The So-called Human Race

I was conversing with Mr. Carlton the Librarian, and he quoted from memory a line from Catulle Mendès that seemed to me uncommonly felicitous: “La vie est un jour de Mi-Carême. Quelques-uns se masquent; moi, je ris.”

In his declining years M. France has associated himself with the bunch called “Clarté,” a conscious group organized by Barbusse, the object of which is the “union of all partisans of the true right and the true liberty.” How wittily the Abbé Coignard would have discussed “Clarté,” and how wisely M. Bergeret would have considered it! Alas! it is sad to lose one’s hair, but it is a tragedy to lose one’s unbeliefs.

Chicago, as has been intimated, rather broadly, is a jay town; but it is coming on. A department store advertises “cigarette cases and holders for the gay sub-deb and her great-grandmother,” also “a diary for ‘her’ if she leads an exciting life.”

We infer from the reviews of John Burroughs’ “Accepting the Universe” that John has decided to accept it. One might as well. With the reservation that acceptance does not imply approval.

It is possible that Schopenhauer wrote his w. k. essay on woman after a visit to a bathing beach.

We heard a good definition of a bore. A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you.

The sleeping sickness (not the African variety) is more mysterious than the flu. It will be remembered that two things were discovered about the flu: first, that it was caused by a certain bacillus, and, second, that it was not caused by that bacillus. But all that is known about the sleeping sickness is that it attacks, by preference, carpenters and plumbers.

Slangy and prophetic Mérimée, who wrote, in “Love Letters of a Genius”: “You may take it from me that … short dresses will be the order of the day, and those who are blessed with natural advantages will be at last distinguished from those whose advantages are artificial only.”

Happy above all other writing mortals we esteem him who, like Barrie, treads with sure feet the borderland ’twixt fact and faery, stepping now on this side, now on that. One must write with moist eyes many pages of such a fantasy as “A Kiss for Cinderella.” There are tears that are not laughter’s, nor grief’s, but beauty’s own. A lovely landscape may bring them, or a strain of music, or a written or a spoken line.

All we can get out of a Shaw play is two hours and a half of mental exhilaration. We are, inscrutably, denied the pleasure of wondering what Shaw means, or whether he is sincere.

WHY THE MAKE-UP FLED

[From the Dodge Center Record.]

Mr. and Mrs. Umberhocker returned yesterday from an over Sunday visit with their son and family in Minneapolis.

They are in hopes to soon land them in jail as they did the hog thieves, who were to have a hearing but waved it and trial will be held later.

“It isn’t hard to sit up with a sick friend when he has a charming sister,” reports B. B. But if it were a sick horse, Venus herself would be in the way.

“Saving the penny is all right,” writes a vox-popper to the Menominee News, “but saving the dollar is 100 per cent better.” At least.

MUSIC HATH CHAHMS

What opus of Brahms’ is your pet? —
A concerto, a trio, duet,
Sonate No. 3
(For Viol. and P.),
Or the second piano quartette?
Sardi.
Our favorite Brahms? We’re not sûr,
For all are so classique et pur;
But we’ll mention an opus
With which you may dope us —
One Hundred and Sixteen, E dur.

Our favorite Brahms? We’re not sûr,
For all are so classique et pur;
But we’ll mention an opus
With which you may dope us —
One Hundred and Sixteen, E dur.

BRAHMS, OPUS 116

I care for your pet, One Sixteen
(Your choice proves your judgment is keen);
But in E, you forget, see,
It has two intermezzi;
Please, which of these twain do you mean?
Sardi.

Which E? Can you ask? Must we tell?
Doth it not every other excel —
The ineffable one,
Of gossamer spun,
The ultimate spirituelle.

A candid butcher in Battle Creek advertises “Terrible cuts.”

Another candid merchant in Ottumwa, Ia., advises: “Buy to-day and think to-morrow.”

MUSIC HINT

Sir: P. A. Scholes, in his “Listener’s Guide to Music,” revives two good laughs – thus: “A fugue is a piece in which the voices one by one come in and the people one by one go out.” Also he quotes from Sam’l Butler’s Note Books: “I pleased Jones by saying that the hautbois was a clarinet with a cold in its head, and the bassoon the same with a cold in its chest.” The cor anglais suffers slightly from both symptoms. Some ambitious composer, by judicious use of the more diseased instruments, could achieve the most rheumy musical effects, particularly if, à la Scriabin, he should have the atmosphere of the concert hall heavily charged with eucalyptus. E. Pontifex.

“I will now sing for you,” announced a contralto to a woman’s club meeting in the Copley-Plaza, “a composition by one of Boston’s noted composers, Mr. Chadwick. ‘He loves me.’” And of course everybody thought George wrote it for her.

“Grand opera is, above all others, the high-brow form of entertainment.” – Chicago Journal.

Yes. In comparison, a concert of chamber music appears trifling and almost vulgar.

At a reception in San Francisco, Mrs. Wandazetta Fuller-Biers sang and Mrs. Mabel Boone-Sooey read. Cannot they be signed for an entertainment in the Academy?

We simply cannot understand why Dorothy Pound, pianist, and Isabelle Bellows, singer, of the American Conservatory, do not hitch up for a concert tour.

Richard Strauss has been defined as a musician who was once a genius. Now comes another felicitous definition – “Unitarian: a Retired Christian.”

Dr. Hyslop, the psychical research man, says that the spirit world is full of cranks. These, we take it, are not on the spirit level.

The present physical training instructor in the Waterloo, Ia., Y. W. C. A. is Miss Armstrong. Paradoxically, the position was formerly held by Miss Goodenough. These things appear to interest many readers.

THE HUNTING OF THE PACIFIST SNARK

(With Mr. Ford as the Bellman.)

“Just the place for a Snark!” the Bellman cried,
“Just the place for a Snark, I declare!”
And he anchored the Flivver a mile up the river,
And landed his crew with care.