BOOKS BY JAMES HUNEKER Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

UNICORNS. 12mo, net, $1.75

IVORY APES AND PEACOCKS. 12mo, net, $1.50

NEW COSMOPOLIS. 12mo, net, $1.50

THE PATHOS OF DISTANCE. 12mo, net, $2.00

FRANZ LISZT. Illustrated. 12mo, net, $2.00

PROMENADES OF AN IMPRESSIONIST. 12mo, net, $1.50

EGOISTS: A BOOK OF SUPERMEN. 12mo, net, $1.50

ICONOCLASTS: A BOOK OF DRAMATISTS. 12mo, net, $1.50

OVERTONES: A BOOK OF TEMPERAMENTS. 12mo, net, $1.50

MEZZOTINTS IN MODERN MUSIC. 12mo, net, $1.50

CHOPIN: THE MAN AND HIS MUSIC. With Portrait. 12mo, net, $2.00

VISIONARIES. 12mo, net, $1.50

MELOMANIACS. 12mo, net, $1.50

UNICORNS

UNICORNS

BY

JAMES HUNEKER

“I would write on the lintels of the door-post, ‘Whim.’” —Emerson

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1917

COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published September, 1917

Copyright, 1906, by THE NEW YORK HERALD COMPANY Copyright, 1907, by THE RIDGEWAY COMPANY Copyright, 1909, 1911, 1916, 1917, by THE SUN PRINTING AND PUBLISHING CO. Copyright, 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917, by THE NEW YORK TIMES COMPANY Copyright, 1915, 1916, by PUCK PUBLISHING CO. Copyright, 1917, by NORTH AMERICAN Copyright, 1917, by THE NEW YORK EVENING MAIL

THIS BOOK OF SPLEEN AND GOSSIP IS INSCRIBED TO MY FRIEND EDWARD ZIEGLER

“Come! let us lay a crazy lance in rest And tilt at windmills under a wild sky.”

—John Galsworthy.

“He is a fribble, a sonsy faddle, whose conceits veer with the breeze like a creaking weather-vane. As the sterile moon hath her librations, so must he boast of his oscillations, thinking them eternal verities. A very cockatoo in his perched-up vanity and prodigious clatter....”

[From “The Velvet Cactus.” Anonymous. Printed at the Sign of the Cat and Cameo, Threadneedle Street, London. A.D. 1723. Rare.]