TADAIMA

I thought I saw the bronze god Asamra (he who may speak but once in a thousand years, and whose friendship I keep by making time stand still for him in the stopping of the clock and its turning back) shake his head in doubt as I put the manuscript into its wrappings and addressed it to the publisher.

"Well?" I inquired, testily.

"Suppose They do not like it?" sighed the god.

"Why should They not?" demanded I, loftily.

"It has, among other unusualities, (I hope you like the gentleness of the word!) those dashes which—You ought to have learned by this time that They don't like to read over dashes."

"Why not?" asked I, again. "I like them. And, they are my own!"

"Well, you know a dash necessitates lucubration. It stands for something which you trust your reader to supply. That is unfair. If you are writing a book and receiving an honorarium for it, do not expect him to do it. It is a bit like eating. One does not go to a restaurant, and pay for his food, then cook it himself."

"I have seen it done," cried I, "by particular people!"

"Ahem!" murmured the polite god: more polite on this day than I had recently observed him—which meant some sort of propaganda.

"It is not an ahem!" I went on in the unregenerate heat which the friction of the god often engendered in me. "Have you never seen it done?"

"I have," admitted the effigy, "seen a waiter sorely vexed to bring the materials for a salad—"

"Aha!" cried I, triumphantly.

"Gomen nasai," begged the deity, "I had not finished. I have seen a waiter, I say, sorely vexed to bring the materials for a salad which the maker has—spoiled!"

"Then," demanded I, with icy coldness, "you think that if I permit Them to supply a few thoughts to carry Them over the dashes They will—"

"Think something you did not think; perhaps something worse," the effigy finished, calamitously.

"Or better?" I suggested, bitterly.

"Or better," agreed the god. "There is a small number of people (but, extremely small) who like to supply in full what you suggest in dashes. It tickles Them tremendously to think that you couldn't have done it so well; that you trust Them to do it better. Often They are certain that They have helped you over a place you could not help yourself over—hence the dash."

"Sometimes," I mused, diffidently, "that is true."

"Ha, ha!" laughed the image, and our mood became more human.

"But, do you mean to say," I asked, "that if I leave John and Jane in the upper hall, and take them up again in the lower hall, I must acquaint Them with the fact that John and Jane have been obliged to traverse the stairway to get away from the one and to reach the other? Am I permitted no ellipsis in so patent a matter as that?"

"They will expect the stairway," sighed the god.

"And a page for each step, I suppose! How can They differ from me? What other thought can They have than that John and Jane descended the stairway to reach the lower hall?"

"There may be a back stairway, or a fire escape," chuckled the deity.

"Then, I suppose, I must spend some pages in telling Them not only that John and Jane descended the stair, but that they did not descend by the back stair or the fire escape!"

"It would be better," said the idol. "They can skip it. But They cannot deny that it is there, as They can if it is not. They would rather skip what you supply than supply what you skip. One is Their judgment of your mental caliber—usually too small—the other is your judgment of Theirs—usually too generous. Ahem! There is a golden mean."

"Besides, however bad for literature it may be," laughed I, "at so much a word, it is good for me!"

"Well," ventured god, in doubt, "are novels literature?"

"I am not the one to say," I retorted, with some asperity. "I manufacture them. But I can swear that they are better literature—if literature at all—than some of the criticisms of them—if literature at all."

"Have I touched a broken, perhaps often mended, place in your armor?" laughed the god.

"Well," I admitted, crustily, "I have read criticisms of English—no matter whose—the English of which was eminently criticisable. Here is one. The gentleman makes no distinction in the uses of 'which' and 'that,' and he has not a 'who' in his vocabulary."

"I have my eye on it," laughed the image, "and I admit that a few whiches and whos for thats, and—even—er—pardon!—a few of your dashes, would make its teaching more grateful."

"God," adjured I, happily, "thank you! Now do please stop and think! No speech, no thought, goes on without dashes. When we write the speech which flows mellifluous, we do violence to nature. And in all art the tendency is toward nature."

"Recently," began the deity, in that high tone which always meant checkmate to me, "I have seen the statue of an alleged athlete, in which his bunions were reproduced!"

"I saw it, too," I laughed. Indeed, the god and I had stared at it together.

"Well," the effigy went on, "that was certainly nature!"

"There is a golden mean," I re-quoted. "An artistic attitude toward all manifestations of art. If one has this one will appreciate—er—whether to reproduce the bunions. They may, of course, be picturesque bunions. Why, god, if one should reproduce human speech, as it is spoken, there would be a dash after every third word! Mine are quite within bounds."

"It would look queer," said the god, "and you would be called eccentric instead of original. Please don't do it! In fact stop it! Placate both your readers and your critics."

"Oh, as to that," said I, airily, "the labor would all be lost. Anything which is unusual to the superficial experience of the average person is glibly dubbed eccentric. You know how it is. A reader likes to find the dear old situations in advance of him so that he knows what he is approaching. There is the same fear of the terra incognita in literature that there is in nature. A book or a play which is too novel a tax upon the faculties of a client is not to his liking."

"Who, pray, do you write books for?" asked the effigy, with the suspicion of a yawn.

"The people who read them," said I, cockily.

"Do They include the critics?"

"Oh, no," said I, hastily.

"Aren't they 'people who read them'?"

"Why, they are critics," cried I. "How can they?"

"That is hard doctrine," said the god, dully. "If you write for the people who read, you must submit to their verdict. And the critics are a part of them."

"A small part. But they pretend to speak for the whole. Permit me to explain—"

The god politely waited.

"Your critic approaches a book as a lawyer does his case—temperamentally—not judicially—with an opinion of it in advance or upon the first pages, which the book must either justify or fail to justify. The result appears in his published estimate. He states his view as if it were the only one. And, being delivered ex cathedra, the multitude take it as they do their preaching—for the gospel of Literature! But how would you like that in your judge? Who is sworn to decide upon the evidence adduced alone?

"So it happens that every book is well cursed and well blessed, according to the humor of the dissector. And the cursing and blessing are usually about equal."

"There does seem to be something wrong about criticism which can be unanimous both ways," laughed the god.

"There ought to be some tribunal to which criticism could be referred upon appeal as lawsuits are," said I. "But," I went on, hastening a bit to my climax as the god seemed to doze, "the most terrible of all criticism is the modern humorous kind—"

"I have heard an odious term used to characterize those who make it," whispered the deity.

"The man who can do nothing else—and usually he can do nothing else—can poke fun. It is a peculiarly tasteful form of iconoclasm."

Said the god:—

"If I should sleep, do not forget to stop the clock."

He pretended to do so.

That is his way when I have tired him.

J. L. L.