregating into a crowd, however large? And surely fools do not becomewise, or worth listening to, merely by the fact of their bandingtogether. 

A 'public opinion' on any matter except football, prize-fighting, andperhaps cricket, is merely ridiculous--by whatever brutal physicalpowers it may be enforced--ridiculous as a town council's opinion uponart; and a nation is merely a big fool with an army. 

THE GREATNESS OF MAN

Ignorant, as I inevitably am, dear reader, of your intellectual andspiritual upbringing, I can hardly guess whether the title of my articlewill impress you as a platitude or as a paradox. Goodness knows, somemen and women think quite enough of themselves as it is, and, from acertain momentary point of view, there may seem little occasion indeedto remind man of his importance. 

I refer to your intellectual and spiritual upbringing, because I ventureto wonder if it was in the least like my own. I was brought up, Irejoice to say, in the bosom of an orthodox Puritan family. I was ledand driven to believe that man was everybody, and that God wassomebody--and that not merely the Sabbath, but the whole universe, wasmade for man: that the stars were his bedtime candles, and that the sunarose to ensure his catching the 8. 37 of a morning. 

On this belief I acted for many years. Every young man believes thatthere is no god but God, and that he is born to be His prophet--thoughperhaps that belief is not so common nowadays. I am speaking of manyyears ago. 

Science, however, has long since changed all that. Those terrible Muses, geology, astronomy, and particularly biology, have reduced man to ahumility which, if in some degree salutary, becomes in its excess highlydangerous. Why should one maggot in this great cheese of the world takeitself more seriously than others? Why dream mightily and do bravely ifwe are but a little higher than the beasts that perish? Nature caresnothing about us, and her giant forces laugh at our fancies. The worldhas no such meaning as we thought. Poets and saints, deluded byunhealthy imaginations, have misled us, and it is quite likely that thewild waves are really saying nothing more important than 'Beecham'sPills. '

'Give us a definition of life, ' I asked a certain famous scientist andphilosopher whom I am privileged to call my friend. 

'Nothing easier!' he gaily replied. 'Life is a product of solar energy, falling upon the carbon compounds, on the outer crust of a particularplanet, in a particular corner of the solar system. '

'And that, ' I said, 'really satisfies you as a definition of life--ofall the wistful wonder of the world!' And as I spoke I thought of Moseswith mystically shining face upon the Mount of the Law, of Ezekiel raptin his divine fancies, of Socrates drinking his cup of hemlock, ofChrist's agony in the garden; the golden faces of the great of the worldpassed as in a dream before me, --soldiers, saints, poets, and lovers. Ithought of Horatius on the bridge, of the holy and gentle soul of St. Francis, of Chatterton in his splendid despair, and in fancy I went withthe awestruck citizens of Verona to reverently gaze at the bodies of twoyoung lovers who had counted the world well lost if they might onlyleave it together. 

The carbon compounds!

I took down _Romeo and Juliet_, listened to its passionate spheralmusic, and the carbon compounds have never troubled me again. 

Love laughs at the carbon compounds, and a great book, a noble act, abeautiful face, make nonsense of such cheap formula for the mystery ofhuman life. 

Yet this parable of the carbon compounds is a fair sample of all thatscience can tell us when we come to ultimates. We go away from itsoracles with a mouthful of sounding words, which may seem veryimpressive till we examine their emptiness. What, for example, is allthis rigmarole about solar energy and the carbon compounds but a morepompous way of putting the old scriptural statement that man was made ofthe dust of the ground? To say that God took a handful of dust andbreathed upon it and it became man, is no harder to realise than thatsolar rays falling upon that dust should produce humanity and all thevarious phantasmagoria of life. If anything, it is more explanatory. Itleaves us with an inspiring mystery for explanation. 

In saying this, I do not forget our debt to science. It has done muchin clearing our minds of cant, in popularising more systematic thinking, and in instituting sounder methods of observation. In some directions ithas deepened our sense of wonder. It has broadened our conception of theuniverse, though I fear it has been at the expense of narrowing ourconception of man. With Hamlet it contemptuously says, 'What is thisquintessence of dust!' It is so impressed by the mileage and tonnage ofthe universe, so abased before the stupendous measurements of thecosmos, the appalling infinity and eternity of its space and time, thatit forgets the marvel of the mind that can grasp all these conceptions, forgets, too, that, big and bullying as the forces of nature may be, manhas been able in a large measure to control, indeed to domesticate, them. Surely the original fact of lightning is little more marvellousthan the power of man to turn it into his errand-boy or his horse, tolight his rooms with it, and imprison it in pennyworths, like the geniusin the bottle, in the underground railway. Mere size seems unimpressivewhen we contemplate such an extreme of littleness as say the ant, thatpin-point of a personality, that mere speck of being, yet includingwithin its infinitesimal proportions a clever, busy brain, a soldier, apolitician, and a merchant. That such and so many faculties should haveroom to operate within that tiny body--there is a marvel before which, it seems to me, the billions of miles that keep us from falling into thejaws of the sun, and the tonnage of Jupiter, are comparativelyinsignificant and conceivable. 

No, we must not allow ourselves to be frightened by the mere size andweight of the universe, or be depressed because our immediate genealogyis not considered aristocratic. Perhaps, after all, we are sons of God, and as Mr. Meredith finely puts it, our life here may still be

 '. .. A little holding To do a mighty service. '

'Things of a day!' exclaims Pindar. 'What is a man? What is a man not?'

It is good for our Nebuchadnezzars, the kings of the world, andconceited, successful people generally, to measure themselves againstthe great powers of the universe, to humble their pride by contemplationof the fixed stars; but a too humble attitude toward the Infinite, a tooconstant pondering upon eternity, is not good for us, unless, so to say, we can live with them as friends, with the inspiring feeling that, little as we may seem, there is that in us which is no less infinite, noless cosmic, and that our passions and dreams have, as Mr. WilliamWatson puts it, 'a relish of eternity. '

Readers of Amiel's 'Journal' will know what a sterilising, petrifyinginfluence his trance-like contemplation of the Infinite had upon hislife. Amiel was simply hypnotised by the universe, as a man mayhypnotise himself by gazing fixedly at a star. 

Mr. Pater, you will remember, has a remarkable study of a similartemperament in his _Imaginary Portraits_. Sebastian van Storck, likeAmiel, had become hypnotised by the Infinite. It paralysed in him allimpulse or power 'to be or do any limited thing. '

'For Sebastian, at least, ' we read, 'the world and the individual alikehad been divested of all effective purpose. The most vivid of finiteobjects, the dramatic episodes of Dutch history, the brilliantpersonalities which had found their parts to play in them, that goldenart, surrounding one with an ideal world, beyond which the real worldwas discernible indeed, but etherealised by the medium through which itcame to one; all this, for most men so powerful a link to existence, only set him on the thought of escape--into a formless and namelessinfinite world, evenly grey. .. . Actually proud, at times, of hiscurious, well-reasoned nihilism, he could but regard what is called thebusiness of life as no better than a trifling and wearisome delay. '

This mood, once confined to a few mystics is likely to become a commonone, is already, one imagines, far from infrequent--so the increase ofsuicide would lead us to suppose. Robbed of his hope of a gloriousimmortality, stripped of his spiritual significance, bullied andbelittled by science on every hand, man not unnaturally begins to feelthat it is no use taking his life seriously, that, in fact, it betrays alack of humour to do so. While he was a supernatural being, a son ofGod, it was with him a case of _noblesse oblige_; and while he is happyand comfortable he doesn't mind giving up the riddle of the world. It isonly the unhappy that ever really think. But what is he to do when agonyand despair come upon him, when all that made his life worth living istaken from him? How is he to sustain himself? where shall he look forhis strength or his hope? He looks up at the sky full of stars, but heis told that God is not there, that the city of God is long since aruin, and that owls hoot to each other across its moss-grown fanes andbattlements; he looks down on the earth, full of graves, a vastnecropolis of once radiant dreams, with the living for itsphantoms, --and there is no comfort anywhere. Happy is he if some simplehuman duty be at hand, which he may go on doing blindly anddumbly--till, perhaps, the light come again. It is difficult to offercomfort to such a one. Comfort is cheap, and we know nothing. When lifeholds nothing for our love and delight, it is difficult to explain whywe should go on living it--except on the assumption that it matters, that it is, in some mystical way, supremely important, how we live it, and what we make of those joys and sorrows which, say some, are butmeant as mystical trials and tests. 

Sebastian van Storck refused 'to be or do any limited thing, ' but theanswer to his mysticism is to be found in a finer mysticism, that whichsays that there is no limited act or thing, but that the significance, as well as the pathos, of eternity is in our smallest joys and sorrows, as in our most everyday transactions, and the greatness of God incarnatein His humblest child. 

This, the old doctrine of the microcosm, seems in certain moments, moments one would wish to say, of divination, strangely plain andclear--when, in Blake's words, it seems so easy to

 '. .. See a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower; Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. '

Perhaps in the street, an effect of light, a passing face, yes, even theplaintive grind of a street organ, some such everyday circumstance, affects you suddenly in quite a strange way. It has becomeuniversalised. It is no longer a detail of the Strand, but a crypticsymbol of human life. It has been transfigured into a thing of infinitepathos and infinite beauty, and, sad or glad, brings to you aninexplicable sense of peace, an unshakable conviction that man is aspirit, that his life is indeed of supreme and lovely significance, andthat his destiny is secure and blessed. 

Matthew Arnold, ever sensitive to such spiritual states, has describedthese trance-like visitations in 'The Buried Life'--

 'Only, but this is rare-- When a beloved hand is laid in ours, When, jaded with the rush and glare Of the interminable hours, Our eyes can in another's eyes read clear, When our world-deafen'd ear Is by the tones of a loved voice caress'd-- A bolt is shot back somewhere in our breast, And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again: The eye sinks inward, and the heart lies plain, And what we mean, we say, and what we would, we know. A man becomes aware of his life's flow, And hears its winding murmur; and he sees The meadows where it glides, the sun, the breeze. 

 'And there arrives a lull in the hot race Wherein he doth for ever chase That flying and elusive shadow, rest. An air of coolness plays upon his face, And an unwonted calm pervades his breast. And then he thinks he knows The hills where his life rose, And the sea where it goes. '

'To be or do any limited thing'! What indeed, we ask in such hours, is alimited thing, when all the humble interests of our daily life arepalpably big with eternity? Is the first kiss of a great love a limitedthing? though there is, unhappily, no denying that it comes to an end!When a young husband and wife smile across to each other above the sleepof their little child--is that a limited thing? When the siren voices ofthe world blend together on the lips of a young poet, and with rapt eyesand hot heart he makes a song as of the morning stars--is that a limitedthing? Are love, and genius, and duty done in the face of death--arethese limited things? I think not--and man, indeed, knows better. 

Greatness is not relative. It is absolute. It is not for man to depresshimself by measuring himself against the eternities and the immensitiesexternal to him. What he has to do is to look inward upon himself, tofathom the eternities and the immensities in his own heart and brain. 

And the more man sees himself forsaken by the universe, the moreopportunity to vindicate his own greatness. Is there no kind heartbeating through the scheme of things?--man's heart shall still be kind. Will the eternal silence make mock of his dreams and his idealisms, laugh coldly at 'the splendid purpose in his eyes'? Well, so be it. Hisdreams and idealisms are none the less noble things, and if the gods dothus make mock of mortal joy and pain--let us be grateful that we wereborn mere men. 

Moreover, he has one great answer to the universe--the answer ofcourage. He is still Prometheus, and there is no limit to what he canbear. Let the vultures of pain rend his heart as they will, he can stillhiss 'coward' in the face of the Eternal. Nay, he can even laugh at hissufferings--thanks to the spirit of humour, that most blessed ofministering angels, without which surely the heart of humanity had longsince broken, by which man is able to look with a comical eye uponterrors, as it were taking themselves so seriously, coming with suchOlympian thunders and lightnings to break the spirit of a mere six footof earth!

But while his courage and his humour are defences of which he cannot bedisarmed, whatever be the intention of the Eternal, it is by no meanscertain that nature does not mean kindly by man. Perhaps the pain of theworld is but the rough horseplay of great powers that mean but jest--andkill us in it: as though one played at 'tick' with an elephant!

Perhaps, after all, --who knows?--God is love, and His great purposekind. 

Surely, when you think of it, the existence in man of the senses of loveand pity implies the probability of their existence elsewhere in theuniverse too. 

 'Into that breast which brings the rose Shall I with shuddering fall. '

So runs the profoundest thought in modern poetry--and need I say it isMr. Meredith's?

As the fragrance and colour of the rose must in some occult way beproperties of the rude earth from which they are drawn by the sun, maynot human love also be a kindly property of matter--that mysteriouslife-stuff in which is packed such marvellous potentialities? Evidentlylove must be somewhere in the universe--else it had not got into theheart of man; and perhaps pity slides down like an angel in the rays ofthe solar energy, while there is the potential beating of a human hearteven in the hard crust of the carbon compounds. 

I confess that this seems to me no mere fancy, but a really comfortingspeculation. Pain, we say, is inherent in the scheme of the universe;but is not love seen to be no less inherent, too?

There must be some soul of beauty to animate the lovely face of theworld, some soul of goodness to account for its saints. If the gods arecruel, it is strange that man should be so kind, and that some patheticspirit of tenderness should seem to stir even in the bosoms of beastsand birds. 

Meanwhile, we cannot too often insist that, whatever uncertainties therebe, man has one certainty--himself. Science has really adduced nothingessential against his significance. That he is not as big as an Alp, asheavy as a star, or as long-lived as an eagle, is nothing against hisproper importance. Even a nobleman is of more significance in the worldthan his acres, and giants are not proverbial for their intellectual orspiritual qualities. The ant is of more importance than the ass, and thegreat eye of a beautiful woman is more significant than the whole clayeybulk of Mars. 

After all the scientific mockery of the old religious ideal of theimportance of man, one begins to wonder if his Ptolemaic fancy that hewas the centre of the universe, and that it was all made for him, is notnearer the If truth than the pitiless theories which hardly allow himequality with the flea that perishes. 

Suppose if, after all, the stars were really meant as his bedtimecandles, and the sun's purpose in rising is really that he may catch the8. 37!

For, as Sir Thomas Browne says in his solemn English, 'there is surely apiece of Divinity in us, something that was before the elements, andowes no homage unto the sun. '

The long winter of materialistic science seems to be breaking up, andthe old ideals are seen trooping back with something more than their oldbeauty, in the new spiritual spring that seems to be moving in thehearts of men. 

After all its talk, science has done little more than correct themisprints of religion. Essentially, the old spiritualistic and poetictheories of life are seen, not merely weakly to satisfy the cravings ofman's nature, but to be mostly in harmony with certain strange andmoving facts in his constitution, which the materialistsunscientifically ignore. 

It was important, and has been helpful, to insist that man is an animal, but it is still more important to insist that he is a spirit as well. Heis, so to say, an animal by accident, a spirit by birthright: and, however homely his duties may occasionally seem, his life is bathed inthe light of a sacred transfiguring significance, its smallest actsflash with divine meanings, its highest moments are rich with 'thepathos of eternity, ' and its humblest duties mighty with theresponsibilities of a god. 

DEATH AND TWO FRIENDS

_A DIALOGUE_

(_To the Memory of J. S. And T. C. L. _)

PERSONS: SCRIPTOR AND LECTOR. 

[This dialogue was written originally as a rejoinder to certaincriticisms on a book of mine entitled, _The Religion of a LiteraryMan_--_Religio Scriptoris_--hence the names given to the two 'persons. 'It was written in March 1894, before an event in the writer's life towhich, erroneously, some have supposed it to refer. ]

LECTOR. But do you really mean, Scriptor, that you have no desire forthe life after death?

SCRIPTOR. I never said quite that, Lector, though perhaps I might almosthave gone so far. What I did say was that we have been accustomed toexaggerate its importance to us here and now, that it really mattersless to us than we imagine. 

LECTOR. I see. But you must speak for yourself, Scriptor. I am sure thatit matters much to many, to most of us. It does, I know, to me. 

SCRIPTOR. Less than you think, my dear Lector. Besides, you are reallytoo young to know. It is true that, as years go, you are ten years mysenior, but what of that? You have that vigorous health which is thesecret of perpetual youth. You have not yet realised decay, not to speakof death. The immortality of the soul is a question wide of you, whohave as yet practically no doubt of the immortality of the body. ButI--well, it would be melodramatic to say that I face death every day. The metaphor applies but to desperate callings and romantic complaints. To some Death comes like a footpad, suddenly, and presents hispistol--and the smoke that curls upward from his empty barrel is yoursoul. 

To another he comes featureless, a stealthily accumulating London fog, that slowly, slowly chokes the life out of you, without allowing you theconsolation of a single picturesque moment, a single grand attitude. Foryou, probably, Death will only come when you die. I have to live withhim as well. I shall smoulder for years, you will be carried to heaven, like Enoch, in a beautiful lightning. 

 'A simple child That lightly draws its breath, And feels its life in every limb, What can it know of Death?'

That's you, my dear Lector, for all your forty years. 

LECTOR. All the more reason, Scriptor, that you should desire ahereafter. You sometimes talk of the work you would do if you were arobust Philistine such as I. Would it not be worth while to liveagain, if only to make sure of that _magnum opus_--just to realisethose dreams that you say are daily escaping you?

SCRIPTOR. Ah! so speaks the energetic man, eager to take the world onhis shoulders. I know the images of death that please you, Lector--such as that great one of Arnold's, about 'the soundinglabour-house vast of being. '

But, Lector, you who love work so well--have you never heard tell ofa thing called Rest? Have you never known what it is to be tired, myLector?--not tired at the end of a busy day, but tired in the morning, tired in the Memnonian sunlight, when larks and barrel-organs start ontheir blithe insistent rounds. No, the man who is tired of a morningsings not music-hall songs in his bedroom as he dashes about in hismorning bath. But will you never want to go to bed, Lector? Will yoube always like the children who hate to be sent to bed, and think thatwhen they are grown up they will never go to bed at all? Yet in a fewyears' time how glad they are of the stray chance of bed at ten. Mayit not be so with sleep's twin-brother? In our young vigour, driven bya hundred buoyant activities, enticed by dream on dream, time seems soshort for all we think we have to do; but surely when the blood beginsto thin, and the heart to wax less extravagantly buoyant, when comfortcroons a kettle-song whose simple spell no sirens of ambition orromance can overcome--don't you think that then 'bedtime' will come toseem the best hour of the day, and 'Death as welcome as a friend wouldfall'?

LECTOR. But you are no fair judge, Scriptor. You say my health, myyouth, as you waggishly call it, puts me out of court. Yet surely yourill-health and low spirits just as surely vitiate your judgment?

SCRIPTOR. Admitted, so far as my views are the outcome of myparticular condition. But you forget that the condition I have beensupposing is not merely particular, but, on the contrary, the mostgeneral among men. Was it not old age?--which, like youth, isindependent of years. You may be young beyond your years, I may be oldin advance of them; but old age does come some time, and with it thedesire of rest. 

LECTOR. But does not old age spend most of its thought in dwellingfondly on its lost youth, hanging like a remote sunrise in itsimagination? Is it not its one yearning desire just to live certainhours of its youth over again?--and would the old man not give all hepossesses for the certainty of being born young again into eternity?

SCRIPTOR. He would give everything--but the certainty of rest. Afterseventy years of ardent life one needs a long sleep to refresh usin. Besides, age may not be so sure of the advantages of youth. All isnot youth that laughs and glitters. Youth has its hopes, which areuncertain; but age has its memories, which are sure; youth has itspassions, but age has its comforts. 

LECTOR. Your answers come gay and pat, Scriptor, but your voicebetrays you. In spite of you, it saddens all your words. Tell me, haveyou ever known what it is actually to lose any one who is dear to you?Have you looked on death face to face?

SCRIPTOR. Yes, Lector, I have--but once. It is now about five yearsago, but the impression of it haunts me to this hour. Perhaps thememory is all the keener because it was my one experience. In a worldwhere custom stales all things, save Cleopatra, it is all the betterperhaps not to see even too much of Death, lest we grow familiar withhim. For instance, doctors and soldiers, who look on him daily, seemto lose the sense of his terror--nay, worse, of his tragedy. Maybe itis something in his favour, and Death, like others, may only need tobe known to be loved. 

LECTOR. But tell me, Scriptor, of this sad experience, which even nowit moves you to name; or is the memory too sad to recall?

SCRIPTOR. Sad enough, Lector, but beautiful for all that, beautiful aswinter. It was winter when she of whom I am thinking died--a winterthat seemed to make death itself whiter and colder on her marbleforehead. It is but one sad little story of all the heaped-up sorrowof the world; but in it, as in a shell, I seem to hear the murmur ofall the tides of tears that have surged about the lot of man from thebeginning. 

There were two dear friends of mine whom I used to call the happiestlovers in the world. They had loved truly from girlhood and boyhood, and after some struggle--for they were not born into that class whichis denied the luxury of struggle--at length saw a little home brightin front of them. And then Jenny, who had been ever bright and strong, suddenly and unaccountably fell ill. Like the stroke of a sword, likethe stride of a giant, Death, to whom they had never given a thought, was upon them. It was consumption, and love could only watch andpray. Suddenly my friend sent for me, and I saw with my own eyes whatat a distance it had seemed impossible to believe. As I entered thehouse, with the fresh air still upon me, I spoke confidently, withbabbling ignorant tongue. 'Wait till you see her face!' was all mypoor stricken friend could say. 

Ah! her face! How can I describe it? It was much sweeter afterwards, but now it was so dark and witchlike, so uncanny, almost wicked, sothin and full of inky shadows. She sat up in her bed, a wizened littlegoblin, and laughed a queer, dry, knowing laugh to herself, a laughlike the scraping of reeds in a solitary place. A strange blackweariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, like the 'unwillingsleep' of a strong narcotic. She would begin a sentence and let itwither away unfinished, and point sadly and almost humorously to herstraight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead bird lying inthe rain. Her hearing was strangely keen. And yet she did not know, was not to know. How was one to talk to her--talk of being well again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly done with allthese things? How bear up when she, with a half-sad, half-amusedsmile, showed her thin wrists?--how say that they would soon be strongand round again? Ugh! she was already beginning to be different fromus, already putting off our body-sweet mortality, and putting on thefearful garments of death, changing before our eyes from ruddyfamiliar humanity into a being of another element, an element we dreadas the fish dreads the air. Soon we should not be able to talk toher. Soon she would have unlearnt all the sweet grammar of earth. Shewas no longer Jenny, but a fearful symbol of mysteries at which theflesh crept. She was going to die. 

Have you never looked ahead towards some trial, some physical trial, maybe an operation?--for perhaps the pains of the body are thekeenest, after all--those of the spirit are at least in some partmetaphor. You look forward with dread, yet it is at last over. It isbehind you. And have you never thought that so it will be with deathsome day? Poor little Jenny was to face the great operation. 

Next time I saw her she was dead. In our hateful English fashion, theyhad shut her up in a dark room, and we had to take candles to seeher. I shall never forget the moment when my eyes first rested on thatawful snow-white sheet, so faintly indented by the fragile formbeneath, lines very fragile, but oh! so hard and cold, like theindentations upon frozen snow; never forget my strange unaccountableterror when he on one side and I on the other turned down the icysheet from her face. But terror changed to awe and reverence, as herface came upon us with its sweet sphinx-like smile. Lying there, witha little gold chain round her neck and a chrysanthemum in the bosom ofher night-gown, there was a curious regality about her, a look asthough she wore a crown our eyes were unable to see. And while I gazedupon her, the sobs of my friend came across the bed, and as he calledto her I seemed to hear the eternal Orpheus calling for his lostEurydice. Poor lad!--poor maid! Here, naked and terrible, was all thetragedy of the world compressed into an hour, the Medusa-face of lifethat turns the bravest to stone. Surely, I felt, God owed more than Hecould ever repay to these two lovers, whom it had been so easy toleave to their simple joys. And from that night to this I can neverlook upon my white bed without seeing afar off the moment when it, too, will bear the little figure of her I love best in the world, bound for her voyage to the Minotaur Death; just as I never put off myclothes at night, and stretch my limbs down among the cool sheets, without thinking of the night when I shall put off my clothes for thelast time and close my eyes for ever. 

LECTOR. But, my friend, this is to feel too much; it is morbid. 

SCRIPTOR. Morbid! How can one really _feel_ and not be morbid? If onebe morbid, one can still be brave. 

LECTOR. But surely, true-lover as you are, it would be a joy to you tothink that this terrible parting of death will not be final. We cannotlove so well without hoping that we may meet our loved ones somewhereafter death. 

SCRIPTOR. Hopes! wishes! desires! What of them? We hope, we _desire_all things. Who has not cried for the moon in his time? But what isthe use of talking of what we desire? Does life give us all we wish, however passionately we wish it, and is Death any more likely tolisten to the cry of our desires? Of course we _wish it_, wish it witha pathetic urgency which is too poignant to bear, and which the wiseman bravely stifles. It would all be different if we _knew_. 

LECTOR. But does not science even, of late, hold out the promise ofits probability?--and the greatest poets and thinkers have always beenconvinced of its truth. 

SCRIPTOR. The promise of a probability! O my Lector, what a poorsubstitute is that for a certainty! And as for the great men you speakof, what does their 'instinctive' assurance amount to but a strongsense of their own existence at the moment of writing or speaking?Does one of them anywhere assert immortality as a _fact_--a fact ofwhich he has his own personal proof and knowledge--a scientific, notan imaginative, theological fact? Arguments on the subject arenaught. It is waste of time to read them; unsupported by fact, theyare one and all cowardly dreams, a horrible hypocritical clutching atthat which their writers have not the courage to forgo. 

LECTOR. Yet may not a dream be of service to reality, my friend? Is itnot certain that people are all the better and all the happier forthis dream, as you call it?--for what seems to me this sustainingfaith?

SCRIPTOR. Happier? Some people, perhaps, in a lazy, unworthyfashion. But 'better'? Well, so long as we believed in 'eternalpunishment' no doubt people were sometimes terrified into 'goodness'by the picture of that dread vista of torment, as no doubt they werebribed into it by the companion picture of a green unbounded Paradise;but, O my friend, what an unworthy kind of goodness, the mere mask ofvirtue! And now that the Inferno has practically disappeared from ourtheology, the belief in eternal life simply means unlimited cakes andale, for good and evil alike, for all eternity. How such a belief canbe moralising I fail to understand. To my mind, indeed, far from beingmoralising, this belief in immortality is responsible for noinconsiderable portion of the wrong and misery of the world. It is thebaneful narcotic which has soothed the selfish and the slothful fromthe beginning. It is that unlimited credit which makes the bankrupt. It simply gives us all eternity to procrastinate in. Instead ofmanfully eating our peck of dirt here and now, we leave it and allsuch disagreeables to the hereafter. 

 'He said, "I believe in Eternal Life, " As he threw his life away-- What need to hoard? He could well afford To squander his mortal day. With Eternity his, what need to care?-- A sort of immortal millionaire. '

LECTOR. I am glad to be reminded, Scriptor, that you are a poet, for theline of your argument had almost made me forget it. One expects otherviews from a poet. 

SCRIPTOR. When, my dear Lector, shall we get rid of the silly idea thatthe poet should give us only the ornamental view of life, and rock us tosleep, like babies, with pretty lullabies? Is it not possible to make_facts_ sing as well as fancies? With all this beautiful world to singof--for beautiful it is, however it be marred; with this wonderfullife--and wonderful and sweet it is though it is shot through with suchbitter pain; with such _certainties_ for his theme, we yet beg him tosing to us of shadows!

And you talk of 'faith. ' 'Faith' truly is what we want, but it is faithin the life here, not in the life hereafter. Faith in the life here! Letour poets sing us that. And such as would deny it--I would hang them asenemies of society. 

LECTOR. But, at all events, to keep to our point--you at least _hope_for immortality. If Edison, say, were suddenly to discover it for us asa scientific certainty, you would welcome the news?

SCRIPTOR. Well, yes and no! Have you seen the 'penny' phonographs in theStrand? You should go and have a pennyworth of the mysteries of time andspace! How long will Edison's latest magic toy survive thispopularisation, I wonder? For a little moment it awakens the sense ofwonder in the idly curious, who set the demon tube to their ears; but ifthey make any remarks at all, it is of the cleverness of Mr. Edison, the probable profits of the invention--and not a word of the wonder ofthe world! So it would be with the undiscovered country. I was blamedthe other day as being cheaply smart because I said that if 'onetraveller returned, ' his resurrection would soon be as commonplace asthe telephone, and that enterprising firms would be interviewing him asto the prospects of opening branch establishments in Hades. Yet it is aperfectly serious, and, I think, true remark; for who that knows themodern man, with his small knowingness, and his utter incapacity forreverence, would doubt that were Mr. Edison actually to be the Columbusof the Unseen, it would soon be as overrun with gaping tourists asSwitzerland, and that within a year railway companies would beadvertising 'Bank-holidays in Eternity'?

No! let us keep the Unseen--or, if it must be discovered, let the keythereof be given only to true-lovers and poets. 

A SEAPORT IN THE MOON

No one is so hopelessly wrong about the stars as the astronomer, and Itrust that you never pay any attention to his remarks on the moon. Heknows as much about the moon as a coiffeur knows of the dreams of thefair lady whose beautiful neck he makes still more beautiful. There isbut one opinion upon the moon--namely, our own. And if you think thatscience is thus wronged, reflect a moment upon what science makes ofthings near at hand. Love, it says, is merely a play of pistil andstamen, our most fascinating poetry and art is 'degeneration, ' and humanlife, generally speaking, is sufficiently explained by the 'carboncompounds'--God-a-mercy! If science makes such grotesque blunders aboutradiant matters right under its nose, how can one think of taking itsopinion upon matters so remote as the stars--or even the moon, which iscomparatively near at hand?

Science says that the moon is a dead world, a cosmic ship littered withthe skeletons of its crew, and from which every rat of vitality has longsince escaped. It is the ghost that rises from its tomb every night, tohaunt its faithless lover, the world. It is a country of ancientsilver-mines, unworked for centuries. You may see the gaping mouths ofthe dark old shafts through your telescopes. You may even see therusting pit tackle, the ruinous engine-houses, and the idle pick andshovel. Or you may say that it is counterfeit silver, coined to take inthe young fools who love to gaze upon it. It is, so to speak, a badhalf-crown. 

As you will! but I am of Endymion's belief--and no one was ever moreintimate with the moon. For me the moon is a country of great seaports, whither all the ships of our dreams come home. From all quarters of theworld, every day of the week, there are ships sailing to the moon. Theyare the ships that sail just when and where you please. You take yourpassage on that condition. And it is ridiculous to think for what atrifle the captain will take you on so long a journey. If you want tocome back, just to take an excursion and no more, just to take a lightedlook at those coasts of rose and pearl, he will ask no more than a glassor two of bright wine--indeed, when the captain is very kind, a flowerwill take you there and back in no time; if you want to stay whole daysthere, but still come back dreamy and strange, you may take a littledark root and smoke it in a silver pipe, or you may drink a little phialof poppy-juice, and thus you shall find the Land of Heart's Desire; butif you are wise and would stay in that land for ever, the terms are eveneasier--a little powder shaken into a phial of water, a little piece oflead no bigger than a pea, and a farthing's-worth of explosive fire, andthus also you are in the Land of Heart's Desire for ever. 

I dreamed last night that I stood on the blustering windy wharf, and thedark ship was there. It was impatient, like all of us, to leave theworld. Its funnels belched black smoke, its engines throbbed againstthe quay like arms that were eager to strike and be done, and a bellwas beating impatient summons to be gone. The dark captain stood readyon the bridge, and he looked into each of our faces as we passed onboard. 'Is it for the long voyage?' he said. 'Yes! the long voyage, ' Isaid--and his stern eyes seemed to soften as I answered. 

At last we were all aboard, and in the twinkling of an eye were out ofsight of land. Yet, once afloat, it seemed as though we should neverreach our port in the moon--so it seemed to me as I lay awake in mylittle cabin, listening to the patient thud and throb of the greatscrews, beating in the ship's side like a human heart. 

Talking with my fellow-voyagers, I was surprised to find that we werenot all volunteers. Some, in fact, complained pitifully. They had, theysaid, been going about their business a day or two before, and suddenlya mysterious captain had laid hold of them, and pressed them to sailthis unknown sea. Thus, without a word of warning, they had beencompelled to leave behind them all they held dear. This, one felt, was alittle hard of the captain; but those of us whose position was exactlythe reverse, who had friends on the other side, all whose hopes indeedwere invested there, were too selfishly expectant of port to be severeon the captain who was taking us thither. 

There were three friends I had especially set out to see: two younglovers who had emigrated to those colonies in the moon just after theirmarriage, and there was another. What a surprise it would be to allthree, for I had written no letter to say I was coming. Indeed, it wasjust a sudden impulse, the pistol-flash of a long desire. 

I tried to imagine what the town would be like in which they were nowliving. I asked the captain, and he answered with a sad smile that itwould be just exactly as I cared to dream it. 

'Oh, well then, ' I thought, 'I know what it will be like. There shall bea great restless, tossing estuary, with Atlantic winds for ever rufflingthe sails of busy ships, ships coming home with laughter, ships leavinghome with sad sea-gull cries of farewell. And the shaggy tossing watershall be bounded on either bank with high granite walls, and on onebank shall be a fretted spire soaring with a jangle of bells, from amida tangle of masts, and underneath the bells and the masts shall gostreets rising up from the strand, streets full of faces, and sweet withthe smell of tar and the sea. O captain! will it be morning or nightwhen we come to my city? In the morning my city is like a sea-blownrose, in the night it is bright as a sailor's star. 

'If it be early morning, what shall I do? I shall run to the house inwhich my friends lie in happy sleep, never to be parted again, and kissmy hand to their shrouded window; and then I shall run on and on tillthe city is behind and the sweetness of country lanes is about me, and Ishall gather flowers as I run, from sheer wantonness of joy; and then atlast, flushed and breathless, I shall stand beneath her window. I shallstand and listen, and I shall hear her breathing right through the heavycurtains, and the hushed garden and the sleeping house will bid me keepsilence, but I shall cry a great cry up to the morning star, and say, "No, I will not keep silence. Mine is the voice she listens for in hersleep. She will wake again for no voice but mine. Dear one, awake, themorning of all mornings has come!"'

As I write, the moon looks down at me like a Madonna from the greatcanvas of the sky. She seems beautiful with the beauty of all the eyesthat have looked up at her, sad with all the tears of all those eyes;like a silver bowl brimming with the tears of dead lovers she seems. Yes, there are seaports in the moon; there are ships to take us there. 

THE END

Most of the foregoing essays have made a first appearance either in_The Yellow Book_, _The Nineteenth Century_, _The Cosmopolitan_, _TheWestminster Gazette_, or _The Realm_, to the editors of which the writeris indebted for kind permission to reprint.