Front matter (continued 2)

Such friends write the kind of letters that one keeps always, the kind that can be re-read without skipping. It is their own talk, their own lives, their own selves put up like fruit preserves of various flavours, moods and colours, warranted not to turn or spoil.

And as for the gagged, wordless folk, it is my opinion that too much sensibility has been accredited to them. To any rich exotic nature expression must come as a demand not to be refused. It is feeling bubbling over into words. Other souls are compressed and silent; they have the possibilities of the bud--something warm and inspiring may at any time make them expand and free them from the constraint--but there is not much perfume until the flower blooms.

The Tyranny of the Lares

No, I have never been tainted with a mania for collecting. It has never particularly interested me, because I already happened to have two of a kind, to possess a third. I prefer things to be different rather than alike, and the few things I really care for I like for themselves alone, and not because they are one of a family, set or series.

But there are so few things to be envious of, even then! After one's necessities are provided for, there are not many things worth possessing, and fewer still worth the struggle of collecting. Acquisition seems to rob most things of their intrinsic value, of the extreme desirability they seemed to possess, and yet it does not follow that the practice of collecting is not worth while. It is worth while for itself, but not for the things collected. It is like hunting. The enjoyment, to your true sportsman, does not depend entirely upon the game that is bagged. If the hunter went out solely for the purpose of obtaining food he would better go to the nearest poulterer.

We have a habit of associating the idea of pleasure with the possession of certain objects, and we fancy such pleasure is permanent. But in nine cases out of ten the enjoyment is effervescent, and the thing must be gazed at, touched and admired while the charm is new. Then only can one feel the sharp joy of possession, and, even though its value remain as an object of art, we must after that enjoy it impersonally; its delight must be shared with other spectators. As far as the satisfaction of ownership is concerned the thing is dead for us, and though we would not give it up, our greed gilds it but cheaply, after all.

Of all things, pictures are most commonly regarded as giving pleasure. A painting is universally regarded as a desirable possession of more or less value, according to personal appreciation. In fact, most men would say that a poor picture is better than none, since one of its recognized functions is to fill a space on the wall. And yet how few pictures are looked at once a day, or once a week. How many persons accept them only as decoration, as spots on the wall, and pass them by, in their familiarity, as unworthy of especial notice!

But the collection of a multitude of things is no great oppression if one is permanently installed; they pad out the comforts of life, they create "atmosphere"; they fill up spaces in the house as small talk fills up spaces in conversation. The first prospect of moving, however, brings this horde of stupid, useless, dead things to life, and they appear in their proper guise to strike terror into the heart of the owner. Pictures that have never been regarded, curiosities that are only curious, books that no longer feed the brain, and the thousand little knickknacks that accumulate in one's domicile and multiply like parasites--all the flotsam and jetsam of housekeeping must be individually attended to, and rejected or preserved piecemeal.

But that exciting decision! It is not till one has actually had the courage to destroy some once prized possession that one feels the first inspiring thrill of emancipation. Before, the Thing owned you; it had to be protected in its useless life, kept intact with care and attention. You were pledged to forestall dust, rust and pillage. If you yourself selected it, it stood as a tangible evidence of your culture, an ornament endorsed as art. The Thing forbade growth of taste or judgment, it became a changeless reproach. If it were a gift, it ruled you with a subtle tyranny, compelling your hypocrisy, enslaving you by chains of your very good nature. But if you do not falter, in one exquisite pang you are freed. The Thing is destroyed! Not given away, not hidden or disguised, but murdered outright. It is your sublime duty to yourself that demands the sacrifice.

These horrid monsters once put out of your life, and all necessity for their care annulled, you have so much more space for the few things whose quality remains permanent. You will guard the entrance to your domicile and jealously examine the qualifications of every article admitted. You will ask, "Is it absolutely necessary?" If so, then let it be as beautiful as possible, putting into its perfection of design the expense and care formerly bestowed on a dozen trifles. You will use gold instead of silver, linen instead of cotton, ivory in the place of celluloid; in short, whatever you use intimately and continually, whatever has a definite plausible excuse for existence, should be so beautiful that there is no need for objects which are merely ornamental.

It was so before machinery made everything possible, common and cheap; it has been so with every primitive civilization. To the unspoiled peasant, to all of sane and simple mind, ornaments have, in themselves, no reason for being. Pictures are unnecessary, because the true craftsman so elaborates and develops the constructive lines of his architecture that the decoration is organic and inherent. The many household utensils, vessels and implements of daily use were so appropriately formed, so graceful and elegant in their simplicity, so cunning of line, so quaint of form and pleasant of colour, that they were objects of art, and there was no need for the extraneous display of meaningless adornment.

Once you are possessed with this idea you will suddenly become aware of the tyranny of Things, and you will begin to dread becoming a slave to mere possessions. You may still enjoy and admire the possessions of others, but the ineffable bore of ownership will keep you content. The responsibility of proprietorship will strike you with terror, gifts will appal you, the opportunity of ridding yourself of one more unnecessary thing will be welcomed as another stroke for freedom. Your friends' houses will become your museums, and they the altruistic custodians, allowing you the unalloyed sweets of appreciation with none of the bitter responsibilities of possession.

For you, if you are of my kind, and would be free to fly light, flitting, gipsy fashion, wherever and whenever the whim calls, must not be anchored to an establishment. We must know and love our few possessions as a father knows his children. We must be able to pack them all in one box and follow them foot-loose. This is the new order of Friars Minor, modern Paulists who have renounced the possession of things, and by that vow of disinheritance, parting with the paltry delights of monopoly, have been given the roving privilege of the whole world!

Costume and Custom

A friend of mine has reduced his habit of dress to a system. Dressing has long been known to be a fine art, but this enthusiast's endeavour has been to make it a science as well--to give his theories practical application to the routine of daily life. To do this, he has given his coats and jackets all Anglo-Saxon names. His frock is called Albert, for instance, his morning coat Cedric, a grey tweed jacket, Arthur, and so on. His waistcoats masquerade under more poetic pseudonyms. A white piqué is known as Reginald, a spotted cashmere is Montmorency, and I have seen this eccentric in a wonderful plaid vest hight Roulhac. His trousers and pantaloons are distinguished by family names; I need only mention such remarkable aliases as Braghampton, a striped cheviot garment, and a pair of tennis flannels denominated Smithers. His terminology includes also appellations by which he describes his neckwear--simple prefixes, such as "de" or "von" or "Mac" or "Fitz," modifying the name of the waistcoat, and titles for his hats, varying from a simple "Sir" for a brown bowler to "Prince" for a silk topper of the season's block.

Now, my mythical friend is not such a fool as you might think by this description of his mania, for he is moved to this fantastic procedure by a psychological theory. The gentleman is a private, if not a public, benefactor, the joy of his friends and delight of his whole acquaintance, for, never in the course of their experience, has he ever appeared twice in exactly the same costume. It may differ from some previous habilitation only by the tint of his gloves, but the change is there with its subtile suggestion of newness. Indeed, this sartorial dilettante prides himself, not so much upon the fact that his raiment is never duplicated in combination, as that the changes are so slight as not to be noticed without careful analysis. His maxim is that clothes should not call attention to themselves either by their splendour or their variety, but that the effect should be upon the emotions rather than upon the eye. He holds that it should never be particularly noticed whether a man dresses much or dresses well, but that the impression should be of an immortal freshness, sustaining the confidence of his friends that his garb shall have a pleasing note of composition.

It is to accomplish this that he has adopted the mnemonic system by which to remember his changing combinations. He has but to say to his valet: "Muggins, this morning you may introduce Earl Edgar von Courtenay Blenkinsopp," and his man, familiar with the nomenclature of the wardrobe, will, after his master has been bathed, shaved and breakfasted, clothe the artist accordingly in Panama hat, sack coat, cheerful fawn waistcoat, a tender heliotrope scarf and pin-check trousers. Or perhaps, looking over the calendar, the man may announce that this fantastic Earl has already appeared at the club, in which case a manipulation of the tie or waistcoat changes von Courtenay to O'Anstruther. The Earl must not, according to the rules, appear twice in his full complement of costume. His existence is but for a day, but Anstruther, the merry corduroy vest, may become a part of many personalities.

So much for my friend Rigamarole, who does, if you like, carry his principles to an extreme; but surely we owe it to our friends that our clothes shall please. It is as necessary as that we should have clean faces and proper nails. But, more than this, we owe it to ourselves that we shall not be known by any hackneyed, unvarying garb. It need not be taken for granted that we shall wear brown or blue, we should not become identified with a special shape of collar. Servants must wear a prescribed livery, priests must always appear clad in the cloth of their office, and the soldier must be content with and proud of his uniform, but free men are not forced to inflict a permanent visual impression upon their fellows. He must follow the habit and style of the day, be of his own class and period, and yet, besides, if he can, be himself always characteristic, while always presenting a novel aspect. It is as necessary for a man as for a woman, and, though the elements which he may combine are fewer, they are capable of a certain kaleidoscopic effect.

Our time is cursed more than any other has been, perhaps, with hard and fast rules for men's costume; and of all clothing, evening dress, in which, in the old days, was granted the greatest freedom of choice, is now subject to the most rigid prescription. We must all appear like waiters at dinner, but daylight allows tiny licences. Perhaps our garments are always darkest just before dawn, and the new century may emancipate men's personal taste. So far, at least, we may go: a frock coat does not compel a tie of any particular colour, and a morning coat does not invariably forbid a certain subdued animation in the way of waistcoats. We may already choose between at least three styles of collar and yet be received at five o'clock, and coloured shirts are making a hard fight to oust the white linen which has reigned for more than half a hundred years. It takes no great wealth to take advantage of these minor opportunities, nor need one be pronounced a fop if one uses one's chances well. He is safest who wears only what the best tailor has advised every other of his customers, but who cares for a tailor's model? Who cares, I might add, to be safe? There is safety in numbers, but who ever remembers or cares for the victims of such commonplace discretion? We are men, not mice; why should our coats be all of the same fashionable hue and of the same length of tail?

But the times are changing, and we may look forward with confident hope to the renascence of colour. Already we may see the signs of the change that is approaching. God forbid that men should become the dandies of the Regency, that we should ever ape the incredible or go without pockets, but we may pray heartily for the wedding of Art and Reason. Let us pray we shall no more wear cylinders or cap our skulls with tight-fitting boxes! Meanwhile, I fear I must buy another necktie, for my only one is well worn out. And Celestine swears she can recognize that blue serge suit of mine, clear across the Park!

Old Friends and New

Old Friends, we say, are best, when some sudden disillusionment shakes our faith in a new comrade. So indeed they are, yet I count many newly made ties as stronger than those of my youth. "Keep close and hold my hand; I am afraid, for an old friend is coming!" Celestine once whispered to me while our love was young. How well I understood her panic! She was swung by the conflicting emotions of loyalty and oppression; her old friend had rights, but her new friend had privileges. With me, a stranger, she was frankly herself; with him, a familiar, she must be what he expected of her.

How shall we arrange the order of precedence for the late and early comers into our hearts? How shall we adjudicate their conflicting claims? That is the problem to be answered by everyone who lives widely, and who would not have writ upon his gravestone: "He made more friends than he could keep!" Were one content to pass from flower to flower it would be easy enough, but I would gather a full, fragrant and harmonious bouquet for my delight.

To one sensitively loyal, each new friend must at first sight seem to come as a robber to steal a fragment of his heart from its rightful owner. We say, "Make many acquaintances but few friends," we swear undying devotion, and we promise to write every week; but, if we practice this reserve, this fastidious partiality and this exclusive attention, how shall we grow and increase in worth, and how shall the Brotherhood of Man be brought about?

We may think that each friend has his own place and is unique, satisfying some especial part of our nature; each to be kept separate in his niche, the saint to whom we turn for sympathy in those matters wherein we have vowed him our confidences. We may satisfy our consciences by giving to each the same number of candles, and by a religious celebration of each Saint's day, keeping the calendar of our devotions independent and exclusive, but this method does not make for growth. It is our duty to help knit Society together, to modify extremes, to transmit and transform affection. Surely there is love enough for all, and the more we give the more we shall have to give to our friends, whether they be old or new.

Friendship is, however, a matter of caste. With just as many as share our point of view or can understand it, who laugh at the things we laugh at, who are tempted by our temptations and sin our sins, can we have a divine fellowship. Through these to others outside of our ken, through friend to friend's friend the tie passes that shall bind the whole world together at last.

Our set of friends is a solar system, a cluster of planets, that, revolving about us, moves with the same trend through space and time. Each member of the fraternity has its own aphelion and perihelion, occultation and transit. Whether they are visible or invisible, we must be sure that each in due season will return to the same relative position and exert the same attraction, answering the law of gravity that in true friendship keeps them in their orbits about us. But the circles interlace, and in that is the possibility of keeping the unity of our constellation of friends. Were the same comrades to accompany us unceasingly we could not develop. There must be an intricate complication of actions and reactions, and we must be affected by each in turn and in combination.

What is a parting from a friend but a departure in quest of new experience? Each fresh meeting, therefore, should be the sharing of the fruits that both have gathered, that each may profit by the contribution. If you tell me of a book you have read, I am amused and profited by the knowledge you bring me; shall I not be grateful to you for what you bring from an interesting person? If every new friend contributes to our development and enriches us by his personality, not only are we the better for it ourselves, but more worth while to our friends. It is not you as you are whom I love best, but you as you shall be when, in due time, you have come to your perfect stature; wherefore I shall not begrudge the loan of you to those who have set you on the way.

Though we may hold one friend paramount over all others, and admit him to every phase of intimacy, there are minor confidences that are often most possible with an entire stranger. Were we to meet a man of the Sixteenth Century, what could we not tell such an impersonal questioner! What would we care for the little mortifications that come between even the best of friends? We could confess faults and embarrassments without shame, we could share every hope and doubt without fear, for he would regard us without bias or prejudice. He could scourge us with no whip of conventional morality, and he would be able to judge any action of itself, hampered by no code or creed.

We had a game once, my sister and I, in which we agreed to look at each other suddenly, newly, as if we had never met before. Frequently we were able to catch a novel phase of character, and our sub-conscious self, freed from the servitude of custom, bounded in a new emotion. Could we, in this way, at times regard our friends, how much we might learn! We fall into the habit of seeing what we look for, and we compel old friends to live up to the preconception. Why not look at them, occasionally, as strangers to be studied and learned? There are two variable quantities in the equation of friendship, Yourself and Myself. Nor is our relation itself fixed; it is alive and changing from hour to hour. There is no such thing as an unalterable friendship, for both parties to the affair are moving at different speeds, first one and then the other ahead, giving a hand to be helped on and reaching back to assist. Might we not, indeed, reverse the previous experiment and regard any stranger as a blood relative, assuming a fraternity of interest? We need only to be honest and kind.

By these two processes we may keep old friends and make new ones; and our conscience shall acquit us of disloyalty. When one enlarges one's establishment, one does not decrease either the wages or the duties of the servants before employed. The new members of the household have new functions. More is given and more is received. But it is not so much that one must give more as that one should give wisely and economically, we must be generous in quality rather than in quantity; for, though there is love enough to go round for all, there is not time enough for most of us. We must clasp hands, give the message and pass on, trusting to meet again on the journey, and come to the same inn at nightfall.

A Defense of Slang

Could Shakespeare come to Chicago and listen curiously to "the man in the street," he would find himself more at home than in London. In the mouths of messenger boys and clerks he would find the English language used with all the freedom of unexpected metaphor and the plastic, suggestive diction that was the privilege of the Elizabethan dramatists; he would say, no doubt, that he had found a nation of poets. There was hardly any such thing as slang in his day, for no graphic trope was too virile or uncommon for acceptance, if its meaning were patent. His own heroes (and heroines, too, for Rosalind's talk was as forcible in figures of speech as any modern American's) often spoke what corresponds to the slang of today.

The word, indeed, needs precise definition, before we condemn all unconventional talk with opprobrium. Slang has been called "poetry in the rough," and it is not all coarse or vulgar. There is a prosaic as well as a poetic license. The man in the street calls a charming girl, for instance, a "daisy." Surely this is not inelegant, and such a reference will be understood a century hence without a foot-note. Slang, to prove adjuvant to our speech, which is growing more and more rigid and conventional, should be terse; it should make for force and clarity, without any sacrifice of beauty. Still, manner should befit matter; the American "dude" is, perhaps, no more unpleasant a word than the emasculated fop it described. The English "bounder" is too useful an appellation to do without in London, and, were that meretricious creature of pretence and fancy waistcoat more common in the United States, the term would be welcomed to American slang with enthusiasm. New York, alas, has already produced "cads," but no Yankee school would ever tolerate a "fag."

The mere substitution of a single synonymous term, however, is not characteristic of American slang. Your Chicago messenger boy coins metaphorical phrases with the facility of a primitive savage. A figure of speech once started and come into popular acceptance changes from day to day by paraphrase, and, so long as a trace of the original significance is apparent, the personal variation is comprehensible, not only to the masses, but generally to those whose purism eschews the use of the common talk. Thus, to give "the glassy eye" became the colloquial equivalent of receiving a cool reception. The man on the street, inventive and jocose, does not stop at this.

At his caprice it becomes giving "the frozen face" or even "the marble heart." In the same way one may hear a garrulous person spoken of as "talking to beat the band," an obvious metaphor; or, later, "to beat the cars."

The only parallel to this in England is the "rhyming slang" of the costers, and the thieves' "patter." There a railway guard may be facetiously termed a "Christmas card," and then abbreviated to "card" alone, thence to permutations not easily traced. But English slang is, for the most part, confined to the "masses," and is an incomprehensible jargon to all else save those who make an especial study of the subject. One may sit behind a bus driver from the Bank to Fulham, and understand hardly a sentence of his colloquies and gibes at the passing fraternity, but though the language of the trolley conductor of Chicago is as racy and spirited, it needs less translation. The American will, it is true, be enigmatic at times; you must put two and two together. You must reduce his trope to its lowest terms, but common sense will simplify it. It is not an empirical, arbitrary wit depending upon a music-hall song for its origin. I was riding on a Broadway car one day when a semi-intoxicated individual got on, and muttered unintelligibly, "Put me off at Brphclwknd Street, please." I turned to the conductor and asked, "What did he want?" The official smiled. "You can search me!" he said, in denial of any possession of apprehension.

Slang in America, then, is expression on trial; if it fits a hitherto unfurnished want it achieves a certain acceptance. But it is a frothy compound, and the bubbles break when the necessity of the hour is past, so that much of it is evanescent. Some of the older inventions remain, such as "bunco" and "lynch" and "chestnut," but whole phrases lose their snap like uncorked champagne, though they give their stimulant at the proper timely moment. Like the eggs of the codfish, one survives and matures, while a million perish. The "observed of all observers" (Ophelia's delicate slang, observe) was, yesterday, in New York "the main Guy," a term whose appositeness would be easily understood in London, where the fall of the Gunpowder Plot is still celebrated. Later, in Chicago, according to George Ade, a modern authority, it became the "main squeeze," and another permutation rendered the phrase useless. It is this facility of change that makes most slang spoil in crossing the Atlantic. On the other side, English slang is of so esoteric an origin and reference, that no Yankee can translate or adopt it. It is drop-forged and rigid, an empiric use of words to express humour. What Englishman, indeed, could trace the derivation of "balmy on the crumpet" as meaning what the American would term "dotty" or "bug-house," unless he was actually present at the music hall where it was first invented?

We have at least three native languages to learn--the colloquial, the literary prose, and the separate vocabulary of poetry. In America slang makes a fourth, and it has come to be that we feel it as incongruous to use slang on the printed page as it is to use "said he" or "she replied with a smile" in conversation, and, except for a few poets, such words as "haply," "welkin," or "beauteous" in prose. Yet Stevenson himself, the purist who avoids foreign words, uses Scotch which nearly approaches slang, for there is little difference between words of an unwritten dialect and slang, such as "scrannel" and "widdershins"; while Wilkie Collins writes "wyte," "wanion," "kittle," "gar," and "collop" in with English sentences, as doubtless many questionable words of today will be honoured in the future.

Slang, the illegitimate sister of Poetry, makes with her a common cause against the utilitarian economy of Prose. Both stand for lavish luxuriance in trope and involution, for floriation and adornment of thought. It is their boast to make two words grow where but one grew before. Both garb themselves in metaphor, and the only complaint of the captious can be that whereas Poetry follows the accepted style, Slang dresses her thought to suit herself in fantastic and bizarre caprices--that her whims are unstable and too often in bad taste.

But this odium given to slang by superficial minds is undeserved. In other days, before the language was crystallized into the verbiage and idiom of the doctrinaire, prose, too, was untrammelled. A cursory glance at the Elizabethan poets discloses a kinship with the rebellious fancies of our modern common colloquial talk. For gargarism, scarab, quodling, puckfist, scroyle, foist, pumpion, trindle-tale, comrogue, pigsbones, and ding-dong, we may now read chump, scab, chaw, yap, fake, bloke, pal, bad-actor, and so on. "She's a delicate dab-chick!" says Ben Jonson; "she had all the component parts of a peach," says George Ade.

It will be seen that slang has two characteristics--humour and force. Brevity is not always the soul of wit, for today we find amusement in the euphuisms that, in the sixteenth century were taken in all seriousness. The circumlocutions will drop speedily out of use, but the more apt and adequate neologisms tend to improve literary style. For every hundred times slang attributes a new meaning to an old word, it creates once or twice a new word for an old meaning. Many hybrids will grow, some flower and a few seed. So it is with slang.

There is a "gentleman's slang," as Thackeray said, and there is the impossible kind; but of the bulk of the American product, the worst to be said of it usually is that it is homely and extravagant. None the less is it a picturesque element that spices the language with enthusiasm. It is antiseptic and prevents the decay of virility. Literary style is but an individual, glorified slang. It is not impossible for the artist; it went to its extreme in the abandon of Ben Jonson, Webster, and Beaumont and Fletcher, but, as your Cockney would say, "It does take a bit of doin'" nowadays.

The Charms of Imperfection

For a long time I have held a stubborn belief that I should admire and aim at perfection. I admitted its impossibility, of course; I attributed my friends' failure to achieve it as a charming evidence of their humanity, but it seemed to me to be a thing most properly to be desired. And yet, upon thinking it over, I was often astonished by the discovery that most of my delights were caused by a divergence from this ideal. "A sweete disorder in the dress kindleth in cloathes a wantonness!"

Now, is this because I am naturally perverse, and enjoy the bizarre, the unique and the grotesque? Is it because of my frailty that I take a dear delight in signs of our common humanity, in the petty faults and foibles of the world? Or is it because I have misinterpreted this ideal of perfection, and have thought it necessary or proper to worship a conventional criterion? Celestine and I have been puckering our brows for a week over the problem!

We have learned, after a quarter of a century's experience with the turning lathe and fret saw, to turn back for lasting joy to handmade work. We delight in the minor irregularities of a carving, for instance, recognizing that behind that slip of the tool there was a man at work; a man with a soul, striving for expression. The dreary, methodical uniformity of machine-made decoration and furniture wearies our new enlightened taste. Mathematical accuracy and "spirit" seem to be mutually exclusive, and we have been taught by the modern Æsthetic almost to regard amateurishness as a sure proof of sincerity. We cannot associate the abandon and naïve enthusiasm of the pre-Raphaelites with the technical proficiency of the later Renascence, and Botticelli stands, not only for the spirit dominating and shining through the substance but, in a way, for the incompatibility of perfect idealization with perfect execution. And yet this conflict troubles us. We feel that the two should be wedded, so that the legitimate offspring might be perfection; but when perfect technique is attained, as in a Japanese carving, the result is almost as devoid of human feeling and warmth as a machine-made product.

We feel this instinctive choice of irregularity wherever we turn--wherever, that is, we have to do with humanity or human achievement. We do not, it is true, delight in the flaw in the diamond, but elsewhere we are in perpetual conflict with nature, whose sole object seems to be the obliteration of extremes and the ultimate establishment of a happy medium of uniformity. We find perfection cold and lifeless in the human face. I doubt if a woman has ever been loved for an absolute regularity of feature; but how many, like little Celestine, who acknowledges herself that her nose is too crooked, her eyes too hazel, and her mouth too large, are bewilderingly charming on that very account! These features go to make up an expression, which, if it is not perfect, is certainly not to be accounted for by merely adding up the items. It is a case where the whole is greater than the sum of all its parts. We admire the anatomy and poise of the Greek statues, but they are not humanly interesting. Indeed, they were never meant to be, for they are divinities, and the symbols of an inaccessible perfection.

Still, while we speak of certain faults as being adorable (notably feminine weaknesses), while we make the trite remark anent a man's "one redeeming vice," while we shrink from natures too chaste, too aloof from human temptation, too uncompromising, yet we must feel a pang of conscience. We are not living up to our ideals. Is it the mere reaction from the impositions of conventional morality? I think not. It is a miscomprehension of the term perfection.

The Buddhist believes in a process of spiritual evolution that, tending ever toward perfection, finally reaches the state of Nirvana, where the individual soul is merged into the Infinite. How can it be differentiated from the universal spirit if it has attained all the attributes of divinity? And that idea seems to be the basis of our mistaken worship of perfection--a Nirvana where each thing, being absolutely perfect, loses every distinguishing mark of character. But is not our Christian, or even the Pagan, ideal higher than this? For even the Greek gods, cold and exquisite as they were, had each his individuality, his character, his separate function. Our conception of Heaven, if it is ever formulated nowadays, has this differentiation of individuality strongly accented; though the most orthodox may insist that the spirits of the blessed are sanctified with perfection, yet he does not hold it as a necessary dogma that they are therefore all alike, and recast in a common mould. He still dares believe in that infinite variety which Nature has taught us persists throughout the universe.

This is the fundamental difference between the Oriental and the Occidental point of view. We moderns stand for the supremacy of character, an ineradicable distinction between human beings which evolution and growth does not diminish, but develops. We believe, you and I, that in a million æons we shall be as different one from the other as we are now; that faults may be eradicated, weaknesses lose their hold, but that our best parts will increase in virtue, not approaching some theoretical standard, but always and forever nearing that standard which is set for ourselves.

We have grown out of our admiration for the "copper-plate hand" in penmanship; we recognize the fact now, that we need not so much follow the specimens in the copy-book as to make the best of what is distinctive in our own style of writing. And this is a type of what our conception of perfection, perhaps, should be. Everything should be significant of character, should supplement it, translate it, explain it. In the Japanese prints you will find almost every face with the same meaningless expression, every feature calm, disguising every symptom of individuality. It is the Oriental pose, the Oriental ideal just mentioned. It is not considered proper to express either joy or sorrow, and the perfection of poise is a sublime indifference.

And I have a final idea that may, to a more subtile student of Æsthetic, seem suggestive. In the beautiful parabola described by the mounting and descending sky-rocket the upward and downward path are not quite parallel. The stick does not drop vertically, although it continually approaches that direction. In other words, the curve, constantly approaching a straight line, is beautiful despite, and, indeed, perhaps because it never quite attains that rectilinear perfection and keeps its distinctive character to the end. It is beautiful in its whole progress, for that path defines the curve of the parabola.

"The Play's the Thing"

"Would you rather see a good play performed by poor actors, or a poor play done by good actors?" asked Celestine.

As a professor of the romantic view of life and a "ghost-seer," there is but one answer to the question. "The play's the thing!" Acting is at best a secondary art--an art, that is, of interpretation, though we as critics judge it of itself alone. But, to an idealist, no play ever is, or can be, perfectly performed. As we accept the conventions of stage carpentry, impossible cottages, flat trees, "property" rocks, misfit costumes and tinsel ornament, so we must gloss over the imperfections of the players, and accept their struttings and mouthings as the fantastic accessories of stage-land. No actor that ever lived ever acted throughout a whole drama as a sane human being would act. We are used to thinking the contrary, but the compression of time and space prevents verisimilitude. A play is not supposed to simulate life except by an established convention. Every art has its medium and its limitation. It is indeed a limitation that makes art possible. In the drama the limitation is the use of the time element.

The play's the thing--we may read it from the book or have it recited before the footlights, but the lasting delight is the charm of plot that, with the frail assistance of the actor, finds its way to our emotions. A good play done by poor actors, then, for me, if I must choose between the two evils.

Fancy creates; imagination constructs. The child, sporting ingenuously with both these powers, dwells in a world of his own, either induced by his mastering fiat, or remodelled nearer to his heart's desire from the rags and fragments at hand. In his toy theatre alone is the perfect play produced, for there imagination is stage manager, and has the hosts of Wonderland in his cast. The child is the only perfect romanticist. He has the keen, fresh eye upon nature; all is play, and the critical faculty is not yet aroused. So in a way, too, was all primitive drama. The audience at Shakespearean plays heard but noble poesies, saw but a virile dream made partly visible, like a ghost beckoning away their thoughts. So, even today, is the Chinese theatre, with its hundreds of arbitrary conventions, its lack of scenery, and its artificial eloquence. The veriest coolie knows that a painted face (a white nose, stripes and crosses on the cheeks) does but portray a masked intention, as if the actor bore a placard writ with the word "Villain." Forthwith, all the rest is faery. The player does but lightly guide the rein, and Pegasus soars free.

So no play can be perfectly performed. We have created an artificial standard of realism, and we say that Bernhardt, Duse and Coquelin portray emotion with consummate art. It has been agreed by authorities on Æsthetic that simulated passion surpasses in suggestive power real emotion. The actor must not "lose himself in his part"--he must maintain the objective relation. None the less, however, must we, as audience, supply imagination to extend the play from art to life. From a romantic point of view, such devotion to realism is unnecessary. We are swayed by the wildest absurdities of melodrama, alike false to life and false to art, and we accept the operas of Wagner, with all their pasteboard dragons and bull-necked heroes belching forth technique, as impressive stimuli to the imagination. Even through such crude means, uplifted either by passionate brotherhood or upon the wings of song, we are wafted far and fast. The play, oh! the play's the thing!

For see! If you prefer the bad play performed by the good actors, why not go to life itself? What else, indeed, is life? It was the old Duke in Lewis Carroll's "Sylvie and Bruno" who first pointed this out. All the world's a stage where are performed the worst of badly constructed plays--plays with neither unity nor sequence nor climax, but performed with absolute perfection. Why waste your time cursing the Adelphi, when, like the Duke, you can see the perfect art of the street? The railway porter's dialect is still convincing. The fat woman with her screaming children may enter at any minute, with her touches of wonderful realism. If you go to the theatre for acting you go to the wrong place! Watch the Font Neuf for the despairing suicide, lurk in Whitechapel, visit in Mayfair, coquette with a Spaniard's sweetheart, or rob a Jew, strike an Englishman, love an American girl, flirt with a French countess, or watch a Samoan beauty at the salt pools catching fish; but try not to find perfect acting behind a row of footlights!

But if, after all, the play's the thing, it is as much a mistake to look for real drama upon the street. There everything is incomplete and, for the satisfaction of our æsthetic sense, we require the threads to be brought together, and the pattern developed, the knots tied. Our contemplation of life is usually analytic; we delight in discovering motives, elementary passions, traits of character and human nature. Our joy in art, on the other hand, arises from synthesis; we love to see effect follow cause, and events march logically, passions work themselves out, the triumph of virtue and justice. Life, as we see it, is a series of photographs. The drama presents these successively as in a biograph, with all the insignificant intermediary glimpses removed. We hunger for the finished story, the poem with the envoy. For this reason we have the drama and the novel.

And now Celestine asks me, "Would you rather read a good story poorly written than a poor story well written?"

The question is as fair as the other, though not quite in the same case. We may agree that acting is a secondary art, but literature has more dignified claims to considerations. Here we are contemplating a wedding of two arts, not the employment of one by another. One might as well say, then, "Would you rather see a good man married to a bad woman or the reverse?" It is the critic who attempts always to divorce the two.

Yet, as in almost all marriage, where two arts work together one is usually the more important. One may have one's preferences, but the selection of that art which embodies an idea, rather than the one which aims at an interpretation, marks the romanticist's point of view. One art must be masculine, creative, and the other feminine and adorning. The glory of the one is strength, of the other beauty. For me, then, the manly choice. Give me the good story badly told, the fine song poorly sung, the virile design clumsily carved, rather than the opposite cases. The necessity of such a choice is not a mere whim of Celestine's; it is a problem we are forced to confront every day. We must take sides. It is not often, even from the Philistine's point of view, that we have the good thing well done, while the poor thing badly done we have everywhere. Between these limits of perfection and hopelessness, then, lies our every-day world of art, and there continually we must make our choice.

If we could deal with abstractions, there would be no question at all, and undoubtedly we would all prefer to enjoy the disincarnate ideal rather than any incomplete embodiment, no matter how praiseworthy the presentment. But few of us are good enough musicians to hear the music in our mind's ear when we look over the score of an opera; few of us can dream whole romances like Dumas, without putting pen to paper; few, even, can long remember the blended glories of a sunset. We must have some tangible sign to lure back memory and imagination, and if we recognize the fact that such symbols are symbols merely, conventions without intrinsic value as art, then we have the eyes of the child and the romantic view of life.

And lastly, Celestine leaned to me in her green kimono and said, "Would you rather see a pretty girl in an ugly gown, or an ugly girl in a pretty gown?" Ah, one does not need to hold the romantic view of life to answer that question!

Living Alone

I have lived so long alone now, that it seems almost as if there were two of me--one who goes out to see friends, transacts business and buys things, and one who returns, dons more comfortable raiment, lights a pipe, and dreams. One the world knows, the other no one knows but the flies on the wall.

I keep no pets, since these would enforce my keeping regular hours; the only familiars I have, therefore, are my clock, my fire and my candles, and how companionable these may become one does not know who does not live alone. They owe me the debt of life, and repay it each in its own way, faithfully and apparently willingly. I have a lamp, too; but a lamp is a dull thing, especially when half-filled, and this one bores me. I might count my typewriter, also, but she is too strenuous, and she makes me too impatient by her inability to spell. Besides, the clock, fire and candles may, with no great stretch of the imagination, be readily conceived to have volition, and, once started, they contribute not a little to relieving the tedium of living alone.

My clock is always the same; it has no surprises. It may go a bit fast or slow, but it has a maddeningly accurate conscience, and its fidelity in ringing the eight-o'clock alarm proves it inhuman. Still, it lives and moves, beating a sober accompaniment to my thoughts. Altogether, it is not unlike a faithful, conscientious servant, never obtrusive, always punctual and obedient, but with an unremitting devotion to orders that is at times exasperating. Many a man has stood in fear and shame of his valet, and so I look askance furtively with a suppressed curse when the hands point to my bath, my luncheon, or my sortie into town. It would be a relief, sometimes, if my clock stopped, were I not sure that it would be my fault.

But my fire is more feminine, full of moods and whims, ardent, domestic and inspiring. Now, a fire, like a woman, should be something besides beautiful, though in many houses the hearth is a mere accessory. It should have other uses than to provide mere warmth, though this is often its sole reason for being. Nor should it be a mere culinary necessity, though I have known open fires to be kindled for that alone, and treated as domestic servants. In my house the fire has all these functions and more, for it is my friend and has consoled many lonely moments. It is a mistress, full of unexpected fancies and vagaries. It has, too, a more sacred quality, for it is an altar where I burn the incense of memory and sacrifice to the gods of the future. It is both human and divine, a tool and symbol at once.

No one, I think, can know how much of all this a fire can be, who has not himself laid, lighted and kindled and coaxed it, who has not utilized its services and accepted its consolations. My fire is, however, often a jealous mistress. She warms me and makes my heart glad, but I dare not leave her side on a wintry day. I must keep well within bounds, hold her hand or be chilled. I need but little urging! I pull up my couch, take pencil and paper, and she twinkles and purrs by my side, casting flickering glances at me as I work.

Not till the flames die down and the coals glow soberly red do I find the more practical pleasures of friendship and housewifely service. Now my fire plays the part of cook, and, in her proper sphere, outdoes every stove or range ever lighted. A little duck laid gently across the grate, the kettle whistling with steam, and the coffee-pot ready--what bachelor was ever attended by more charming handmaiden than I by my little open fire? She will heat an iron or shaving-water as gracefully, too, waiting upon me with a jocund willingness. No servant could be so companionable. Still, she must be humoured as one must always humour a woman. Try to drive her, or make her feel that she is but a slave, and you shall see how quickly she resents it. There is a psychological moment for broiling on an open fire, and postponement is fatal. It takes a world of petting and poking to sooth her caprice when she is in a blazing temper, but remember her sex, and she melts in a glow like a mollified child.

Kindling and lighting my fire is a ritual. I cannot go about it thoughtlessly or without excitement. The birth of the first curling flame inspires me, for the heart becomes an altar sacred to the household gods. If the day offers the least plausible pretext for a fire, I light one and sit down in worship. I resent a warm morning, when economy struggles with desire. Luckily my studio is at the north of the house, and, no matter if the sun is warm abroad, there is a cool corner waiting where a fire needs no apology. The sun creeps in toward noon and puts out the flames, but all the morning I enjoy the blaze.

In the evening the fire becomes absolutely necessary, and provides both heat and light, giving a new life of its own to the darkness of the room. Then I become a Parsee, put on my sacerdotal robes (for such lonely priestcraft requires costume), and fall into a reverie. For my sacrifices, old letters feed the flames. They say that coal, in burning, gives back the stored sunlight of past ages. What lost fires burn, then, when love-letters go up in smoke to illumine for one brief, last instant the shadows of memory!

My candles partake of the nature of both clock and fire. They are to be depended upon, when let alone, to burn just six hours, marking the time like the ticking pendulum, but they give light and warmth, too, in their own way, in gentle imitation of the fire. They also have moods--less petulant than the fire's--but they require as little attention as the clock. The fire seems immortal; though the coals fade into ashes, the morning's resurrection seems to continue the same personality, and the same flames seem to be incarnated--living again the same old life. But the life of a candle seems visibly limited to a definite space of time, and its end is clearly to be seen. In that aspect it seems more human and lovable than the fire--a candle is more like a petted animal, whose short life seems to lead to nothing beyond. We may put more coals on the fire, and continue its existence indefinitely, but the candle is doomed. Putting another one in the socket does not renew a previous existence. But, if it is a short life, it is a merry one, and its service is glad and generous. My little army of candles is constantly being replenished. Like brave and loyal soldiers, they lay down their lives gallantly in my cause, and new ones fill up the vacant ranks, fighting the powers of darkness.

This is my bachelor reverie. But high noon approaches, and my metamorphosis is at hand. Now the sun has struck the fire-place with a lance of light, and I, that other I, must rise, dress and out into the world!

Cartomania

With something of the excitement Alice felt when she crawled through the looking-glass, I used to pore over my atlas. Geography was for me a pastime rather than a study. There was one page in the book where the huge bulging expanse of the United States lay, and there, on the extreme left hand of the vari-coloured patchwork of States and territories, was the abode of romance and adventure--a long and narrow patch tinted pink, curving with the Pacific Ocean, and ribbed with the fuzzy haschures of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. This was the Ultima Thule of my dreams, beyond which my sober-minded hopes dared not stray.

Further on in the book I saw Europe, irregular with ragged peninsulas and bays, Asia, vast and shapeless, with the great blue stretch of Siberia atop, and the clumsy barren yellow triangle of Africa. But these foreign countries were, to my young imagination, as inaccessible as Fairyland; they did not properly come into the world of possibility. They were as unreal as ghosts, remote as the Feudal Ages, and I put them by with a sigh as hopeless. The world is a big place to the eyes of a child, and all beyond his ken but names. How could I know that the end of the century was even then whirling me toward wonders that even my Arabian Magi would not have thought possible? But today, in this far Western town, then but a semi-barbarous camp of gold miners, I have seen an airship half-completed upon the stocks, and this morning, in my own room, I rang up Celestine and talked with her over the wire a hundred miles away!

Maps were my favourite playgrounds, and so real were they that it almost seemed that, with a sufficiently powerful microscope, I might see the very inhabitants living their strangely costumed customs. There was a black dot on my fascinating pink patch marked San Francisco, and now, that dream come true, I try to see this city with the eyes of my childhood, and wonder that I am really here. To get the strangeness of the chance I have to think back and back till I see that map stretched out before the boy, and follow his finger across the tiers of States that run from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Everyone who has not travelled much must feel the excitement that maps give when intently studied. No one has been everywhere, and for each some unvisited spot must charm him with its romantic possibilities. But there are certain cities almost universally enticing to the imagination--the world's great meeting-places, where, if one but waits long enough, one can find anybody. London, Cairo, Bombay, Hongkong, San Francisco, New York--these are the jewels upon the girdle that surrounds the globe. To know these places is to have lived to the full limit of Anglo-Saxon privilege.

But the true cartomaniac is not content with ready-made countries; he must build his own lands. How many kingdoms and empires have I not drawn from the tip of my pencil! Now, the achievement of a plausible state is not so easy as it might appear. There is nothing so difficult as to create, out of hand, an interesting coast line. Try and invent an irregular shore that shall be convincing, and you will see how much more cleverly Nature works than you. Here is where accident surpasses design. Spill a puddle of coloured water on a sheet of paper and pound it with your fist, and lo, an outline is produced which you could not excel in a day's hard work with your pencil!

The establishment of a boundary line, too, requires much thought in order that your frontier interlocks well with your neighbours'. Your rivers must be well studied, your mountains planned, and your cities located according to the requirements of the game. You must name your places, you must calculate your distances, and you must erase and correct many times before you can rival the picturesque possibilities of such a land as India, for instance, which, from the point of view of the sentimental cartographer, is one of the most interesting of states.

If such an effort is too difficult for the beginner, one might begin with a country of which something is known, yet which never has been charted. "Gulliver's Travels," for instance, contains information of many lands that should be drawn to scale. Lilliput, Brobdingnag, Laputa, and the land of horses would alone make a very interesting atlas. The geography of Fairyland affords charming opportunities for the draughtsman. For myself, I prefer the magical territory of the Arthurian legends, and I have platted Sir Launcelot's Isle, with Joyous Gard at the northern end, high over the sea. There is a pleasaunce, a wood, a maze, and a wharf jutting out into a shallow, smiling water, while the lists occupy a promontory to the south.

Oh, the opportunities are many for the cartomaniac! Who has mapped Utopia, Atlantis, Alice's Wonderland, or the countries of the Faerie Queene? Who has reconstructed the plans of Troy? And there are other allegorical lands, too, that should be mapped. I have had a try myself at the modern "Bohemia," and have taken the liberty of shewing within its much-maligned borders Arcady and the Forest of Arden. I have even planned Millamours, the city of a thousand loves, and I am now attempting to draw a map of the State of Literature in the year 1902.

There are many celebrated edifices, too, that might be trifled with. I have a friend, an architect, who has completed the Castle of Zenda, and he is now occupied with Circe's palace, with a fine eye to the decorative effect of the pig-pens. Think of laying out the gardens, grottoes, and palaces of the Arabian Nights! Why has the Castle of Otranto been neglected--and Udolpho, and Castle Dangerous, and the Moated Grange?

Many novelists, and, I think, most writers of pure romance, have played this game. Stevenson, dreaming in his father's office, drew the map of Treasure Island, and from that chart came forth, hint by hint, the suggestions for his masterpiece. Maurice Hewlett drew a plat of the ancient marches and forests where the Forest Lovers wandered, and it is a pity he did not publish it in more detail. This is one of the graphical solutions of story writing, a queer, anomalous method whereby the symbol suggests the concept. The cheaper magazines often use old cuts, and request some hack to write a story to fit the illustration. But the map is an abstraction; its revelations are cabalistic, not definite. A good map is a stage set for romantic fiction, ready for anybody who can write or dream the play.

The Science of Flattery

Time was when people were less sophisticated and almost everybody could be flattered. A compliment was the pinch of salt that could be placed upon any bird's tail. But such game is scarcer now, and to capture one's quarry one has to practice all the arts of modern social warfare. We have, for instance, been taught to believe, time out of mind, that women are especially susceptible to this saccharine process; that one had but to make a pretty speech, and her conquest was assured. But what lady nowadays can take a compliment without bridling? It is as much as a man's reputation is worth to make a plain, straightforward statement of approbation. He must veil his meaning so that it can be discovered only by a roundabout reflection. Whether it be true or not, he is held offensively responsible for the blush with which it is received.

So, to be successful, one must be politic and tactful; one must adopt the indirect method, and, above all, one must escape the obvious. To say what has been said many times before defeats the very purpose, whether it be good or evil, for which we flatter. The artist discards the hackneyed compliment, and endeavours to place his arrow in a spot that has never been hit before. He will compliment a poet upon his drawings and a painter upon his verses. If a woman ordinarily plainly dressed, has a single effective garment, does he compliment her upon that particular costume? By no means. Subtilty demands that he flatter her by pointing out some interesting feature in one of her common frocks, without hinting that it is surprising to see her particularly well clad. Such compliments have the flavour of novelty, and are treasured up by the recipient, to be quoted long after the donor has forgotten them.

The tribute of unexpected praise is more grateful to a person than the reward for which he works hardest and is most confident. It discovers to him new and pleasing attributes. It has all the zest and relish that the particular always has more than the general. And, besides, for the person who happens to light upon some little favourite trick of individuality, and to notice and to comment upon it, the reward is great. Such a flatterer is, in the heart of the flattered one, throned with the authority of discernment; he is considered forever after as a critic of the first importance. Everyone has a hobby, an idiosyncrasy, visible or invisible; it is the art of the flatterer to discover it, and his science to use it to his own ends.

Flattery is, however, an edged tool, and must be used with care. It is not everyone who has the tact to decide at a glance just how much his victim will stand. He may know enough, perhaps, to praise the author of a successful book for some other one of his works which has not attained a popular vogue; he may have the discretion to banter men about their success with the opposite sex, and to accuse women of cleverness; but for all that he may often misjudge his object, and give embarrassment if not actual affront. For all such the safest weapon is the written word.

This is the ambush from which your prey cannot escape. If a letter of praise, of compliment, or even of deliberate flattery, is made decently interesting, if it is not too grossly cloying even for private perusal, it cannot fail to count. It has to be paid for by no blush, no awkward moment, no painful conspicuous self-consciousness, no hypocritical denial. It strikes an undefending victim, and brings him down without a struggle. Such tributes of praise can be read and reread without mortification. It is a sweet-smelling incense that burns perpetually before the shrine of vanity. One compliment written down in black and white is worth any number of spoken words, and the trouble that has been taken to commit such praise to paper gives the offering an added interest and importance. Anything that can be said can be written, from the eulogy of a lady's slipper to the appreciation of a solo on the harp. You may be sure that any unconventionality of manner will be atoned for by the seduction of a honeyed manner. Stevenson, in his playful "Decalogue for Gentlemen," set down as his first canon, "Thou shalt not write an anonymous letter," but it cannot be doubted that he would have excepted an unsigned note of admiration.

The element of time, in flattery, too, is often disregarded. Few would-be flatterers understand the increased influence of a compliment deferred. It is again the same case of the misuse of the obvious. When your friend's book appears, or his picture is displayed, there are enough to compliment him on the spot, but your own sympathetic endorsement, delayed a few months, or even iterated, comes to him when he is least expecting the compliment. He is off his guard, and the shot goes home. When I give Celestine a present she thanks me immediately, of course, but that is not the last of it. In every third letter or so I am reminded of her gratitude and my kindness.

There is, however, a flattery of manner as well as one of matter. Celestine, to whose wise counsels I am indebted for many a short cut in the making of friends, once laid down for me the following rules for dealing with women:

First, be intellectual with pretty women.

Second, be frivolous with intellectual women.

Third, be serious and empressé with young girls.

Fourth, be saucy and impudent with old ladies. Call them by their first names, if necessary.

It goes without saying that such audacious methods require boldness and sureness of touch, especially in the application of the fourth rule. But even that, when attempted with spirit and assurance, has given miraculous results. In a case where a woman's age is in question, action speaks far louder than words.

Perhaps the most successful method of flattery is that of the person who makes the fewest compliments. To gain a name for brusqueness and frankness is, in a way, to attain a reputation for sincerity. Whether this is just or not, it is undoubtedly true that the occasional unlooked for praise of such a person acquires an exaggerated importance and worth. This system is similar to that of the billiard-player who goes through the first half of his game wretchedly in order to surprise his opponent with the dexterity of his shots later on. But it is an amateurish ruse, and is soon discovered and discounted at its true value. Yet in a way, too, it is justifiable, since unpleasant comments are usually accepted as candid, while pleasant ones alone are suspected.

There is a kind of conscious vanity to which flattery comes welcomely, however patent the hyperboles may appear. To such persons, and there are many, a certain amount of adulation oils the mental machine. They do not believe all that is said, but prefer, on the whole, to be surrounded by pleasant fictions rather than by unpleasant facts. They prefer harmony to honesty, and, though the oil on the troubled waters of life does not dispel the storm, it makes easier sailing. To others, especially if they be creators in any art, compliments stimulate and impel to their best endeavour. Many a man has achieved a masterpiece chiefly because a woman declared him capable of it.

The question of the object for which flattery is employed is here beside the mark. It may be used or misused; it may be true or false of itself, although, to be sure, the word flattery has attained an evil significance and has come to stand for counterfeit approval. All that has been said, however, applies to one as well as to the other. Even when praise has the least foundation in fact, it may prove beneficial to the person flattered, arousing a pride which creates the admired quality that was wholly lacking. Thus I have known a man notorious for his vulgarity stimulated to a very creditable politeness by the most undeserved and insincere compliment upon his table manners.

I have used the three testimonials of admiration as synonymous, but Celestine says that praise is a rightful fee, a compliment is a tip, and that flattery is bribery.

Romance En Route

How tired I am of the question, "How do you like London?" and "How do you like New York?" "Would you rather live in San Francisco or Paris?" Why, indeed, should I not like London, Kalamazoo, Patagonia, Bombay, or any other place where live men and women walk the streets, eat, drink, and are merry? How can I say whether El Dorado is better than Arcady, or a square room more convenient than an oblong one? Every living place has its own fascination, its mysteries, its characteristic delights. Ask me, rather, if I can understand London, if I can catch the point of view of the French concierge, if I comprehend the slang and bustle of Chicago? Like them? Show me the town I cannot like! Know them? Ah, that is different!

This is the charm of travel--to keep up the feeling of strangeness to the end, never to take things for granted or let them grow stale, to see them always as though one had never seen them before. Then, and only then, can we see things as they really are. When I become cosmopolitan, world-old, blasé, when I think and speak in all languages, I shall fly to some deserted island to study the last, most impenetrable enigma--myself.

But meanwhile, I can purchase romance retail, at the mere cost of a railway ticket. I can close my eyes in one city, and wake next morning in its mental antipode. Romance requires only a new point of view; it is the art of getting fresh glimpses of the commonplace. One need not be transported to the days of chivalry, one need not even travel; one need only begin life anew every morning, and look out upon the world unfamiliarly as the child does. One must be born a discoverer. Thus one may keep youth, for the sport never loses colour. One game won or lost, the next has an equal interest, though we use the same counters and the same board. The combinations are always fresh.

Still, though one may find this fountain of perpetual youth in one's breakfast glass, the obvious conventional method is to go forth for the adventure, and get this famed elixir at some foreign and well-advertised spring. For this purpose tourists travel, taking part in a pilgrimage of whose meaning and proper method they are wholly ignorant. In their boxes and portmanteaus they pack, not hopes of mystery, faith in the compelling marvels of the world, nor the wonder of strange sights; but instead, fault-finding comparisons, and prejudice against all manners not their own. They do not see, in the omnibus of London, the automobile of Paris, the electric trolley of New York and the cable car of San Francisco, the pregnant evidence of several points of view on life, art and commerce, but they perceive only grotesque contrasts with their own particular means of locomotion. They do not delight in the incomprehensible hurly-burly of civilization that has produced the City Man, the Bounder, the Coster, the Hoodlum, Hooligan and Sundowner, nor do they attempt to solve the mystery or get the meat from such strange shells. Instead, they see only the clerk at the lunch-counter bolting his chops and half-pint, the incredible waistcoat of the pretentious blagueur, or the buttons and "moke" of the ruffling D'Artagnan of the Old Kent-road.

So the tourist travels with his eyes shut, while the true traveller has a lookout on life, keen for new sensations. To do things in Rome as the Romans do, that is his motto. He must eat spaghetti with his fingers, his rice and chopped suey with chop-sticks, or he fails of their subtle relish. He calls no Western town crude or uncivilized, but he tries to cultivate a taste for cocktails, that he may imbibe the native fire of occidental enthusiasm. In the East he is an Oriental; he changes his mind, his costume and his spectacles wherever he goes, and underneath the little peculiarities of custom and environment, he finds the essential realities of life.

To taste all this fine, crisp flavour of living--not to write about it or fit it to sociological theories, but to live it, understand it, be it--this is the art of travel, the art of romance, the art of youth. But there is no Baedeker to guide such a sentimental tourist through such experiences as these. It takes a lively glance to recognize a man disguised in a frock coat, and to find him blood brother to the Esquimau!

Well, there is a place in Utah on the Central Pacific Railroad called Monotony. The settlement consists of a station, a water-tank, and a corrugated iron bunk-house. The level horizon swings round a full circle, enclosing a flat, arid waste, bisected by an unfenced line of rails, straight as a stretched string. The population consists of a telegraph operator, a foreman, and six section hands. Yet I dare say I would like to stay there awhile, on the way, and perhaps I would taste some charm that London never gave. I am not so sure that but that before I took wing again I might not like it, in some respects, better even than Paris.

The Edge of the World

To find the colonial or the provincial more cultured, better educated in life and keenlier cognizant of the world's progress than the ordinary metropolitan, is a common enough paradox. Class for class, the outlander has more energy, greater sapience and a truer zest of intellect than the citizen at the capital. By the outlander is not meant, however, the mere suburban or rural inhabitant, but the dweller at the outpost of civilization, the picket on the edge of the world.

Let us grant that, in the gross, every new community must be crude--it takes time to grow ivy over the walls, to soften the primary colours into harmonious tones, to smooth off the rough edges,--but let us also grant that, at all the back doorways of empire, in far-away corners of the earth, are assembled little coteries of men and women who, by reason of their very isolation, rather than despite it, have made themselves cosmopolitan, catholic, eclectic, and stand ever ready to welcome, each in his own polite dialect and idiom, the astonished traveller who thinks he has left all that is great and good behind.

This compensation is, indeed, a natural law. If we cut back half the shoots of a shrub, the surviving sprouts will be more vigorous. The deprivation of one sense renders the others more acute. Make it hard for an ambitious lad to obtain an education, and, working alone by candle-light, he will outstrip the student with greater advantages. So it is with the colonial who realizes his poverty of artistic and intellectual resources. He must, in self-defense and to compensate for his isolation, make friends with the world at large, and his mental vision, accustomed to long ranges of sight, becomes sharp and subtile. To avoid the reproach of provincialism he studies the great centers of thought and watches eagerly for the first signs of new growths in fads, fashions, art and politics. It is for this reason that the British colonial is more British than the Englishman at home.

Plunged in the midst of the turmoil of every-day excitements, the dwellers in great cities lose much of the true and fine significance of things. A thousand enterprises are beginning, and amidst a myriad essays the headway of yesterday's novelty is lost in the struggle of today's agonists. The little, temporary, local success seems big with import, and the slower development of more serious and permanent virtues is ignored. Things are seen so closely that they are out of true proportion, and they are seen through media of personality that diffract and magnify.

But the provincial, far from this complicated aspect of intellectual life, gains greatly in perspective. Separated by great space, he is, in a way, separated by time also, and he sees what another generation will perhaps see in the history of today. For he watches not only literary London, that tiniest and most garrulous of gossiping villages, but a dozen other hives of thought as well, and from his very distance can the more easily discern the first signs of pre-eminence. His ears are not ringing with a myriad petty clamours, but he can hear, rising above the multitudinous hum, the voice of those who sing clearest. The connoisseur in art views a painting from across the hall--the lover of music does not sit too close to the orchestra--and so the intelligent looker-on at life does not come too often in familiar touch with the aspirants for fame. Living, as one might say, upon a hill, the stranger thus gets the range, volume and trend of human activities, and sees their movements, like those of armies marching below him, though they seem as ants, so far away. He can trace the direction of waves of emotion that follow round the earth like tides of the sea.

In every community, however small or remote, there are a few who delight in this comprehensive view of things, who keep up with the times, and, so far as their immediate neighbours are concerned, are ahead of the prevailing mode. As the meteorologist, studying the reports from North, South, East and West, can trace the progress of storm and wind, so these intelligent observers can predict what will be talked about next, and how soon the first murmurs will reach their shores. Their cosmic laboratory is the club library table, with its journals and periodicals from all over the world.

The first hint of a new success in literature comes from the London weeklies, and then, if the British opinion is corroborated by American favour, the New York papers take up the note of praise, and one may follow the progress of a novel's triumph across three thousand five hundred miles of continent, or see the word pass from colony to colony, over the whole empire. The Londoner sees but the bubbles at the spring--the pioneer by the Pacific watches the course of a mighty stream increasing in depth and width. Tomorrow, or in three months, the vogue will reach his own town, and he will smile to see all tongues wag of the latest literary success.

So it is with art, so it is with fashions, with the drama and with every fad and foible, from golf and Babism to the last song and catchword of the music halls. The colonial is behind the times? What does it matter! Are we not all behind the times of tomorrow? So long as we cannot travel faster than the news, it makes little difference; and it is wise, when we are in San Francisco, to do as the Franciscans do. It is as bad to be ahead of the times as to be behind, and it is best to follow the style of one's own locality, with a shrewd eye to one's purchases for the future, buying what we can see must come into popular favour.

But does your metropolitan enjoy this complexity, this living in the future? Not he! He cares nothing for the vieux jeu. For him, ping-pong is dead or dying--he neither knows nor cares that it still lives in the Occident, marching in glory ever towards the West, along the old trail to fame. Of the last six successful books discussed over his muffins, does he know which have been virile enough to survive transplanting to other shores--which have emigrated and become naturalized in the colonies? No! He is for the next little victory at the tea tables of the elect!

And yet, this afterglow, this subsequent invasion of new territory is what brings enduring fame. Before the city election is substantiated, the country must be heard from. The urban hears the solo voices of adulation, the worship of those near and dear to celebrity, but the great chorus that sweeps the hero up to Parnassus comes from a wider stage. The army of invasion never comes home again to be hailed as victor until it has encircled the globe. But it is the greater conquest that the dweller at the outpost sees, at first like a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, and it is his game to watch and await it. It is better so. Waste no pity upon him at the edge of the world. For the big game needs big men, and it is the boldest and most strenuous spirits who push to Ultima Thule. The anæmic and neurotic do not emigrate; the reddest blood has flowed in the veins of the pioneer ever since the first migration. He does things, rather than talks of things others have done--he knows life, even if he knows not Ibsen. Meet him in his far-away home, and he holds your interest with an unlooked-for charm; take him to the Elgin marbles and he will have and hold his own idea of art unborrowed from text-books. He knows more of your city's history than you do yourself; panic or the furor of a fashion cannot hypnotize him. The importance of a celebrated name cannot embarrass him, for he has met men unknown to fame who have lived as uncrowned kings. He has seen cities rise from the plain. He has made the wilderness to blossom like the rose; he has lived, not written epics.

And in addition to gaining all this experience that trained the pioneers of old, he has, while living at the confines of civilization, kept in touch with the world, and has tasted the exhilarating flavour of the old and new in one mouthful. For, in this century, distance is swept away and no land is really isolate. The pioneer lives like a god above distinctions of time, at once in the past, the present and the future.

The Diary Habit

For seven years I have kept my diary scrupulously, without missing a day, and now, at the beginning of a new twelvemonth, I am wondering whether I should maintain or renounce it. There are certain good habits, it would seem, as hard to break as bad ones, and if the practice of keeping a daily journal is a praiseworthy one, it derives no little of its virtue from sheer inertia. The half-filled book tempts one on; there is a pleasure in seeing the progress of the volume, leaf by leaf; like sentimental misers, we hoard our store of memories. We end each day with a definite statement of fact or fancy, and it grows harder and harder to abstain from the self-enforced duty. Yet it is seldom a pleasure, when one is fatigued with excitement or work, to transmit our affairs to writing. Some, it is true, love it for its own sake, or as a relief for pent-up emotions, but, in one way or another, most autobiographical journalists consider the occupation as a prudent depositor regards his frugal savings in the bank. Some time, somehow, they think, these coined memories will prove useful.

Does this time ever come, I wonder? For me it has not come yet, though I still picture a late reflective age when I shall enjoy recalling the past, and live again my old sensations. But life is more strenuous than of yore, and even at seventy or eighty, nowadays, no one need consider himself too old for a fresh, active interest in the world about him. Your old gentleman of today does not sit in his own corner of the fireplace and dote over the lost years; he reads the morning papers, and insists upon going to the theatre with his nieces on wet evenings. Have I, then, been laying up honey for a winter of discontent that shall never come?

Besides this distrust of my diaries, I am awakening after seven years to the fact that, as autobiography, the books are strangely lacking in interest. They are not convincing. I thought, as I did my clerkly task, that I should always be I, but a cursory glance at these naïve pages shows that they were written by a thousand different persons, no one of whom speaks the language of the emotions as I know it today. It is true, then, my diary has convinced me, that we do become different persons every seven years. Here is written down rage, hate, delight, affection and yearning, no word of which is comprehensible to me now; they leave me quite cold. I am reading the adventures of some one else, not my own. Who was it? I have forgotten the dialect of my youth. Ah, indeed, the boy is father of the man! I will be indulgent, as a son should, to paternal indiscretions!

And yet, for the bare skeleton of my history, these volumes are useful enough. The pages which, while still wet with ink and tears I considered lyric essays, have fallen to a merely utilitarian value. I am thankful, on that account, for them, and for the fact that my bookkeeping was well systematized and indexed. As outward form goes, my diaries are models of manner. So for those still under the old-fashioned spell, who would adopt a plan of entry, let me describe them.

The especial event of each day, if the day held anything worthy of remark or remembrance, was boldly noted at the top of the page over the date. Whirring the leaves I catch many suggestive phrases: "Dinner at Mme. Qui Vive's" (it was there I first tasted champagne), "Henry Irving in 'Macbeth'" (but it was not the actor that made that night famous--I took Kitty Carmine home in a hansom!), "Broke my arm" (or else I would never have read Marlowe, I fear), and "Met Sally Reynard" (this was an event, it seemed at that time, worthy of being chronicled in red ink). So they go. They are the chapter headings in the book of my life.

In the lower left-hand corner of each page I noted the receipt of letters, the initials of the writers inscribed in little squares, and in the opposite right-hand corner a complementary hieroglyph kept account of every reply sent. So, by running over the pages I can note the fury of my correspondence. (What an industrious scribbler "S.R." was to be sure! I had not thought we went it quite so hard--and "K.C."--how often she appears in the lower left, and how seldom in the lower right! I was a brute, no doubt, and small wonder she married Flemingway!)

Perpendicularly, along the inner margin, I wrote the names of those to whom I had been introduced that day, and on a back page I kept a chronological list of the same. (I met Kitty, it seems, on a Friday--perhaps that accounts for our not hitting it off!) Most of these are names, and nothing more, now, and it gives my heart a leap to come across Sally in that list of nonentities. (To think that there was ever a time when I did not know her!)

Besides all this, the books are extra-illustrated in the most significant manner. There is hardly a page that does not contain some trifling memento; here, a theatre coupon pasted in, or a clipping from the programme, an engraved card or a pencilled note; there a scrap of a photograph worn out in my pocket-book, somebody's sketched profile, or, at rare intervals, a wisp of some one's hair! (This reddish curl--was it Kitty's or from Dora's brow? Oh, I remember, it was Myrtle gave it me! No, I am wrong; I stole it from Nettie!) I pasted them in with eager trembling fingers, but I regard them now without a tremour. There are other pages being filled which interest me more.

Occasionally I open a book, 1895 perhaps, and consult a date to be sure that Millicent's birthday is on November 12th, or to determine just who was at Kitty's coming-out dinner. Here is a diagram of the table with the places of all the guests named. (So I sat beside Nora, did I? And who was Nora? I have forgotten her name! Now she is Mrs. Alfred Fortunatus!)

Sometimes I think it would be better to write up my diary in advance, to fill in the year's pages with what I would like to do, and attempt to live up to the prophecy. And yet I have had too many unforeseen pleasures in my life for that. I would rather trust fate than imagination. So, chiefly because I have kept the book for seven years, I shall probably keep it seven years more. It gratifies my conceit to chronicle my small happenings, and somehow, written down in fair script, they seem important. And besides I am a bit anxious to see just how many times a certain name, which has lately begun to make itself prominent, will appear at the top of the pages. I promise to tell you some time, if Celestine is willing!

The Perfect Go-between

Surely the modern invention that has done most to perpetuate Romance is the telephone. The man that, however used to this machine, can take up its ear-piece without a thrill of wonder has no soul. The locomotive, the steamship, the automobile have but made travel a bit more rapid, they have added no new element of mystery. Even the telegraph fails to give any true feeling of surprise. It is no whit more wonderful than that one, after writing a letter and slipping it into a red mail-box, should be handed a reply by a strange, blue-clad gentleman, after many days. A telegraphic despatch does not even hold the handwriting of the sender; it is cold, colourless, metallic.

But a machine that can bring your friend into the same room with you, at a moment's notice, who can deny the poetry of such a victory over space and time! Not until some genius invents a thought-transmitter shall a more stupendous aid to Romance be discovered. For see! It is not only one's friends that are caught in the net of telephone wires, one can drag up a whole city full! I have but to sit down at my desk and call up a number, and he or she must reply. True, I cannot force any one to answer, but if I have the audacity and persistency, it will go hard if I do not find some one who is willing to while away a leisure, inquisitive moment in inconsequent conversation.

It is my privilege to live in a telephone city where the habit is extraordinarily developed. One out of every sixteen of the population is connected to that most amiable of go-betweens, the Central Office. I have the opportunity of investigating some thirty thousand souls at the ridiculously cheap price of five cents per soul! Not only every counting-house and shop, doctor's office and corner grocery has its wire, but every residence with any claims to acquaintance. What Romance gone to waste! For few, it seems, have imagination enough to embrace such unlimited opportunities!

This morning Sonia called me at 8:25, apologizing for her kind-heartedness in letting me sleep when she knew I wished to work. Think of that for an alarm clock--Sonia's voice, ten miles away! So I am awakened by the telephone, I call by telephone, flirt by telephone, shop, market and speculate over the same wire. We do not take long in utilizing the latest invention here in this hurried land--the city is ravaged by Telephonitis. One invites friends to dinner, one makes appointments, one breaks the news of the death of a friend, one proposes marriage--all by means of this little instrument. I know one lady who has her machine connected by flexible wires so that she may talk in bed. She need not be too strict in regard to dress for her interviews--no one ever knows! I know two old men who while away long evenings together playing chess, when the weather is too harsh to leave home. Beside each board stands the faithful receiver; one has but to whisper "K.B. to Q.3" or some such rigamarole into the nickel-plated "extension" and he has checkmated his opponent across the Bay!

With such common intercourse as this, many are the comedies of the telephone. I have myself entertained a visitor with a diversion he will not soon forget. The day he came I took him to my telephone and introduced him in turn to a half-dozen ladies of my acquaintance, who plied him with badinage. We set forth then on a tour of calls, and I enjoyed his several attempts at identifying the voices he had heard over the wire. It is not always easy to recognize a voice and remember it. I remember an unfortunate experience of my own with two sisters which brought a week's embarrassment, for the voices of members of one family do have a marvellous similarity in the telephone, and if one is anxious to call upon Fanny when Elizabeth is out, one must be very sure just which sister one is speaking to when making an appointment.

The necessity for such precaution has led some of my friends to adopt telephone methods which must be extremely amusing to one who could hear both sides of the conversation. In many houses the telephone is situated in the hall, altogether too near the dining-room for any confidential communication. If the questioner is careful he may so word his inquiries that they may be answered by a mere "yes" or "no"; and papa, smoking after dinner, is none the wiser. If the girl finds it impossible to reply in unguarded terms, she has been known to say, somewhat vaguely, "Of course," which conveys to the man at the other end of the wire the fact that she is not alone. Some, too, have more definite codes. Celestine has arranged with me that when she mentions the "Call" it means the forenoon; the "Chronicle" stands for afternoon, while by the "Examiner" I understand that she refers to the evening. If, then, I ring her up and say, "When can you go walking today? I want to be sure not to meet that fool Clubberly." Clubberly, who is at her elbow, hears her reply sweetly, "Really! Yes, I saw it in the "Chronicle"; and how is he to know what it is all about? Oh, he could have his revenge easily enough, were he not an ass, for he might be kissing Celestine (horrid thought) even as she is speaking, for all I could know.

With this romantic battery opposed to her, what chance has poor Mrs. Grundy? What hard-hearted parent can successfully immure his daughter while the copper wire strings out toward her proscribed lover? Here is where love laughs at locksmiths. Were a dozen ineligibles forbidden the house, the moment mamma's back is turned and she has gone out for her round of calls, little daughter takes the telephone off the hook and, presto! she has her room full of clandestine company! Does any rash young man dare ring her up while her parents are near, she has but to say, sweetly, "Oh, you have the wrong number!" and hang up. It is too wonderful. You may lie by telephone, with a straight face, or you may call a man a liar with impunity. If you have no answer ready to an ardent impertinence, you need only say nothing and listen--he is helpless; you need not speak unless you want to. Who made the first telephone made mischief for a thousand years to come!

Rrrrrrrrrrng!!!! There is Celestine ringing me up now! Pardon me if I leave you for a moment, for I think she is going to give me her answer to a very important question. Tremendously important for me! Wish me good luck! I hope no one will be listening!

Growing Up

When I asked Perilla how she first came to realize that she was growing up, she said, "When I began of my own accord to wash my sticky fingers, without waiting to be told." I believe she meant it literally, with no moral significance that should make a parable of the statement. I hope so, at least, for then by that test I cannot hope to have yet attained the years of discretion. Little Sister says that she felt "growing pains," but here is a figure of speech, surely. I suppose she means the wonder of the passage from a great, wistful ignorance to a limited knowledge; for the first part of the path of life is a very steep up-grade.