The So-called Human Race

[Song in the manner of Laura Blackburn.]

Whilst I mused in vacant mood
By a wild-thyme banklet,
Love passed glimmering thro’ the wood,
Lost her golden anklet.

Followed I as fleet as dart
With the golden token;
But she vanished – and my heart,
Like the clasp, is broken.

Such a little hoop of gold!
She … but how compare her?
Till Orion’s belt grow cold
I shall quest the wearer.

Next my heart I’ve worn it since,
More than life I prize it,
And, like Cinderella’s prince,
I must advertise it.

Would you mind contributing a small sum, say a dollar or two, to the Keats Memorial Fund. We thought not. It is a privilege and a pleasure. The object is to save the house in which the poet lived during his last years, and in which he did some of his best work. The names of all contributors will be preserved in the memorial house, so it would be a nice idea to send your dollar or two in the name of your small child or grandchild, who may visit Hampstead when he grows up. Still standing in the garden at Hampstead is the plum tree under which Keats wrote,

“Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down.”

Americans who speak at French should confine their conversation to other Americans similarly talented. They should not practise on French people, whose delicate ear is no more proof against impure accent than a stone is proof against dripping water. The mistake which English speaking people make is assuming that French is merely a language, whereas, even in Paris, the speaking of it as much as accomplishment as singing, or painting on china. Many gifted Frenchmen, like M. Viviani, Anatole France, and some other Academicians, speak French extremely well, but even these live in hope of improvement, of some day mastering the finest shades of nasality and cadence, the violet rays of rhythm.

Mr. Masefield, the poet, does not believe that war times nourish the arts. The human brain does its best work, he says, when men are happy. How perfectly true! Look at ancient Greece. She was continually at war, and what did the Grecians do for art? A few poets, a few philosophers and statesmen, a few sculptors, and the story is told. On the other hand, look at England in Shakespeare’s time. The English people were inordinately happy, for there were no wars to depress them, barring a few little tiffs with the French and the Spanish, and one or two domestic brawls. The human brain does its best work when men are happy, indeed. There was Dante, a cheery old party. But why multiply instances?

Having read a third of H. M. Tomlinson’s “The Sea and the Jungle,” we pause to offer the uncritical opinion that this chap gets as good seawater into his copy as Conrad, and that, in the item of English, he can write rings around Joseph.

Like others who have traversed delectable landscapes and recorded their impressions, in memory or in notebooks, we have tried to communicate to other minds the “incommunicable thrill of things”: a pleasant if unsuccessful endeavor. When you are new at it, you ascribe your failure to want of skill, but you come to realize that skill will not help you very much. You will do well if you hold the reader’s interest in your narrative: you will not, except by accident, make him see the thing you have seen, or experience the emotion you experienced.

So vivid a word painter as Tomlinson acknowledges that the chance rewards which make travel worth while are seldom matters that a reader would care to hear about, for they have no substance. “They are no matter. They are untranslatable from the time and place. Such fair things cannot be taken from the magic moment. They are not provender for notebooks.”

He quotes what the Indian said to the missionary who had been talking to him of heaven. “Is it like the land of the musk-ox in summer, when the mist is on the lakes, and the loon cries very often?” These lakes are not charted, and the Indian heard the loon’s call in his memory; but we could not better describe the delectable lands through which we have roamed. “When the mist is on the lakes and the loon cries very often.” What traveler can better that?

Old Bill Taft pulled a good definition of a gentleman t’other day. A gentleman, said he, is a man who never hurts anyone’s feelings unintentionally.

Mr. Generous is the claim agent for the New Haven railroad at New Britain, Conn., but a farmer whose cow wandered upon the rails tells us that he lost money by the settlement.

William Benzine, who lives near Rio, Wis., was filling his flivver tank by the light of a lantern when – But need we continue?

Our notion of a person of wide tastes is one who likes almost everything that isn’t popular.

Speaking of the Naval Station, you may have forgotten the stirring ballad which we wrote about it during the war. If so —

YEO-HEAVE-HO!

It was a gallant farmer lad
Enlisted in the navy.
“Give me,” said he, “the deep blue sea,
The ocean wide and wavy!”

A sailor’s uniform he’d don,
And never would he doff it.
He packed his grip, and soon was on
His way to Captain Moffett.

In cap of white and coat of blue
He labored for the nation,
A member of the salty crew
That worked the Naval Station.

He soon became the best of tars,
A seaman more than able,
By sweeping streets, and driving cars,
And waiting on the table.

He guarded gates, and shoveled snow,
And worked upon the highway.
“All lads,” said he, “should plough the sea,
And would if I had my way.”

Week-end he took a trolley car,
And to the city hied him,
Alongside of another tar
Who offered for to guide him.

The train rolled o’er a trestle high,
The river ran below him.
“Well, I’ll be blamed!” our tar exclaimed,
And grabbed his pal to show him.

“Yes, dash my weeping eyes!” he cried.
“That’s water, sure, by gravy!
The first blue water I have spied
Since joining of the navy!”

* * * * *

Now, “landsmen all,” the moral’s plain:
Our navy still is arming,
And if you’d plough the well known main,
You’d best begin by farming.

If you would head a tossing prow