The So-called Human Race

I go, I go —
I know.
Under the covers,
That’s where I go.

The little poet of the foregoing knew where she was going, which is more than can be said for many modern bards.

THE EIGHTH VEIL

(By J-mes Hun-k-r.)

There was a wedding under way. From the bright-lit mansion came the evocations of a loud bassoon. Ulick Guffle, in whom the thought of matrimony always produced a bitter nausea, glowered upon the house and spat acridly upon the pave. “Imbeciles! Humbugs! Romantic rot!” he raged.

Three young men drew toward the scene. Ulick barred their way, but two of the trio slipped by him and escaped. The third was nailed by Guffle’s glittering eye. Ulick laid an ineluctable hand upon the stranger’s arm. “Listen!” he commanded. “Matrimony and Art are sworn and natural foes. Ingeborg Bunck was right; there are no illegitimate children; all children are valid. Sounds like Lope de Vega, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. It is Bunck. Whitman, too, divined the truth. Love is a germ; sunlight kills it. It needs l’obscurité and a high temperature. As Baudelaire said – or was it Maurice Barrès? – dans la nuit tous les chats sont gris. Remy de Gourmont …”

The wedding guest beat his shirtfront; he could hear the bassoon doubling the cello. But Ulick continued ineluctably. “Woman is a sink of iniquity. Only Gounod is more loathsome. That Ave Maria – Grand Dieu! But Frédéric Chopin, nuance, cadence, appoggiatura – there you have it. En amour, les vieux fous sont plus fous que les jeunes. Listen to Rochefoucauld! And Montaigne has said, C’est le jouir et non le posséder qui rend heureux. And Pascal has added, Les affaires sont les affaires. As for Stendhal, Flaubert, Nietzsche, Edgar Saltus, Balzac, Gautier, Dostoievsky, Rabelais, Maupassant, Anatole France, Bourget, Turgenev, Verlaine, Renan, Walter Pater, Landor, Cardinal Newman and the Brothers Goncourt …”

Ulick seized his head with both hands, and the wedding guest seized the opportunity to beat it, as the saying is. “Swine!” Ulick flung after him. “Swine, before whom I have cast a hatful of pearls!” He spat even more acridly upon the pave and turned away. “After all,” he growled, “Stendhal was right. Or was it Huysmans? No, it was neither. It was Cambronne.”

Though there has been little enough to encourage it, the world is growing kinder; at least friendliness is increasing. Every other day we read of some woman living pleasantly in a well appointed apartment, supplied with fine raiment and an automobile, the fruit of Platonism. “No,” she testifies, “there was nothing between us. He was merely a friend.”

What heaven hath cleansed let no man put asunder. Emma Durdy and Raymond Bathe, of Nokomis, have been j. in the h. b. of w.

THE TRACERS ARE AT WORK

Sir: Please consult the genealogical files of the Academy and advise me if Mr. Harm Poppen of Gurley, Nebraska, is a lineal descendant of the w. k. Helsa Poppen, famous in profane history. E. E. M.

Our opinion, already recorded, is that if Keats had spent fifteen or twenty minutes more on his Grecian Urn, all of the stanzas would be as good as three of them. And so we think that if A. B. had put in, say, a half hour more on her sonnet she would not have rhymed “worldliness” and “moodiness.” Of the harmony, counterpoint, thoroughbass, etc., of verse we know next to nothing – we play on our tin whistle entirely by ear – but there are things which we avoid, perhaps needlessly. One of these is the rhyming of words like utterly, monody, lethargy, etc.; these endings seem weak when they are bunched. Our assistants will apprehend that we are merely offering a suggestion or two, which we hope they will follow up by exploring the authorities.

Music like Brahms’ Second Symphony is peculiarly satisfying to the listener. The first few measures disclose that the composer is in complete control of his ideas and his expression of them. He has something to say, and he says it without uncertainty or redundancy. Only a man who has something to say may dare to say it only once.

Those happy beings who “don’t know a thing about art, but know what they like,” are restricted to the obvious because of ignorance of form; their enjoyment ends where that of the cultivated person begins. Take music. The person who knows what he likes takes his pleasure in the tune, but gets little or nothing from the tune’s development; hence his favorite music is music which is all tune.

We recall a naïve query by the publisher of a magazine, at a musicale in Gotham. Our hostess, an accomplished pianist, had played a Chopin Fantasia, and the magazine man was expressing his qualified enjoyment. “What I can’t understand,” said he, “is why the tune quits just when it’s running along nicely.” This phenomenon, no doubt, has mystified thousands of other “music lovers.”

A Boston woman complains that school seats have worn out three pairs of pants (her son’s) in three months. “Is a wheeze about the seat of learning too obvious?” queries Genevieve. Oh, quite too, my dear!

Mr. Frederick Harrison at 89 observes: “May my end be early, speedy, and peaceful! I regret nothing done or said in my long and busy life. I withdraw nothing, and, as I said before, am not conscious of any change in mind. In youth I was called a revolutionary; in old age I am called a reactionary; both names alike untrue… I ask nothing. I seek nothing. I fear nothing. I have done and said all that I ever could have done and said. There is nothing more. I am ready, and await the call.”

A very good prose version of Henley’s well known poem. As for regretting nothing, a man at forty would be glad to unsay and undo many things. At seventy, and decidedly at eighty-nine, these things have so diminished in importance that it is not worth while withdrawing them.

A DAY WITH LORD DID-MORE

“Mr. Hearst is the home brew; no other hope.”

    – The Trib.

At his usual hour Lord Did-More rose —
Renewed completely by repose —
His pleasant duty to rehearse
Of oiling up the universe.

Casting a glance aloft, he saw
That, yielding to a natural law,
The sun obediently moved
Precisely as he had approved.

If mundane things would only run
As regularly as the Sun!
But Earth’s affairs, less nicely planned,
Require Lord Did-More’s guiding hand.

This day, outside Lord Did-More’s door,
There waited patiently a score
Of diplomats from far and near
Who sought his sympathetic ear.

Each brought to him, that he might scan,
The latest governmental plan,
And begged of him a word or two
Approving what it hoped to do.

Lord Did-More nodded, smiled or frowned,
Some word of praise or censure found,
Withheld or added his “O. K.”
And sent the ministers away.

These harmonized and sent away,
Lord Did-More finished up his day
By focusing his cosmic brain
On our political campaign.

And night and morning, thro’ the land,
The public prints at his command
Proclaimed, in type that fairly burst,
The doughty deeds of Did-More Hearst.

THE SECOND POST

[From a genius in Geneseo, Ill.]

Dear sir: I am the champion Cornhusker I have given exhibitions in different places and theater managers and moveing picture men have asked me why I dont have my show put into moves (Film). I beleave it would make a very interesting Picture. We could have it taken right in the Cornfield and also on the stage. It would be very interesting for farmer boys and would be a good drawing card in small towns. I beleave we could make 1000 feet of it by showing me driveing into the field with my extra made wagon. then show them my style and speed of husking and perheps let a common husker husk a while. I could also give my exibition on the stage in a theater includeing the playing of six or eight different Instruments. For instence when I plow with a traction engine or tresh I also lead bands and Orchestra’s.

There is a stage in almost everybody’s musical education when Chopin’s Funeral March seems the most significant composition in the world.

The two stenogs in the L coach were discussing the opera. “I see,” said one, “that they’re going to sing ‘Flagstaff.’” “That’s Verdi’s latest opera,” said the other. “Yes,” contributed the gentleman in the adjacent seat, leaning forward; “and the scene is laid in Arizona.”

Mr. Shanks voxpops that traffic should be relieved, not prevented, as “the automobile is absolutely important in modern business life.” Now, the fact is that the automobile has become a nuisance; one can get about much faster and cheaper in the city on Mr. Shanks’ w. k. mare. Life to-day is scaled to the automobile, whereas, as our gossip Andy Rebori contends, it ought to be scaled to the baby carriage. Many lines of industry are short of labor because this labor has been withdrawn for the care of automobiles.

“Do you remember,” asks a fair correspondent (who protests that she is only academically fair), “when we used to read ‘A Shropshire Lad,’ and A. E., and Arthur Symons, and Yeats? And you used to print so many of the beautiful things they wrote?” Ah, yes, we do remember; but that, my dear, was a long, long time ago, in the period which has just closed, as Bennett puts it. How worth while those things used to seem, and what pleasant days those were. Men say that they will come again. But men said that Arthur would come again.