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AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
BY MICHAEL MONAHAN 
 
 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 AT THE SIGN OF THE VAN 
 
 ADVENTURES IN LIFE AND LETTERS 
 
 NEW ADVENTURES 
 
 HEINRICH HEINE 
 
 NOVA HIBERNIA 
 
AN ATTIC 
 DREAMER 
 
 BY 
 
 MICHAEL MONAHAN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MITCHELL KENNERLEY 
 MCMXXII 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1922 BY 
 MITCHELL KENNERLEY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
TO 
 
 PETER 
 
 WITH MEMORIES OF THE GREAT AGE 
 
 THAT CAME LAUGHING ARM-IN-ARM 
 
 WITH MR. DOOLET 
 
 M184877 
 
THE AUTHOR S APOLOGY 
 
 THIS book is, in great part, the literary 
 residuum of a small literary periodi 
 cal, The Papyrus, personally conducted 
 by the Author or more truly, conducting and 
 possessing the Author from 1903 to 1912. 
 
 The same was not a strictly continuous per 
 formance. There were several suspensions and 
 intermissions of varying length, which endear 
 the broken sets of The Papyrus to the collector 
 of literary curios. 
 
 I published the magazine at my own cost, 
 which made it doubly dear to me, and I paid 
 full price every way for my free lance and saucy 
 independence. But it was an inspiration of 
 youth and the courage that goes therewith, and 
 I am glad now that I acted upon it. It is true 
 there were times when I wanted to quit it once 
 and forever, but no sooner had I sent out the 
 funeral notices, etc., than I was seized with a 
 frantic desire to dig it up again. And so it 
 went on and on. For I could not otherwise 
 have got the thing out of me that cried for ex- 
 
viii THE AUTHOR S APOLOGY 
 
 pression, and if I had there would have been 
 obstacles to the immediate publishing thereof 
 which need not be dwelt upon. I therefore de 
 termined, like the excellent Mr. Howells, to be 
 an editor myself: a position which is of ad 
 vantage to the most gifted, in the way of accost 
 ing the fickle Goddess Fame, if not actually se 
 curing her favors. 
 
 I venture to say that no literary periodical 
 ever lived so long that had such a continuously 
 hard time of it (being altogether without capi 
 tal), or was so chronically insolvent, or, on 
 the other hand, that so entirely paid for itself, 
 in the view of its Conductor I should rather 
 say, its humble slave and worm of the dust! 
 The mere writing of it, as I remember, the 
 printing and the sending forth of it each month 
 (or sometimes skip one) healed the suicidal 
 recurring hunt for the printer s money. 
 
 I know one thing: print will never again look 
 so good to me as it did when I mailed the early 
 numbers of The Papyrus to a remarkably select 
 but rather diminutive list of readers, and then 
 waited nervously for the world s intellectual re 
 action. I achieved the miracle of editing and 
 publishing and financing it for the space of 
 nine years (including suspensions and lay-offs 
 
THE AUTHOR S APOLOGY ix 
 
 for one reason or another), but I am not rich 
 enough to own a Complete Set of it, as pub 
 lished: some things must be left to the purse- 
 proud Collector! 
 
 It will be seen from the foregoing that my 
 book has complied with the Horatian condi 
 tion Nonum prematur in annum since it has 
 been pressed (if not actually suppressed) more 
 years than nine. I dare say that, like many a 
 greater work, it is none the worse for having so 
 long waited its turn. Time is the best editor 
 that the world has yet discovered. I may add 
 that nothing is here reprinted from The Papy 
 rus save what has stood the test of enduring 
 affection and interest on the part of many 
 readers. 
 
 I shall not deprive the acute reader of the 
 legitimate pleasure of running down divers in 
 consistencies throughout the following pages. 
 It is allowed that where inconsistency does not 
 prove a weakness of the logical faculty, it may 
 be a sign of mental or spiritual growth. I will 
 leave it to the aforesaid acute reader to decide 
 the point for or against me, merely bespeaking 
 a charity equal to his intelligence. In spite of 
 a few papers which have stood long in type, he 
 
x THE AUTHOR S APOLOGY 
 
 will readily divine that I care very little for 
 polemics, but very much for Liberty and Litera 
 ture. My point of sympathy with so bold an 
 iconoclast as Ingersoll, waiving his eloquence 
 and literary appeal, was and is in his efforts to 
 soften and humanize the religious or, prefer 
 ably, the dogmatic spirit. That there is room 
 for such a service, who will seriously question? 
 We are still very far from realizing the King 
 dom of Love which the Nazarene came to es 
 tablish amongst us. 
 
 Without presuming to supply a first aid to 
 critics, I may perhaps be allowed to point out 
 that my book is an adventure of the Romantic 
 spirit, both as regards the literary studies and 
 the sketches of life herein attempted. And this 
 prompts a further observation, to wit, that the 
 mingling of such different subject matter, 
 which yet, I hope, does not preclude a due har 
 mony of the whole, is something of a novelty 
 and an experiment in this country. It is not 
 without precedent abroad, and may indeed 
 claim, among others, the illustrious warrant of 
 Anatole France. 
 
 It has been remarked that nothing is so in 
 destructible as a good book; and when I re 
 member how we struggled monthly with that 
 
THE AUTHOR S APOLOGY xi 
 
 vexatious little Papyrus, walking the floor o 
 nights with it and sparing no pains to prolong 
 its uncertain existence when I remember this 
 and see how it rises again more glorious in 
 the present incarnation, I wonder if mayhap the 
 child shows any stigmata of the life enduring? 
 But that is for the wise and candid reader to 
 say. 
 
 MICHAEL MONAHAN 
 New York 
 
 August, 1922 
 
I IN THE ATTIC i? 
 
 II THE POE LEGEND 22 
 
 III IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 57 
 
 IV RICHARD WAGNER S RO 
 
 MANCE 9 
 
 V IN THE RED ROOM 104 
 
 VI SAINT MARK 115 
 
 VII THE POET S ATONEMENT 127 
 
 VIII CHILDREN OF THE AGE 135 
 
 IX THE BLACK FRIAR 144 
 
 X LAFCADIO HEARN 152 
 
 XI THE DEFENCE OF DAMIEN 172 
 
 XII A PORT OF AGE 181 
 
 XIII THE KINGS 197 
 
 XIV Louis THE GRAND 206 
 XV DINING WITH SCHOPEN 
 HAUER 214 
 
 XVI ON LETTERS 226 
 
 XVII THE SONG THAT is SOLOMON S 235 
 
 xiii 
 
XIV 
 
 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 XVIII IN PRAISE OF LIFE 
 
 XIX THE FORBIDDEN WAY 
 
 XX GLORIA MUNDI 
 
 XXI THE SPRING 
 
 XXII THE FIRST LOVE 
 
 XXIII SEEING THE OLD TOWN 
 
 XXIV PULVIS ET UMBRA 
 XXV SHADOWS 
 
 XXVI THE GREAT REDEMPTION 
 
 XXVII SURSUM CORDA 
 
 XXVIII HOPE 
 
 XXIX IDEAL 
 
 XXX LITTLE MOTHER 
 
 XXXI LOVE 
 
 XXXII EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 
 
 XXXIII SCRIP FOR YOUR PILGRIM 
 
 AGE 
 
 XXXIV SONG OF THE RAIN 
 
 240 
 248 
 
 254 
 258 
 263 
 270 
 278 
 287 
 
 293 
 
 298 
 302 
 
 305 
 308 
 
 324 
 330 
 
 L ENVOI 
 
 332 
 
AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
IN THE ATTIC 
 
 [By Way of Prologue] 
 
 IN old days, in merrie England, the chap 
 man or pamphleteer set up shop in an attic, 
 as much for economy s sake as to be out of 
 easy reach of the police. Commonly he bit the 
 thumb at Government, and the bilks were his 
 natural foes. Great men out of place lent him 
 secret support and countenance, paying the 
 costs of his perilous trade and supplying him 
 with matter for his broadsides. His fidelity to 
 his patrons was his best virtue; in other respects 
 of conduct he was, it is to be feared, no better 
 than he should have been. But the life was one 
 of constant adventure, and as such appealed to 
 many daring spirits. Often they had to move, 
 and quickly, too, yet they were not always quick 
 enough for the emissaries of Government. To 
 stand in the pillory and there submit to the 
 nameless outrages of the London mob; to spend 
 long years in jails fouler than a modern sewer; 
 
 17 
 
1 8 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 to be whipped and branded by the sovereign 
 majesty of the law; to be hunted from one rook 
 ery to another such was the lot of many a 
 bold pamphleteer of the Seventeenth and Eigh 
 teenth centuries. 
 
 Ah well, my lads, they had a stirring time of 
 it, for all their hard lines, and potently, though 
 obscurely, they made themselves felt on public 
 opinion, which, as hath been said, is but history 
 in the making. Peace to them ! they and their 
 types, their plotting and pamphleteering, their 
 ballads and broadsides, have long since vanished 
 from the scene; but some echo of their ancient 
 hardihood, some smack of real service to the 
 good old cause of liberty, which to render they 
 so bravely risked life and limb, still linger in 
 the world. 
 
 I therefore feel that in publishing The Papy 
 rus from an attic I am in accord with some 
 worthy literary traditions. To be sure, it s a 
 very nice attic and roomy enough well 
 lighted, too, with walls and ceiling finished off 
 and calcimined. Strictly speaking, The Papyrus 
 occupies only half the attic; the other half, 
 which by a lucky chance is quite separate and 
 partitioned off, the younger children use for a 
 playhouse on rainy days. Oh, and I had al- 
 
IN THE ATTIC 19 
 
 most forgotten, the family linen is sometimes 
 dried here, with great convenience. 
 
 Allah is both wise and good. He sometimes 
 puts it into the stony heart of a landlord (Jer 
 sey landlord at that) to make unwitting pro 
 vision for the Children of the Dream. 
 
 The stairway leading to both attics is quite 
 dark, and it turns sharply, but we don t feel 
 that to be a great objection, as the Youngest is 
 now walking and only swarms when he is going 
 down stairs which he does backward and with 
 remarkable celerity. 
 
 Once a month the children have great fun 
 carrying the little brown booklets from the low 
 er floor, where the printer delivers them, to the 
 attic; and again from the attic to the lower 
 floor, when ready to be mailed. That is, they 
 think it s great fun and surely a large family 
 is not without its compensations. 
 
 The Papyrus, by the way, is just the age of 
 our Youngest but One, a five-year-old girl. I 
 am not sure of which I am the fonder, but the 
 Mother, with a touch of artistic jealousy, says 
 she is ... 
 
 I love this little attic room. Here I spend 
 the only quiet hours that I may really call mine. 
 
20 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Here, with the world and its taskmasters shut 
 out, I cheat myself with a dream of indepen 
 denceah, an uneasy dream at best, and a fleet 
 ing one, but yet it links day unto day with a 
 thread of gold. The good thoughts that come 
 only with silence peace without and within 
 have here their dwelling place. Here, too, I 
 listen oft to a Voice which speaks of the sure, 
 though late, reward that waits on unyielding 
 effort, on hope that springs anew from each de 
 feat, on faith in self that can stand against the 
 world, on fidelity to the Dream! 
 
 Yes, even though knowing myself unworthy 
 of the high call it would lay upon me, I do 
 hearken to that Voice aye, and often sigh that 
 I may not rise to those heights of heroism to 
 which it points me. 
 
 O little attic room, that has shared the secret 
 of my dearest cherished hopes, that has known 
 and ever knows something not all unworthy in 
 me which to express is at once my joy and my 
 despair, who shall sit here in days to come 
 when I am gone ? Pray God it be one who may 
 think not unkindly of him that dreamed his 
 dreams here for a space, and was, in his fash 
 ion, happy within your quiet walls. . . . 
 
 More commonly, however, I think of my 
 
IN THE ATTIC 21 
 
 literary predecessors, the old English chapmen 
 and pamphleteers in their attics, and how the 
 wind of time has long since blown them and 
 their works away. 
 
 And I smile to myself, once more put off 
 beginning my Masterpiece . . . well, till to 
 morrow; turn down the light, and go softly to 
 bed. 
 
II 
 
 THE POE LEGEND 
 [y/w Unconventional Version} 
 
 A COMPLIMENT which mediocrity 
 often pays to genius, is to indict it. 
 So there is an indictment against 
 Edgar Allan Poe, with a bill of particulars, the 
 effect of which is to make him out the chief 
 Horrible Example of our literary history. 
 
 Most of his critics admit that he was a 
 genius and deny that he was a respectable per 
 son. 
 
 A considerable number deny his respectability 
 with warmth, and coldly concede to him a cer 
 tain measure of poetical talent. 
 
 A few embittered ones deny that he was 
 either respectable or a genius. 
 
 No one has ever contended for him that he 
 was both a genius and respectable. I do not 
 make this claim, as I should not wish to appear 
 too original; and, besides, I am content with 
 
 22 
 
THE POE LEGEND 23 
 
 the fact of his genius, and care nothing for 
 the question of respectability. Or, yes, I do 
 care something for it, if by respectability is 
 meant that prudent regard for self which would 
 have prevented the suicide of Poe. I m sure 
 if he were living to-day, he would never think 
 of drinking himself to death. His work would 
 be better paid, for one thing, supposing that 
 he could get past the magazine editors, and 
 then we have learned a little how to drink the 
 art was crude and brutal in Poe s day. Per 
 haps this is the only respect in which we, the 
 children of a later generation, are better artists 
 than he. 
 
 It is true that some eminent living poets are 
 quite successful in keeping sober, and they are 
 even more successful in writing poetry which is 
 not so good as Poe s! 
 
 In brief, conventionality bids fair to kill off 
 the poet and place him at no distant date in the 
 category of extinct species. 
 
 True poetry is something awful, mysterious, 
 as beautiful and terrible as the lightning s leap 
 in the collied heaven, charming the eye with 
 dread and rousing the soul to a quick sense of 
 the Power behind the mechanism of nature ! 
 Now it is difficult to associate this idea with a 
 
24 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 type of poet that offers no food for wonder and 
 leaves us no ground for illusions. 
 
 No doubt many a respectable poet would 
 pitch the proprieties to Hell, if he could be sure 
 that by so doing he would land beside Villon 
 and Burns and Byron and Poe. But that is a 
 large "if", and in our day it is almost as hard 
 to live the old life of the poet as to recapture 
 his careless lyric rapture and the secret of his 
 wild genius. 
 
 Indeed, if we may believe the Philistines of 
 the hour, the personality of the poet is no 
 longer much in question; seeing that he is re 
 duced or, if you please, elevated to a perfectly 
 respectable type ; offers no shocking singulari 
 ties of character or conduct; is often arrayed as 
 the lilies and bidden to discourse platitudes be 
 fore young ladies seminaries; and has modest 
 hopes of being one day decorated as a Doctor 
 Litterarum. 
 
 But look you, there are some amongst us who 
 will fight until their eyelids can no longer wag, 
 against this caricature of the Poet. Human 
 nature, too, is opposed to it, and the heresy is 
 not written in the Holy Book of Genius. I do 
 not contend that literature must be a species 
 
THE POE LEGEND 25 
 
 of Newgate Calendar,* a history of tragedies, 
 errors and defeats: that were to overdarken 
 the picture. But I shall venture to hold suspect 
 the man who comes smiling and sleek and pros 
 perous before me, in the awful name of Poet; 
 with no signs upon him of agony and wrestling, 
 and no visible wounds from the embraces of 
 his God. 
 
 II 
 
 THE tradition of Poe s drunkenness, or to 
 speak scientifically, dipsomania, hangs on 
 so persistently that many people can think of 
 him only in connection with that still unforgot- 
 ten melodrama, "Ten Nights in a Barroom". 
 As a boy I used to fancy that he was cut out 
 for the leading part in it. And in fact I saw 
 a play not long ago in the provinces, of 
 course in which the author of "The Raven" 
 was shown drunk in every act and working up 
 to a brilliant climax of the "horrors". . . . 
 
 When I try to summon before my mind s eye 
 the figure of Poe, the man in his habit as he 
 lived, his daily walks and associates, the picture 
 is at once broken up by an irruption of red and 
 
 * This was Carlyle s notion ai>d phrase. 
 
26 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 angry faces old John Allan, Burton the 
 Comedian (who could be so tragically in ear 
 nest, and so damned virtuous with a poor poet) , 
 White, Griswold, Wilmer, Graham, Briggs, the 
 sweet singer of "Ben Bolt", and others of the 
 queer literati of that day. Each and all declare 
 in staccato, with positive forefinger raised, 
 "We tell you the man was drunk!" Then Absa 
 lom Willis appears, bowing daintily, and says in 
 mild deprecation, "No, I would not precisely 
 say drunk but do me the honor to read my 
 article on the subject in the Home Journal ." 
 The saintly Longfellow, evoked from the 
 shades, seems to add, "Not merely drunk, but 
 malignant". And a host of forgotten poet 
 asters looming dimly in the background, take 
 up the Psalmist s words and make a refrain of 
 them "Not merely drunk, but malignant!" 
 
 Since this is what we get, in lieu of biog 
 raphy, by those who have taken the life of Poe, 
 it is no wonder that the obscure dramatist 
 seizes on the same stuff for his purpose, de 
 grading the most famous of our poets to the 
 level of a barroom hero. Whether or not it is 
 possible at this late day to separate the fame 
 of Poe from the foul legend of drunkenness 
 and sodden dissipation that has gathered about 
 
THE POE LEGEND 27 
 
 it, I would not venture to say; but very sure am 
 I that no one has yet attempted the feat. Even 
 the mild and half-apologetic Dr. Woodberry is 
 gravely interested in the number, extent and 
 variety of Poe s drunks. Let me not forget one 
 honorable exception, Edmund Clarence Sted- 
 man, who has taken his brother poet, u as he 
 was and for what he was". I do not, how 
 ever, include Mr. Stedman with the biogra 
 phers of Poe he stands rather at the head 
 of those who have sought to interpret his genius 
 and to safeguard his literary legacy. And 
 though (I think) he brought no great love to 
 the task Poe is hardly a subject to inspire love 
 he has done it fairly and well. 
 
 I may here observe, parenthetically, that in a 
 very kind letter addressed to the author, Mr. 
 Stedman demurs at the suggestion that he 
 brought no great love to his critical labors in 
 behalf of Poe labors that have unquestionably 
 raised the poet s literary status in the view of 
 many, and have as certainly cleared away a 
 mass of prejudice, evil report and misunder 
 standing attached to his personal character and 
 reputation. But all I mean to convey is, that 
 Mr. Stedman s splendid work was done, as it 
 appears to me, less for the love of Poe than 
 
28 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 for the love of letters. In saying this I imply 
 not the slightest reproach : Poe is a man to be 
 pitied, praised, admired, regretted; or, if you 
 please, to be hated, envied, blamed, and con 
 demned. But love such love, say, as Lamb 
 inspired in his friends and still inspires in his 
 readers is not for the lonely singer of 
 u lsrafel". 
 
 I agree with Poe s biographers that he got 
 drunk often, but I am only sorry that he never 
 got any fun out of it the man was essentially 
 unhumorous. I should be glad to hold a brief 
 for Poe s drunkenness, if his tippling ever yield 
 ed him any solace; or, better still, if it ever 
 inspired him to any genuine literary effort. We 
 know well that some great poets have success 
 fully wooed the Muse in their cups, but you can 
 take my word for it, they were cold sober when 
 they worked the thing out. It is true Emerson 
 says (after Milton) that the poet who is to see 
 visions of the gods should drink only water 
 out of a wooden bowl; but Emerson belonged 
 to the unjoyous race of New England Brah 
 mins, who were surprisingly like the snow-men 
 children make, in that they lacked natural heat 
 and rude passions. We may not forget that a 
 poet who stands for all time as an ideal type of 
 
THE POE LEGEND 29 
 
 sanity and genius the always contemporary 
 Quintus Horatius Flaccus has in many places 
 guaranteed mediocrity to the abstaining bard.* 
 So there was the best poetical warrant for 
 Poe s drinking, if he could only have got any 
 good out of it. But he couldn t and didn t; he 
 was merely, at times frequent enough to jus 
 tify his enemies, an ordinary dipsomaniac, crav 
 ing the madness of alcohol; mirthless, darkly 
 sullen, quite insane, though perhaps physically 
 harmless; hardly conscious of his own identity. 
 Of the genial god Bacchus, who rewards his 
 true devotees with jollity and mirth, with for- 
 getfulness of care and the golden promise of 
 fortune, who makes poets of dull men and gods 
 of poets of this splendid and beneficent deity, 
 Poe knew nothing. That spell from which 
 Horace drew his most charming visions; which 
 inspired Burns with courage to sing amid the 
 hopeless poverty of his lot; which kindled the 
 genius of Byron and allured the fancy of Heine, 
 like his own Lorelei; which is three-fourths of 
 Beranger and one-half of Moore to Poe 
 
 * I need only cite the famous lines 
 
 nee vivere carmina possunt 
 
 Qua scribuntur aquae potoribus. 
 Which may be rudely Englished 
 
 O water-drinking bards, how brief the date 
 
 Your laurels flourish, tho so "dry" your state 1 
 
30 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 meant only madness, the sordid kind from 
 which men turn away with horror and disgust, 
 and which too often leads to the clinic and the 
 potter s field. The kindly spirit of wine, that 
 for a brief time at least works an inspiring 
 change in every man, enlarging the sympathies, 
 softening the heart, prompting new and gen 
 erous impulses, opening the soul shut up to self 
 to the greater claims and interests of humanity, 
 was, in the case of Poe, turned into a malefic 
 genie, intent only upon the lowest forms of 
 animal gratification, and reckless of any and 
 every ill wrought to body and soul. 
 
 In other words for I must not write a con 
 ventional essay Poe was the kind of man that 
 never should have touched the cup. For there 
 are some men oh, yes, I know it I to whom 
 the mildest wine ever distilled from grapes 
 kissed by the sun in laughing valleys, is deadly 
 poison, fatal as that draught brewed of old by 
 the Colchian enchantress. And of these was 
 poor Edgar Poe. 
 
 Neither were there for him those negative 
 but still pleasing virtues which are sometimes 
 credited to a worshiper of the great god 
 Bacchus perhaps they are mostly fictitious, but 
 this is a fraud at which Virtue herself may con- 
 
THE POE LEGEND 31 
 
 nive. I am very sure no one ever called Poe 
 a "good fellow" for all the whiskey he drank; 
 and his biographers also make the same omis 
 sion. The drunkenness of Burns calls up the 
 laughing genius of a hundred matchless ballads, 
 the dance, the fair, and the hot love that fol 
 lowed close upon; calls up the epic riot of beg 
 gars in the alehouse of Poosie Nancy and we 
 see the whole vivid life of Burns was of a piece 
 with his poetry. To wish him less drunken or 
 more sober (if you prefer it) is to wish him 
 less a poet. 
 
 Not so with Poe, as I have already shown. 
 He got nothing from drink, in the way of lit 
 erary inspiration, though some of his critics 
 think he did, and, being themselves both sober 
 and dull, appear to doubt whether anything so 
 gotten is legitimate. I hate to lay irreverent 
 hands on the popular belief that "The Raven" 
 was composed during or just following a crisis 
 of drunken delirium the poem is too elab 
 orately artificial for that, and has not Poe 
 told us how he wrote it, in a confession which, 
 more clearly than all the labored disparage 
 ment of his biographers, explains the vanity, 
 the weakness and the fatal lack of humor in his 
 make-up? I do not find any suggestions of 
 
32 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 drink or "dope" in the samples of his prose 
 which I dislike, such as a few of his "Old 
 World Romances". If there be any "dope" 
 in this stuff, it is, in my opinion, the natural 
 dope of faculties when driven against their 
 will to attempt things beyond the writer s prov 
 ince or power. And there is also the "dope" of 
 what could be, at times, a fearfully bad style. 
 But I am not writing a literary essay. 
 
 I conclude, then, that in the case of Edgar 
 Allan Poe, drink has no extenuating circum 
 stances, though many might be pleaded for the 
 poet himself. It made enemies for him of 
 those who wanted to be his friends (if you will 
 only believe them) ; it lost him his money 
 deuced little of it ever he had; it helped to 
 break his health, and it gave him no valuable 
 literary inspiration. Some solace, I would 
 gladly think, it yielded him, and mayhap (who 
 knows?) there was a blessed nepenthe in the 
 peace it brought him at last when, after bab 
 bling a while on his cot in that Baltimore hos 
 pital, there came to him the only dreamless 
 sleep he ever knew. 
 
THE POE LEGEND 33 
 
 in 
 
 ALL his life long Poe dreamed of having a 
 magazine of his own, and never got his 
 desire. He was always writing to his friends 
 and possible patrons about this one darling 
 dream; but nothing came of it. The nearest 
 he ever got to his wish was when he succeeded 
 in drawing into his plan one T. C. Clarke, a 
 Philadelphia publisher. Clarke had money, 
 and he put up a certain amount toward the 
 starting of the "Penn", as the magazine was to 
 be called. Some initial steps were taken, and 
 the moment seems to have been the most san 
 guine in Poe s long battle with adversity. He 
 was full of enthusiasm and wrote to many 
 friends, detailing his literary hopes and projects 
 in connection with the new magazine. Then 
 suddenly, and rather unaccountably, everything 
 was dropped. It seems likely that Clarke took 
 cold in his money at any rate, the "Penn" 
 died a-borning. Poe had gone far enough to 
 incur a large-sized debt to Clarke : he left in 
 the latter s hand a manuscript as security, 
 which, we may suppose, did not raise the tem 
 perature of that gentleman s finances. 
 
 Then the planning and the letter-writing and 
 
34 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 the making of prospectuses, with other archi 
 tectural projects of the Spanish variety, went 
 on and continued to the end of the chapter 
 good God! how pathetic and yet how grimly 
 humorous it all is to one who has carried the 
 same cross, and knows every inch of that Cal 
 vary! Poe was at least spared the struggle 
 which comes after possession; but I am aware 
 that this is no consolation to the man who is 
 dying to make his fight. 
 
 Yet once again the chance fluttered into his 
 hands, when he bought the "Broadway Jour 
 nal" from a man named Bisco with a note of 
 fifty dollars endorsed by Horace Greeley. Not 
 long afterward Horace had the pleasure of 
 paying the note, and he remained to the end 
 a strong believer in Poe s imaginative gifts. 
 About the same time that the philosopher part 
 ed with his money, Poe gave up his brief pos 
 session of the "Journal". But still he went on 
 in the old hopeless, hopeful way, dreaming of 
 that blessed magazine, which he had now de 
 cided to call the "Stylus" instead of the 
 "Penn". And a name only it remained to the 
 last. 
 
 From these and many similar facts in the life 
 of Poe his biographers to a man conclude that 
 
THE POE LEGEND 35 
 
 he had no business ability. I am not so sure I 
 am only sure that he never had the money. 
 In fact, Poe was never able to raise more than 
 one hundred dollars at any one time in his whole 
 life once when he borrowed that sum to get 
 married (and the sneerers say, forgot to repay 
 it), and again when he won a like amount with 
 a prize story. Yes, he got a judgment of 
 something over two hundred dollars against his 
 savage foe, Thomas Dunn English,* but I am 
 not aware that it was ever satisfied think of 
 Poe suing a man for literary libel ! His usual 
 salary was ten dollars a week Burton, the 
 tragic Comedian, held out a promise of more, 
 but discharged him when the time to make good 
 came around and this after Poe had gained 
 what was considered a literary reputation in 
 those days. With such resources, to have start 
 ed the kind of magazine Poe had always in 
 mind, would have tasked a man of great busi 
 ness ability, with no poetical ideas floating 
 about in his head to divert him from the Main 
 Chance. 
 
 Certainly Poe was not the man for the job 
 
 *A mediocre and prolific poet of whose works scarcely 
 anything is now remembered or reprinted, save the once 
 popular ballad, "Ben Bolt", which owes its later recrudes 
 cence to "Trilby". 
 
36 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 I doubt if he could have sold shares in El Do 
 rado. But I do not think his failures, such as 
 they were, justly convict him of a complete lack 
 of that ordinary sense which enables a man to 
 carry his money as far as the corner. There 
 is a popular cant now, based on the success of 
 some fortunate writers, that literary genius of 
 high order is not inconsistent with first-rate 
 business ability. I do not care to go into the 
 discussion especially as this is not a literary 
 essay but I will say that in most instances 
 cited to prove the point, the money sense is a 
 good deal more obvious than the literary 
 genius. 
 
 To make what is called a business success in 
 this world, a man is required to do homage 
 unto many gods. But though he pay the most 
 devoted worship to the divinities of Thrift, 
 Enterprise, Courage, Energy, Foresight, Cal 
 culation, he will still fail should he omit his 
 tribute to a greater god than these Expedi 
 ency! 
 
 In his poetical way Edgar Allan Poe went 
 a-questing after many strange worships, and he 
 was learned in all that mystic lore as far back 
 as the Chaldeans. But he seems never to have 
 got an inkling of that one Universal Religion 
 
THE POE LEGEND 37 
 
 in which all men believe, which settles all 
 earthly things the inexorable Divinity of 
 Affairs, already named, by which success or 
 failure is determined for every man that 
 cometh into the world. 
 
 IV 
 
 TOWARD the close of Poe s life a horde 
 of female poets rushed upon his trail. 
 His relations with them were not wholly "free 
 from blame", to quote his biographers they 
 seem to have been, at any rate, Platonic. In 
 deed, the fact is self-evident. A poetess who 
 is always studying her own emotions for "copy", 
 is not to be taken unawares. I think Poe was 
 in more danger of being led astray than any 
 of the ladies whom he distinguished with his 
 attentions. It is to be noted that they invari 
 ably speak of him as a "perfect gentleman", 
 even after he has ceased to honor them with 
 his affections. To me there is something rather 
 literary than womanly in such angelic charity 
 and forgiveness tis too sugary sweet. Have 
 we not heard that lovers estranged make the 
 bitterest enemies? At any rate, the lover of 
 "Ligeia", "Eleonora" and similar abstractions 
 
38 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 was not a man to be feared by a poetess of well- 
 seasoned virtue. 
 
 Yes, I am sure they only wanted to get copy 
 out of him, and especially to link their names 
 with his. They were mostly widows, too 
 which makes the thing even more suspicious. 
 One of them that one to whom he addressed 
 his finest lyric was forty-five. Lord, Lord! 
 what liars these poets are ! I give you my word 
 that until very lately, I believed those perfect 
 lines "To Helen" idealized some youthful love 
 of Poe s. 
 
 Ah 1 Psyche, from the regions which 
 Are holy land. 
 
 Psyche lived in Providence, which is in the 
 State of Rhode Island. She was, as I have 
 said, forty-five, an age that should be above 
 tempting or temptation. She wrote verses, now 
 forgotten, and her passion for Poe was of the 
 most literary character. After a two-days 
 courtship he proposed to her and was accepted, 
 on condition, however, that he amend his breath 
 which is to say, his habits. Poe seems to 
 have regretted his rashness, for he at once 
 started on a bat (these remarks are not liter 
 ary), as if the prospect of his joy were too 
 
THE POE LEGEND 39 
 
 much for him. Still Helen would not reject 
 him; she merely wrote him more poetry and 
 the poet again turned to drink as if to drown 
 a great sorrow. A day was set for the wed 
 ding, and he began celebrating at the hotel bar 
 long before the hour appointed for the cere 
 mony. Helen heard of his early start, and, 
 knowing what he could do in a long day with 
 such an advantage, she sent for him and broke 
 off the engagement. This is the only instance 
 I know of in Poe s entire career where his 
 drinking had the least appearance of sanity. 
 
 Before this, and indeed during the lifetime 
 of Mrs. Poe, he had broken with Mrs. Ellet, a 
 lady who made feeble verse, but whose ability 
 for scandal and mischief was out of the ordi 
 nary. It was through this daughter of the 
 Muses that the poet became estranged from 
 Mrs. Osgood, and there was a beautiful wom 
 en s row, in which Margaret Fuller took a 
 hand. Mrs. Osgood was a gushing person, 
 ferociously intent on "copy", but of mature age 
 and quite capable of taking care of herself. 
 She declares and asseverates that Poe chased 
 her to Providence that fatal Providence ! 
 likewise to Albany, imploring her to love him. 
 I wonder where he got the money for these 
 
40 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 journeys about this time he was lecturing on 
 the "Cosmogony of the Universe", in order to 
 raise funds for his eternally projected maga 
 zine. The very popular nature of the subject 
 and his own qualities as a lyceum entertainer, 
 which never would have commended him to the 
 late Major Pond incline me to the belief that 
 Poe was not at that time burning much money 
 in trips to Providence and Albany. 
 
 At any rate, Mrs. Osgood cut him out, 
 though on her deathbed, with a last effort of 
 the ruling passion (or literary motive) she very 
 handsomely forgave him and pronounced a 
 touching eulogy on his moral character. 
 
 Then there was "Annie", a married woman 
 living near Boston, to whom Poe addressed a 
 sincere and beautiful poem. The exigencies of 
 her case rather strain the Platonic theory, but 
 I do not give up my brief, mind you. I suspect 
 that Annie was behind the breaking off with 
 Helen; but, of course, he couldn t marry Annie 
 for the reason that she had a husband already 
 (of whom we know no more), and divorces 
 were not then negotiated in record time. Annie 
 was therefore obliged to be content with the 
 sweet satisfaction of foiling a hated rival and 
 to a woman s heart, we know this is the next 
 
THE POE LEGEND 41 
 
 best thing to landing the man. Annie, by the 
 way, was not a literary person; she wanted love 
 from Poe, not copy; and she seems to have sin 
 cerely, if not very sensibly, loved the poet for 
 himself. 
 
 Remains the last of these queer attachments 
 which throw a kind of grotesque romance over 
 the closing years of Poe. Mrs. Shelton was of 
 unimpeached maturity, like the rest, and like 
 all the rest but one, a widow. She lived in Rich 
 mond, Virginia, and she had been a boyish 
 flame of Poe s. Mrs. Shelton was neither beau 
 tiful nor literary, and she had attained the ripe 
 age of fifty years. But she was rich, and 
 though Poe was not a business man, I dare say 
 he felt the money would be no great inconveni 
 ence and then there was always the magazine 
 to be started, dear me ! Still he made love to 
 her as if half afraid she would take him at his 
 word and he kept writing to Annie ! But 
 Mrs. Shelton was of sterner stuff than the poetic 
 Helen. She had made up her mind to marry 
 Poe for reasons sufficient unto herself, and she 
 would have done it had not fate intervened. 
 She made her preparations like a thorough 
 business woman, and strong-mindedly led the 
 way toward the altar. The wedding ring was 
 
42 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 bought (I can hardly believe with Poe s 
 money), and all things were in readiness for 
 the happy event, when the poet wandered away 
 on that luckless journey whose end was in an 
 other world. 
 
 Mrs. Shelton wore mourning for him, and all 
 her women friends told her it was wonderfully 
 becoming. ... I think Annie s crape was 
 at the heart. 
 
 Edgar Allan Poe was a child in the hands of 
 women, and that s the whole truth a loving, 
 weak, vain and irresponsible child. This count 
 in the indictment is the weakest of all. I should 
 not have referred to it were this a conventional 
 "study" of the Poet. 
 
 V 
 
 THE notion that Poe was mad has within 
 late years received a quasi-scientific con 
 firmation at least the doctors have settled the 
 matter to their own satisfaction. I therefore 
 advert to it in order to dispose of the Poe in 
 dictment in full. 
 
 My learned friend, Dr. William Lee How 
 ard, of Baltimore (a town forever memorable 
 to the lovers of the poet) , sets out to prove that 
 Edgar Allan Poe was not a drunkard in the 
 
THE POE LEGEND 43 
 
 ordinary sense (which is ordinarily believed), 
 but was rather what the medical experts are 
 now calling a psychopath; in plain words, a 
 madman. "He belongs," says the doctor, "to 
 that class of psychopaths too long blamed and 
 accused of vicious habits that are really symp 
 toms of disease a disease now recognized by 
 neurologists as psychic epilepsy." The doctor 
 fortifies his thesis with much learning of the 
 same portentous kind, and in conclusion he 
 says: 
 
 "The psychologist readily understands the 
 reason for Poe s intensity, for his cosmic terror 
 and his constant dwelling upon the aspects of 
 physical decay. He lived alternately a life of 
 obsession and lucidity, and this duality is the 
 explanation of his being so shamefully mis 
 understood so highly praised, so cruelly 
 blamed. In most of his weird and fantastic 
 tales we can see the patient emerging from ob 
 livion. We find in his case many of the pri 
 mary symptoms of the psychopath a dis 
 ordered and disturbed comprehension of con 
 cepts, suspicion, and exaggerated ideas of per 
 
 secution." 
 
 These be words horrendous and mouth-fill 
 ing, but surely I need not remind the erudite 
 Dr. Howard that 
 
44 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 When Bishop Berkeley said there was no 
 
 matter, 
 And proved it twas no matter what he 
 
 said. 
 
 And I suspect Dr. Howard in coming, as 
 he thinks, to the defence of Poe s reputation, 
 has done the poet an ill service, though I 
 doubt if he will influence any right-judging 
 minds. Nor am I in sympathy with the 
 doctor s ingenious argument that the most 
 strongly marked products of Poe s genius are 
 to be referred to a diseased mental and nervous 
 condition; which is simply Nordau s conten 
 tion that all genius is disease. According to 
 this view, all men of great intellectual power 
 e. g. y Nordau himself and Dr. William Lee 
 Howard are insane; and yet it is a fact that 
 the madhouses are chiefly peopled with the 
 average sort of human beings. 
 
 No, the first of American poets was not mad 
 because he wrote "The Raven", and "The 
 House of Usher", and "Ligeia", and "The Red 
 Death". These masterpieces indeed prove that 
 he was at certain fortunate times in possession 
 of that highest and most potential sanity, that 
 mens divinior, from which true artistic creation 
 
THE POE LEGEND 45 
 
 results always the rarest and most beautiful 
 phenomenon in the world. 
 
 Mad? I guess not! but no doubt he was 
 thought to be cracked by the half of his ac 
 quaintance, for such is the tribute that medioc 
 rity ever pays to genius. The small grocer folk 
 and their kind about Fordham, as well as 
 some more pretentious respectabilities, looked 
 askance at the poor poet struggling with his 
 burden and his vision; fighting his unequal bat 
 tle with fate and fortune. In much the same 
 way, with a scarcely veiled contempt and aver 
 sion, he was regarded by the successful literary 
 cliques of the day, especially the "New England 
 School" of his detestation to which it must 
 be allowed he offered provocation enough by 
 his critical disparagements.* It is to be noted 
 that Mr. W. D. Howells, the leading inheritor 
 of their tradition, though a critic of unusual 
 breadth and sympathy, has a poor notion of 
 Poe. In short, our poet was that scandal and 
 contradiction in his own day a true genius; 
 and he remains an enigma to ours. 
 
 But I do not think he was any more a psycho 
 path or a madman than bless me ! Dr. Wil 
 liam Lee Howard himself though I will grant 
 
 * Emerson called him the "jingle man". 
 
46 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 that, as we are now saying, several things got 
 constantly on his nerves. And among these : 
 
 Chronic poverty. 
 Rejection of his literary claims. 
 Success of his inferiors. 
 The insolence of publishers. 
 Humiliation of spirit. 
 
 And I must grant it the agony induced 
 by his occasional excesses and his forfeiture of 
 self-respect. 
 
 I do not argue that the misfortunes prove the 
 genius, even though in Poe s case they seem to 
 have been the penalty annexed to his extraordi 
 nary gifts the curse of the malignant Fairy. 
 But with due respect to the learned authority 
 several times referred to, and in spite of all 
 the Bedlam science in the world, I hold to my 
 faith that true genius is not the negation, but 
 the affirmation of sanity. 
 
 As for the literary smugs, to whom Poe is 
 still anathema because he was a genius and also 
 a scandal, according to their moral code : is it 
 not enough, gentlemen, that you are prosper 
 ous, and respectable and utterly unlike Poe? 
 
THE POE LEGEND 47 
 
 VI 
 
 NEXT to the subject of Poe s drinking 
 habits, which you have to follow like a 
 strong breath through every account of him 
 that I have seen his faithful biographers give 
 most attention to his borrowings. Hence the 
 typical Poe biography reads, as I have already 
 suggested, like an indictment. 
 
 Now, the fact is, poor Poe was as bad a bor 
 rower as he was a drinker he meant well, and 
 heaven knows he tried hard enough in each 
 capacity, but neither part fitted him, and in 
 both he failed to rise to the dignity of the 
 artist. He was truly a bum borrower (this is 
 not a literary essay). He never executed a 
 "touch" with grace or finesse. Instead of going 
 to his friends with endearing assurance, smiling 
 like a May-day at the honor and pleasure he de 
 signed them, he put on his hat with the deep 
 black band and went like an undertaker to con 
 duct his own funeral. No wonder they threw 
 him down ! But in truth he rarely had the cour 
 age to face his man, and so he sent the poor 
 devoted Mrs. Clemm that paragon of moth 
 ers-in-law for a poet ! or else weakly relied on 
 his powers of literary persuasion and courted 
 
48 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 certain refusal by penning his modest request. 
 Call this man a borrower! Why, he was a 
 parody of Charles Lamb s idea that your true 
 borrower like Alcibiades or Brinsley Sheri 
 dan belongs to a superior kind of humanity, 
 the Great Race born to rule the rest. He 
 never realized the greatness of the Borrowing 
 Profession never rose to it, to take a meta 
 phor from the stage, but remained a mumping, 
 fearful, calamity-inviting, graceless and hope 
 less, make-believe borrower to the last. 
 
 For this his biographers are ashamed of him, 
 as for his sprees, and this also has passed into 
 the popular legend concerning Poe, of which 
 the obscure dramatist (already referred to) 
 has availed himself. Neither the unknown 
 dramatist nor his biographers have deemed it 
 worth while to explain this phase of Poe s life 
 these are the facts and here are the letters 
 to Kennedy, Griswold, White, Thomas, Gra 
 ham, Clarke, Simms, Willis, et al. Can you 
 make anything else of them? And another 
 count of the indictment in re Edgar Allan Poe 
 is proven. 
 
 I am not writing a literary essay, but I must 
 again lay stress on one thing, in extenuation of 
 Poe s inveterate offence of borrowing from his 
 
THE POE LEGEND 49 
 
 friends he did it very badly, so badly that this 
 fact alone should excuse him in the eyes of the 
 charitable. Let us also try to bear in mind 
 that the most he could earn, after giving oath- 
 bound guarantees as to sobriety, etc., was Ten 
 Dollars a week this was the sum for which 
 Burton (the tragic comedian) hired him, and 
 from which in a very short time the same Bur 
 ton ruthlessly separated him. The joke being 
 that this same fat-headed Burton carried on the 
 affair with a high show of regard for the dig 
 nity of the Literary Profession, outraged by 
 Poe ! Ten dollars a week ! Why, do you know 
 that our most popular author, Mr. Success G. 
 Smith, is believed to earn about fifty thousand 
 a year by his pen? That Mr. Calcium Givem- 
 fitts, the fearless exposer of corruption in high 
 places, is worrying along on a beggarly stipend 
 of, say, thirty-five thousand? That the famous 
 society novelist, Mrs. Tuxedo Smith-Jones, 
 barely contrives to make ends meet on the same 
 hard terms; and that a score of others might 
 be named whose incomes do not fall below 
 twenty-five thousand? . . . 
 
 But, you say, does each and every one of 
 these gifted and fortunate individuals make lit 
 erature in the sense that Poe made it? My 
 
50 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 dear sir, these persons are all my intimate 
 friends; I admire their works next to my own, 
 though I confess I do not read them so often. 
 Therefore, to single out one of these distin 
 guished and successful authors for praise would 
 be invidious; and, besides I am not writing a 
 literary essay. 
 
 VII 
 
 THAT old, old story of genius struggling 
 with want, and overborne by cruel neces 
 sity, hampered too by its weaknesses, how piti 
 ful though trite it is! The other day I went 
 into the great Public Library of New York, in 
 order to verify some data for this paper. Un 
 der the glass cases displaying rare books and 
 autograph letters, I saw one or two exhibits 
 which quite made me forget the object of my 
 visit. I looked at them a long time, and I 
 would like you to understand and share the 
 feeling which they evoked in me. 
 
 There was, first of all, a copy of the First 
 Edition of Poe s "Murders in the Rue Mor 
 gue" and "The Man That Was Used Up", 
 published by Graham of Philadelphia; a thin 
 book, or rather pamphlet, in gray covers. An 
 
THE POE LEGEND 51 
 
 inscription stated that it was a very rare copy, 
 only one other of this edition being known to 
 exist, and that it had brought at auction in 
 1909, the sum of thirty-eight hundred dollars; 
 the highest price yet paid for any book printed 
 in America. Thirty-eight hundred dollars! 
 an amount that would have seemed a fortune 
 to Poe and would have secured to his later 
 years the independence of which he vainly 
 dreamed to the last perhaps added to his days 
 and enabled him to leave us a richer literary 
 legacy. And why was this great sum paid 
 recently for a cheap paper-covered book printed 
 away back in 1843, seeing that we possess the 
 stories in numerous better editions? Why but 
 because the rich collector prized and coveted 
 that book for its rarity as one of the indubitable 
 proofs of Poe s pilgrimage let me say with 
 out irreverence, a thorn from his crown, a stone 
 from his Calvary. Nay, has not the world, in 
 various ways, always paid the highest price for 
 the relics of the martyr? How else shall we 
 surely know the elect ones who suffered and 
 travailed in order that their great thoughts 
 might be born? 
 
 I turned from this to an autograph letter of 
 one of the most famous and unfortunate of 
 
52 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 poets, whose destiny is not without tragic like 
 ness to that of Poe. It bore date March 31, 
 1788, and read in part as follows: 
 
 "I am so harassed with care and anxiety 
 about this farming project of mine that my 
 Muse has degenerated into the veriest prose 
 wench that ever picked cinders or followed a 
 tinker. ... At present the world sits such 
 a load on my mind that it has effaced almost 
 every trace of the image of God in me." 
 
 The letter is signed Robert Burns. 
 
 In the same case I saw a letter of Poe s, ad 
 dressed to one E. A. Duycinck, Esq., and bear 
 ing date November 13, 1845. I* ran as Al 
 lows: 
 
 "My dear Mr. Duycinck: 
 
 I am still dreadfully unwell and fear I shall 
 be very seriously ill. I have resolved to give 
 up the Broadway Journal and retire to the 
 country for six months or perhaps a year, as 
 the sole means of regaining my health and 
 spirits. Is it not possible that yourself, or Mr. 
 Mathews, might give me a trifle for my inter 
 est in the paper? Or if this cannot be effected, 
 might I venture to ask you for an advance of 
 $50 on the faith of the American Parnassus, 
 which I will finish as soon as possible? If you 
 would oblige me in this manner, I would feel 
 myself under the deepest obligation." 
 
THE POE LEGEND 53 
 
 The writer ends by requesting that reply be 
 sent by bearer another proof of Poe s de 
 ficiency in the borrowing craft, since only a 
 novice or a bungler would thus attempt to force 
 a man s hand. Loans are very shy toward 
 those who seem to need them so badly. 
 
 This letter so strangely companioning that 
 of Burns, which it resembles in its burden of 
 complaint and the cry of despair it voices, is 
 stated to be from the Duycinck collection. I 
 am inclined to suspect that the requested fifty 
 was never added to the Poe collection. 
 
 By the way, there was another letter in the 
 case, from a great and famous and successful 
 contemporary of Poe, whose ordered and happy 
 life was in every respect a contrast to his. I 
 wonder why, under the circumstances, it gave 
 me no thrill to read those lines penned by the 
 hand of Longfellow: verily unto him that 
 hath shall not always be given ! 
 
 VIII 
 
 A LAST word as to Poe s enemies those 
 whom he made for himself and those 
 who were called into being by his literary tri 
 umphs. Here again I think Poe failed to hit it 
 
54 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 off, as he might have done. Though he labored 
 at the gentle art of making enemies with much 
 diligence, he never utilized them with brilliant 
 success in a literary way (most of the criticism 
 which procured him his enemies is hack-writing, 
 not literature). For example, he did not make 
 his enemies serve both his wit and reputation, 
 as Heine so well knew how to do. The latter 
 turned his foes into copy; throughout his life 
 they were his chief literary asset, and I have 
 no doubt that he almost loved them for the lit 
 erature they enabled him to make. This is the 
 most exquisite revenge upon a literary rival 
 to make him your pot-boiler and bread-winner 
 as well as a feeder to your fame and glory. It 
 was beyond Poe, and, therefore, the chronicle 
 of his grudges has for us hardly more piquancy 
 than the tale of his borrowings. 
 
 But his biographers weary us with it, as if 
 the matter were of real importance. Nonsense ! 
 Our literary manners are doubtless improved 
 since Poe s day; the brethren are surely not so 
 hungry, and there is more fodder to go round 
 (I have said this is not a literary effort). Still 
 the civility is rather assumed than real; there 
 is much spiteful kicking of shins under the 
 table; and private lampoons take the place of 
 
THE POE LEGEND 55 
 
 the old public personalities. I grant that au 
 thors are more generous in their attitude to 
 ward one another than formerly, and the fact 
 cannot be disputed that they are fervently sin 
 cere in their praise of the dead ones! 
 
 No, we shall not condemn Poe for the ene 
 mies he made. The printed word breeds hos 
 tility and aversion that the writer wots not of 
 yea, his dearest friends, scanning his page 
 with jealous eye, shall take rancor from his 
 most guileless words and cherish it in their 
 bosoms against him. Write, and your friends 
 will love you till they hate you; for there is no 
 fear and jealousy in the world like those that 
 lurk in the printed word. Write then, write 
 deeply enough, down to the truth of your own 
 soul, below the shams of phrase and convention, 
 below your insincerities of self and you shall 
 have enemies to your heart s desire. The man 
 who could print much and still make no ene 
 mies,* has never yet appeared on this planet. 
 
 * One W. C. Brownell, writing in "Scribner s Magazine," 
 evinces a kind of rage that a man so weak, so faulty and 
 ill-governed, an artist so capricious, slight and motiveless, 
 should have wrought himself into the unforgetting heart of 
 humanity. Whatever may be the explanation, we know that 
 is the offence which a certain brand of critics will never 
 forgive Poe. Drunken, debauched and devil-driven, per 
 haps the man often was; but the rare Poet whom the world 
 will ever cherish was brother to Israfel, and not less divine. 
 
56 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Certainly it was not he who struggled desper 
 ately for the poorest living in and about New 
 York some seventy-odd years ago; who saw his 
 young wife die in want and misery, with the 
 horror of officious charity at the door; who not 
 long afterwards, and in a kindly dream (as I 
 must think it) left all this coil of trouble and 
 sorrow behind him, bequeathing to immortality 
 the fame of Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
Ill 
 
 IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL * 
 
 IN many States of the Union there are laws 
 on the statute books that penalize liberty 
 of thought and speech. 
 
 These laws are mostly derived from Colonial 
 times and the barbarous intolerance of the Old 
 World. They are an organic link between us 
 and the British tyranny from which our patriot 
 fathers appealed to the sword. No statesman 
 or legislator has the courage to demand that 
 they be repealed or annulled. It is supposed 
 that the moral sense of the people is somehow 
 concerned in their being kept alive or at least 
 in a state of suspended animation and potential 
 menace. 
 
 *In this paper I treat Ingersoll romantically (as in keep 
 ing with the spirit of my book), as a personality and a man 
 of literary as well as oratorical gifts, certainly an American 
 Notable if we have ever produced one. 
 
 I dare not slight his peculiar religious views, but I have 
 touched the polemic side lightly and mainly to the end of 
 bringing into relief the Man of Genius and the Humani 
 tarian. Surely it is hardly warrantable to speak or think 
 of the Colonel as a spent influence; his books sell always, his 
 charm as a Personality, as an Orator and a Writer is saving 
 him in spite of his I grant unpopular agnosticism. The 
 great glowing heart of the man redeems his cold infidelity. 
 
 57 
 
58 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 So these cruel old laws are not disturbed by 
 pious legislators, who would make no bones at 
 all of trading in public franchises, or of acting 
 on any proposition with the "immoral major 
 ity". Hypocrisy and fraud respect in these 
 ancient statutes the "wisdom" of our ancestors, 
 and still affect to see in them a safeguard for 
 religion. Hypocrisy and fraud unite to keep 
 them on the law-books where they lie, asleep 
 it may be, but ready-fanged and poisoned 
 should they be evoked at any time to do their 
 ancient office. Many people would be glad to 
 have these infamous laws erased from the 
 statute-books, but they do nothing about it. 
 The public sense of hypocrisy stands in the way. 
 Legislators fear the protest of what is called 
 "organized religion". Liberty continues to be 
 disgraced in the house of her friends. 
 
 New Jersey has laws of this kind. Some 
 thing over three decades ago one of them was 
 waked from its long sleep in order to punish a 
 man who had exercised the right of free speech. 
 By a strange contradiction the result of yok 
 ing the Era of Liberty with the Age of Oppres 
 sion this right of free speech is guaranteed in 
 the Constitution of New Jersey, under which 
 the old cruel Colonial law is allowed to operate. 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 59 
 
 That is to say, the Constitution both guarantees 
 and penalizes the same privilege a beautiful 
 example of consistency arising from respect for 
 the "wisdom of our ancestors". 
 
 The trial attracted universal attention be 
 cause the bravest and ablest advocate of free 
 speech in our time appeared for the defence. 
 Outside of the great principle involved, there 
 was little in the case to engage the interest or 
 sympathies of Colonel Ingersoll. The defend 
 ant was an obscure ex-minister named Reynolds, 
 who had gone over to infidelity. Religion, it 
 must be granted, lost less than Reynolds, who 
 seems to have been unable to maintain himself 
 as a preacher of liberal doctrine. No doubt 
 many ministers have profited by his example 
 and stayed where they were the free thought 
 standard of ability is perhaps not much lower 
 than the evangelical. This Reynolds printed 
 and circulated some literature about the Bible. 
 It was merely puerile and foolish, but some 
 people who looked upon Reynolds as a nuisance 
 (which I fear he was) and wanted to punish 
 him, thought it a good case for the old Colonial 
 statute against blasphemy. Accordingly they 
 invoked it, and hence the trial. 
 
 The result of this now famous trial for bias- 
 
60 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 phemy proves that a law on the statute-book, 
 no matter how antiquated, bigoted and absurd 
 and this was all three in the superlative de 
 gree outweighs with a jury the utmost logic 
 and eloquence of the ablest advocate. Such is 
 the superstition of law, and such is our enlight 
 ened wisdom in jealously preserving these be 
 quests from the blind and tyrannous bigotry of 
 the Old World. 
 
 We need not condemn the twelve Jersey jury 
 men for sinning against light darkness was 
 there in the law and demanded judgment at 
 their hands. Of course, they enjoyed the Colo 
 nel s eloquence; his marvellous pleading; his 
 logic that built up and buttressed a whole struc 
 ture of argument, while his oratory ravished 
 them; his flashes of wit that disarmed every 
 prejudice; his persuasive power that almost 
 convinced them they were free men with no 
 slightest obligation to the servile past. Yes, it 
 must have been like a wonderful play to these 
 simple Jerseymen. No doubt they congratu 
 lated themselves that they were privileged 
 spectators, seeing and hearing it for nothing; 
 and they talked or will talk of it to their dying 
 day. I think myself it was one of the most 
 effective and powerful addresses ever made to a 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 61 
 
 jury one of the finest appeals ever uttered in 
 behalf of liberty and it will be honored as it 
 deserves when this Nation shall be truly free. 
 
 I daresay some of these Jerseymen were 
 wavering when the Colonel sat down at last 
 how could they help it? But the prosecutor 
 reminded them (without any eloquence) of 
 their obligations to city, county and State. 
 Above all, there is the Law what are you 
 going to do about that, gentlemen? No mat 
 ter whether it was passed some two hundred 
 years ago and carried over from Oppression to 
 Liberty no matter whether it was made for a 
 state of civilization or barbarism, if you 
 please, which we have outgrown there it 
 stands, the Law which safeguards the Church 
 and the Home the law which you are sworn 
 to maintain. 
 
 Something like this, no doubt, the prosecutor 
 must have said, but his remarks were few he 
 did not care to invite a comparison. Besides, 
 he knew his jurymen. 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll had made a speech that will 
 live forever. 
 
 He lost his case. 
 
 New Jersey lost an opportunity. 
 
62 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 ii 
 
 A GREAT many people contend that we 
 now enjoy in this country as much liberty 
 (or toleration) as is good for us. To aim at 
 the full measure which Colonel Ingersoll advo 
 cated is, in the opinion of these people, to ad 
 vance the standard of Anarchy. 
 
 By this reasoning a man who is only half or 
 three-quarters well is better off than one in per 
 fect health. 
 
 Complete freedom is complete well-being. 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll was the foremost cham 
 pion in our time of the rights of the liberal 
 spirit. 
 
 It has been urged that he spent the best part 
 of his life threshing out old theological straw, 
 fighting battles that had been thoroughly fought 
 out long before his day. Singularly enough, 
 this position is usually taken by persons attached 
 to the theological system against which Inger 
 soll waged a truceless war. There may be some 
 virtue in the argument, but surely it is not that 
 of consistency. 
 
 Let us be fair. Ingersoll was no mere echo 
 and imitator of the great liberals who pre 
 ceded him. He had a message of his own to 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 63 
 
 his own generation. He was the best- 
 equipped, most formidable and persistent advo 
 cate of the liberal principle which this country, 
 at least, has ever known; and it is extremely 
 doubtful if his equal as a popular propagan 
 dist was to be found anywhere. 
 
 He took new ground. He carried the flag 
 farther than any of his predecessors. He 
 fought without compromise, neither seeking 
 nor giving quarter. He believed in the sacred- 
 ness of his cause the holy cause of liberty. 
 His was no tepid devotion, no Laodicean fer 
 vor, no timid acquiescence dictated by reason 
 and half denied by fear. 
 
 That uncertain allegiance of the soul which 
 Macaulay describes as the "paradise of cold 
 hearts", was not for him. The temper of his 
 zeal for liberty can be likened only to a con 
 suming flame; it burned with ever-increasing 
 ardor through all the years of his long life; 
 it was active up to the very moment when jeal 
 ous Death touched his eloquent lips with silence. 
 
 It was a grand passion, and, like every grand 
 passion, it had grand results. 
 
 Heine has said that no man becomes greatly 
 famous without passion; that it is the mark by 
 
64 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 which we know the inspired man from the mere 
 servant or spectator of events. 
 
 I see this mark in Abraham Lincoln in the 
 Gettysburg speech, in the Proclamation, and 
 some of the Messages. The divine passion 
 that announces a man with a mission and a 
 destiny beyond his fellows. 
 
 I see this mark in Robert G. Ingersoll. I 
 have lately read the greater part of his work 
 lectures, speeches, controversial writings and 
 the cumulative sense I take from it is that of 
 wonder at the passion of the man. Perhaps it 
 never found better, never attained higher, ex 
 pression than in these words : 
 
 "I plead for light, for air, for opportunity. 
 I plead for individual independence. I plead 
 for the rights of labor and of thought. I plead 
 for a chainless future. Let the ghosts go 
 justice remains. Let them disappear men 
 and women and children are left. Let the mon 
 sters fade away the world is here with its 
 hills and seas and plains, with its seasons of 
 smiles and frowns, its spring of leaf and bud, 
 its summer of shade and flower and murmuring 
 stream, its autumn with the laden boughs, when 
 the withered banners of the corn are still and 
 gathered fields are growing strangely wan; 
 while death, poetic death, with hands that color 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 65 
 
 what they touch, weaves in the autumn wood 
 her tapestries of gold and brown. 
 
 "The world remains with its winters and 
 homes and fire-sides, where grow and bloom the 
 virtues of our race. Let the ghosts go we 
 will worship them no more. 
 
 "Man is greater than these phantoms. 
 Humanity is grander than all the creeds, than 
 all the books. Humanity is the great sea, and 
 these creeds, and books, and religions are but 
 the waves of a day. Humanity is the sky, and 
 these religions and dogmas and theories are but 
 the mists and clouds changing continually, des 
 tined finally to melt away. 
 
 "That which is founded on slavery, and fear, 
 and ignorance cannot endure." 
 
 Ill 
 
 IT IS agreed by the opponents of Colonel 
 Ingersoll that he was without influence upon 
 the intelligent thought of his time by which 
 intelligent thought they perhaps mean to com 
 pliment themselves ! 
 
 If this be true, we lack an explanation of the 
 fact that his books and lectures are selling by 
 the thousands, both in this country and in Eng 
 land. If the testimony of the bookstalls 
 amounts to anything, then the great Agnostic 
 
66 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 did not cast his "seed of perdition" upon barren 
 ground. Whether for right or wrong, whether 
 for good or evil, his word is marching on. 
 
 From the Silence that comes to all men he 
 has gained a higher claim upon our attention, 
 a more valid right to plead. We remember 
 that he was faithful unto death. With the 
 cessation of that defiant personality, about 
 which so long raged the din of controversy, men 
 have leave to study his best thought in the dry 
 light of reason. He that is dead overcometh. 
 
 During his life Colonel Ingersoll gave and 
 took many hard blows that is, he fought his 
 adversaries with the weapons of their choice. 
 
 Often it seemed to those who were in sym 
 pathy with much that he said, with much that 
 he contended for, that he might have used 
 softer words; that he might have dealt less bru 
 tally with inherited beliefs and prejudices; in 
 short, that he might have employed rosewater 
 instead of vitriol. 
 
 The answer to this is, Colonel Ingersoll 
 fought without compromise. From his first 
 public utterance he made his position plain. 
 He never faltered, shuffled or equivocated. He 
 knew that mutual compliments cloud the issue; 
 he asked none, gave none. 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 67 
 
 But the fact really is, he was far kinder and 
 more charitable toward his adversaries than 
 they were toward him. Besides, they had a 
 great advantage in unkindness : they were al 
 ways sending him to their Hell and he had no 
 Hell to send them to ! 
 
 However, I do not believe that Colonel In- 
 gersoll would have fared much better at the 
 hands of the clergy had he, while professing 
 infidelity, made his declaration of unfaith in 
 the mildest and most colorless terms. Euphe 
 mism would not have saved the Colonel, and 
 this he well knew, having one of the most logi 
 cal minds in the world. 
 
 No infidel was ever so tender toward the 
 sensibilities of the orthodox as Ernest Renan, 
 who, though he left the altar, yet (as Ingersoll 
 shrewdly said) carried the incense a great part 
 of his journey with him. 
 
 Renan s attitude toward the old Faith which 
 he had renounced was that of a sentimental 
 iconoclast but an iconoclast, for all that. He 
 wrote his "Life of Jesus" with a kind of pious 
 infidelity, coloring it with such euphemism, han 
 dling it with such precaution, that some persons 
 took it for an orthodox account. He discloses 
 his motive in the prefaces, but almost suppresses 
 
68 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 it in the body of the book. His criticism is the 
 best in the world, his romance no better than 
 Chateaubriand s a woman said that the "Life 
 of Jesus" read as if it were going to end with 
 a marriage ! In my poor opinion, one or two 
 chapters of Renan s "Recollections" are worth 
 "The Life of Jesus". 
 
 Renan loved the grand old Church which 
 had educated him, as his "dearest foe". His 
 mind had been formed by contact with her at a 
 hundred points. The poetry of her ritual, the 
 pomp of her service, the grandeur of her titles, 
 the majesty of her spiritual dominion, never 
 quite lost their power to impress his soul even 
 when he was prophesying that the days of her 
 greatness were numbered. He spoke of the 
 clergy always with respect, often with compli 
 ment, declaring in his latest book that he had 
 never known a bad priest. He abhorred all 
 coarseness, all invective, all vulgarity, all vio 
 lence. Nothing common, low or brutal was 
 ever suffered to mar the translucent mirror of 
 his perfect style. In theory a democrat, he had 
 the mental manners which are fostered by a 
 clerical aristocracy. Every faculty of his mind 
 paid homage to the Church, except his reason. 
 Renan never lost his feeling of reverence for 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 69 
 
 the sacred mysteries of the Faith in which his 
 youth was cradled but he wrote the u Prayer 
 on the Acropolis". He rebuked Strauss and 
 Feuerbach for the ruthless way in which they 
 attacked the Christian legend he pleaded for 
 tenderness in demolishing a religion which had 
 been the hope of the world. He confessed that 
 he never could wholly put off the cassock, and 
 he seemed like an unfrocked bishop on the 
 heights of science. If ever an infidel deserved 
 chanty at the hands of the clergy, that infidel 
 was Renan. 
 
 Did he get it? The answer is, that not even 
 Voltaire was assailed with a greater virulence 
 of ecclesiastical rancor the most infernal mal 
 ice ever planted in the heart of man.* 
 
 Alas, the ecclesiastical spirit too often seems 
 the same in all ages ! It crucified Jesus of 
 Nazareth, it burned Giordano Bruno. When 
 Servetus writhed at the stake in his death 
 agony, Calvin, his murderer, drew nearer, 
 saluted him as the son of the Devil and piously 
 committed his soul to Hell. 
 
 *This remark admits of some notable exceptions. Father 
 William Barry, an eminent English writer, has done a fair 
 and justly appreciative Life of Renan (Scribner s) while 
 making no concession to his agnostic views. Several priests 
 who knew Renan in his youth or during his novitiate have 
 written of him with respect and humane feeling. 
 
70 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Renan was cursed and slandered with that 
 special ingenuity which has always belonged to 
 the custodians of Divine Truth, and the priests 
 whom he was in the habit of complimenting, 
 with great fervor of unanimity saluted him as 
 the Anti-Christ ! 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll s reasoning was good. 
 Compliments are vain in an irreconcilable con 
 flict. 
 
 IV 
 
 MOST speeches are not literature they 
 do not read as they were heard, as they 
 were spoken. Lacking the living voice, the 
 speaking eye, the personality from which they 
 derived their force, they seem cold, inanimate, 
 without that vital principle which is the product 
 of genius and art. 
 
 The orator s triumphs are usually short-lived, 
 like those of an actor. They are the children 
 of the time, not of the eternities. 
 
 But there are exceptions, though rare, and 
 among these we may reckon the best speeches 
 of Colonel Ingersoll. 
 
 Our American literature has nothing better 
 of their kind than the Decoration Day Ora 
 tion, the lectures on Ghosts, Orthodoxy, Super- 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 71 
 
 stition, Individuality, Liberty for Man, Woman 
 and Child, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Humboldt, 
 Thomas Paine, and some others. 
 
 These are so vital, so charged with intellec 
 tual power, so instinct with a passionate love 
 of truth and justice, so eloquent and logical, 
 so clear and convincing above all, so readable 
 that they can afford to dispense with the 
 living voice that is, they are, in a true sense, 
 literature. 
 
 I doubt if this enviable distinction belongs 
 in equal measure to the work of any other 
 American orator. 
 
 The explanation is, that Colonel Ingersoll 
 was an artist as well as an orator: he knew 
 that without the preserving touch of art, the 
 most impassioned oratory soon goes back to 
 common air. He was one of the great masters 
 of our English speech, never seeking the ab 
 struse or the obsolete, believing that the tongue 
 of Shakespeare was adequate to every neces 
 sity of argument, every excursion of fancy, 
 every sentiment of poetry, every demand of 
 oratory. 
 
 His skill in construction, in antithesis, in 
 balancing periods, in leading up to the lofty 
 climax which crowned the whole, was that of 
 
72 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 a wizard of speech. He never fell short or 
 came tardy off his means were always ade 
 quate to his ends and the close of every speech 
 was like a strain of music. Rich as his mind 
 was, immense his intellectual resources, un 
 daunted the bravery of his spirit, there was yet 
 manifest in all his work the wise husbandry of 
 genius. His power never ran to excess; never 
 dwindled to impotence. 
 
 Nature, too, is economical and dislikes to 
 double her gifts: yet this man was a true poet 
 as well as a great orator. I have quoted above 
 a paragraph from one of his orations, which 
 is the fine gold of sterling poetry. 
 
 Charles Lamb tells us that "Prose hath her 
 harmonies no less than Verse", and we know 
 that the speech of every true orator is rhythmic. 
 It was eminently so with Colonel Ingersoll, 
 who, like Dickens, often fell unconsciously into 
 blank verse. Here are a few examples taken 
 at random; and first this bit of what we are 
 now calling "nature poetry" : 
 
 The rise and set of sun, 
 
 The birth and death of day, 
 
 The dawns of silver and the dusks of gold, 
 
 The wonders of the rain and snow, 
 
 The shroud of winter and 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 73 
 
 The many-colored robes of spring; 
 The lonely moon with nightly loss or gain, 
 The serpent lightning and the thunder s voice, 
 The tempest s fury and the breath of morn, 
 The threat of storm and promise of the bow. 
 
 Nothing could excel in beauty and metrical 
 grace this description of the old classic myths : 
 
 They thrilled the veins of Spring with tremu 
 lous desire, 
 
 Made tawny Summer s billowed breast the 
 throne and home of Love; 
 
 Filled Autumn s arms with sun-kissed grapes 
 and gathered sheaves; 
 
 And pictured Winter as a weak old king 
 
 Who felt, like Lear, upon his withered face, 
 Cordelia s tears. 
 
 This on Shakespeare, reveals the poet in the 
 orator: 
 
 He knew the thrills and ecstasies of love, 
 
 The savage joys of hatred and revenge. 
 
 He heard the hiss of envy s snakes 
 
 And watched the eagles of ambition soar. 
 
 There was no hope that did not put its star 
 
 above his head 
 No fear he had not felt 
 No joy that had not shed its sunshine on his 
 
 face. 
 
74 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 The critics, I am aware, make this kind of 
 writing a fault in prose, but we should be glad 
 to get real poetry, wherever we may find it. 
 Colonel Ingersoll s greatest distinction as a 
 poet is, that he never fails to interest us: in 
 this particular, at least, the regular metre-mon 
 gers may well envy him. 
 
 I LIKE his distinct literary style the style 
 of his miscellanies, of his controversial 
 papers, of his occasional bits of wisdom and 
 fancy and criticism. Perhaps the thoroughly 
 human side of the man is best seen in these un 
 related efforts these vagrant children of his 
 mind. You know that this man thought before 
 he took the pen in hand. He writes without 
 pretence, without the vices of the literary habit, 
 without artifice or evasion, clearly, frankly, 
 as a gentleman should speak. In written con 
 troversy he was relentless in his logic, press 
 ing the point home, but unfailing in courtesy. 
 As he himself would have said, his mental man 
 ners were good they were at any rate "sweet 
 ness and light" compared with those of his 
 adversaries. 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 75 
 
 He did not profess to love his enemies, yet 
 he treated them more humanely than many who 
 made that profession. 
 
 We are never to forget that the chief article 
 of his offending was, that he made war upon 
 the Dogma of an everlasting Hell. 
 
 In his controversies he was never worsted, 
 from a rational standpoint (sic), and his vic 
 tories seem not less due to his own fairness in 
 argument and tenacity of logic than to the 
 weakness and confusion of his opponents. The 
 natural and supernatural can not maintain a 
 profitable argument. They can never agree 
 and, strictly speaking, one can not overcome 
 the other they occupy separate realms. 
 
 It is useless for a man who believes in 
 miracles to argue with a man who does not a 
 miracle and a fact are in the nature of things 
 irreconcilable. 
 
 Renan said to the theologians, "Come, gen 
 tlemen, let us have one miracle here before 
 the savants in Paris that will end the dispute 
 forever." He asked in vain miracles are no 
 longer granted for the conversion of infidels, 
 and if they occur at all, it is before witnesses 
 whose faith predisposes them to belief. It 
 may be hazarded that no one ever believed 
 
76 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 in a miracle who did not wish to believe in 
 it. 
 
 In a purely rational view it must be allowed 
 that the honors of controversy usually fell to 
 Colonel Ingersoll. His apparent victories 
 were, of course, easily waived by those who be 
 lieved that they had Divine Truth on their 
 side. Yet they must have regretted that the 
 supernatural can be so ill defended. That all 
 the advantage of reason would seem to be with 
 the enemy of light. That one who can make 
 himself understood should prevail over the 
 champion of Revealed Truth, which is in its 
 nature incomprehensible. That it should be 
 so hard to square reason with revelation, fact 
 with fable, method with miracle, dreams with 
 demonstrations. 
 
 Of all these tourneys of skill and wit and 
 logic, Colonel Ingersoll is seen at his best in 
 his reply to Gladstone. Perhaps nothing that 
 he ever did more thoroughly certifies the power 
 and keenness of his mind, the bed-rock of his 
 convictions. He was like an athlete rejoicing 
 in his strength ; merciful to his adversary, as 
 feeling that the victory was sure; always con 
 scious of his power, but ruling himself with 
 perfect poise. The one touch of malice he al- 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 77 
 
 lowed himself was when he quoted for Mr. 
 Gladstone s benefit the saying of Aristotle, that 
 "clearness is the virtue of style" : this arrow 
 pierced the heart of the British behemoth. 
 
 In truth Mr. Gladstone, the master of many 
 languages, the world-famed orator, the "most 
 learned layman of Europe", appeared at a 
 manifest disadvantage in his duel with the 
 American. He tried to write in the "Bishop s 
 voice", to overawe his adversary with Greek 
 and Latin quotations, omitting to give the Eng 
 lish equivalent. He begged the question, floun 
 dered about it, did everything but argue it, and 
 finally took refuge behind the "exuberance_of 
 his own verbosity". Colonel Ingersoll, cool, 
 urbane, inflexible, asked only for the facts; Mr. 
 Gladstone, flustered, irritated, conscious of his 
 weakness, had apparently none to give and 
 raised a cloud of words. The world waited 
 eagerly for Mr. Gladstone s rejoinder: it never 
 came, and the trophies of debate seemed to rest 
 with the American. Needless to say, this left 
 the great Question still at issue. 
 
78 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 VI 
 
 /COLONEL INGERSOLL has been so 
 \^4 slandered and defamed by the intemper 
 ate friends of orthodox religion that many peo 
 ple have no just idea of the man or of the prin 
 ciples for which he contended. Slander is too 
 often the favorite weapon of persons who claim 
 to love their enemies as themselves. It was 
 used so effectively against Voltaire that even at 
 this late day many liberal Christians are afraid 
 to read him. 
 
 Separating the odium theologicum from the 
 argument and the slanderous motive of those 
 who libel a sublime cause by their uncharity, let 
 us see how the matter really stands. 
 
 Did Ingersoll say there is no God? 
 
 No; he said he did not know. 
 
 What did he deny as to God? 
 
 He denied the existence of the personal Jew 
 ish God the Jehovah of the Hebrew Scrip 
 tures. 
 
 He denied and repudiated the dogma of an 
 eternal Hell, said to have been made by Jehovah 
 in order to gratify his revenge upon the great 
 majority of the human race. 
 
 Did he attack Christianity? 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 79 
 
 He attacked only what he conceived to be 
 the evil part of it, in so far as it justified 
 and continued the curses of the Old Testament. 
 He made a distinction between the real and 
 the theological Christ: the first he honored as 
 a great moral teacher and a martyr of freedom, 
 killed by the orthodox priests of his day; the 
 second he denied and repudiated as a creation 
 of men. 
 
 Did he believe in a Hereafter? 
 
 He believed that no one could know whether 
 there is or is not a future life of the soul. But 
 he was not without the hope of immortality 
 which has in all ages cheered and fortified the 
 heart of man. 
 
 It follows from all this that he did not accept 
 the Revelation of the Hebrew Bible, its cos 
 mogony, geology or morality; nor the New 
 Testament with its Scheme of Atonement and 
 threat of Eternal Damnation God suffering 
 in his own person for the sins of the world, yet 
 condemning the far greater number of his chil 
 dren to everlasting pain. 
 
 What positive effect had his example and 
 teaching? 
 
 It liberalized the creeds in spite of them 
 selves. 
 
8o AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 It made the preaching of Hell unpopular. 
 
 It made for sanity in religion and enlarged 
 the province of honest doubt. 
 
 It caused men to think more of the simple 
 human virtues and less of the theological ones. 
 
 There is no doubt at all that it saved many 
 from the madhouse who might have accused 
 themselves of committing the Unpardonable 
 Sin. 
 
 It helped to make better husbands, kinder 
 fathers, more loyal and loving sons. 
 
 It was a great step toward freedom and 
 light. It enlarged the horizon of hope it 
 advanced the standard of liberty. 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll was a free man, talking in 
 a country where all are presumed to be free, yet 
 his courage, more than the laws, protected him. 
 
 He upheld public and private morality and 
 was himself an exemplar of both. 
 
 He loved only one woman as his wife and 
 lived with her in perfect honor and fidelity. He 
 loved his children and was idolized by them. 
 
 His abilities and services reflected honor 
 upon the state. 
 
 It is agreed that but for his religious views, 
 he might have reached the greatest honor in 
 the Nation s gift. As it is, he has gained a 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 81 
 
 place in the Republic of Intellect to which few 
 of our Presidents may aspire. 
 
 His crime was, that he had elected to exer 
 cise his reason, had interrogated Revelation, 
 put Moses in the witness-box, and asked for the 
 facts. 
 
 VII 
 
 IT IS claimed by certain critics that Colonel 
 Ingersoll, being defective in scientific equip 
 ment as well as in exact scholarship, was unable 
 to produce such effects by his teaching as might 
 otherwise have been feared by the orthodox. 
 It seems to me the contention is quite unsup 
 ported by logic or fact. True, Colonel Inger 
 soll was neither a Darwin nor a Huxley, neither 
 a Tyndall nor a Spencer. He lacked the special 
 training and scientific grasp of all these, as well 
 as the searching erudition and ripened philo 
 sophic spirit of Ernest Renan, in our time the 
 chief protagonist in the domain of liberal 
 thought. But had Colonel Ingersoll been other 
 than he was, it is doubtful if he would have 
 achieved so distinct an effect. In mere scholar 
 ship he was at least equal if not superior to 
 Thomas Paine, and he was no more unscientific 
 than Voltaire. As a propagandist of liberal 
 
82 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 opinions, and as a living force, he was far 
 greater than the former by virtue of the free 
 play accorded to his vigorous and persuasive 
 eloquence. That his influence in no way ap 
 proaches that of Voltaire, is not a fact which 
 demands explanation. A stream can not rise 
 higher than its source. The whole liberal 
 movement may almost be said to have pro 
 ceeded from the great Frenchman, whose por 
 tentous eminence remains secured to him alone. 
 But if Ingersoll was neither scientific in a 
 profound sense, nor cultured in a scholastic one, 
 he was not the less manifestly cut out for his 
 work. He gave his audiences just what they 
 expected to get and were glad to pay for ora 
 tory, which it serves no purpose now to dis 
 parage and which, in spite of all disparagement, 
 often rose to a noble height and strain. Wit 
 that played like lambent lightning about the old 
 structures of belief, showing many an obscure 
 niche and cranny that, mayhap, had escaped 
 the torches of earlier investigators. Pathos 
 that proved the poet in the orator and needed 
 only a metrical expression nay, sometimes un 
 consciously attained it. Humor that evinced 
 this man s sympathetic touch with his fellow 
 men and that not seldom won their regard 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 83 
 
 when all the protean resources of his eloquence 
 had failed to persuade. Lastly, a gracious and 
 noble presence, 
 
 Where every god did seem to set his seal 
 To give the world assurance of a man; 
 
 and a voice whose thrilling organ melody it will 
 long be the solace of many thousands to have 
 heard. 
 
 How much of the Colonel will live as a per 
 manent legacy, is a graver question than that of 
 his influence upon his contemporaries. Littera 
 scripta manet, and the Ingersollian word is, 
 essentially, the spoken word. Most of his 
 writings are cast in the form of speeches; were 
 obviously written to be delivered as such. John 
 Morley notes this as a sensible depreciation 
 of a great part of Macaulay s brilliant work. 
 
 The finer note addressed to the mental ear 
 is more palpably lacking in the American. One 
 sees this at once by turning from Colonel Inger- 
 soll s speeches to the papers of his controversy 
 with Gladstone, to which I have already re 
 ferred. In these letters Colonel Ingersoll dis 
 plays a closeness of reasoning, a dialectic fence, 
 an analytic subtlety, which are quite foreign 
 to his ordinary processes. The fact is, that 
 
84 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Colonel Ingersoll, being a born pleader and 
 skilled, moreover, in a long course of forensic 
 training, adopted too much, perhaps, in his 
 speeches, the lawyer s plan of making the most 
 of the adversary s weak points. Hence, the 
 brutality, at times, of Ingersoll s philippics 
 against the Christian religion, and hence, also, 
 the unlikelihood of their being permanently em 
 bodied in the canon of liberal faith. The keen 
 ness of the critical spirit was in Colonel Inger 
 soll; in its charity he was often wanting. 
 
 VIII 
 
 COLONEL INGERSOLL belongs with 
 the select company of the great Ameri 
 cans. 
 
 He is of the fellowship of Jefferson and 
 Franklin, of Lincoln and Sumner. His pa 
 triotism was second only to his passion for uni 
 versal liberty. He loved his country beyond 
 everything except freedom. He was not a fire 
 side patriot the temper of his devotion had 
 been proved in the baptism of battle. His pa 
 triotic speeches rank with the best in our litera 
 ture : the Vision of War is as high an utterance 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 85 
 
 as Lincoln s Gettysburg Speech and as surely 
 immortal. 
 
 He was a great American, loving liberty, 
 fraternity, equality. He hated the spirit of 
 Caste which he saw rising among our people, 
 and he struck at it with all the force of his 
 honest anger. 
 
 He despised the worship of titles among the 
 rich, their tuft-hunting, aping of aristocratic 
 airs and mean prostration before the self-styled 
 nobility of the Old World. To him the most 
 loathsome object in the world was an American 
 ashamed of his country. 
 
 He urged that the representatives of repub 
 lics should have precedence at Washington. 
 He condemned the flummery of our diplomatic 
 etiquette, the foolish kow-towing designed to 
 flatter the ambassadors of servile nations. 
 
 His patriotism was purer than that of our 
 Christian statesmen who wish to subjugate in 
 the name of liberty to expand in territory and 
 contract in honor. 
 
 He was an individualist, believing that equal 
 rights and equal opportunities hold the solu 
 tion of every social problem. 
 
 He saw no evil in wealth, save the abuse of 
 it, and he did not think it a virtue to be poor. 
 
86 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 He believed that everyone was entitled to 
 comfort, well-being, happiness in this world. 
 He denied that God has purposely divided his 
 children into rich and poor; he saw in this the 
 teaching of a false religious system which has 
 sanctioned every oppression and injustice, and 
 has cursed the earth with misery. 
 
 He regarded pauperism not as a proof of 
 the special favor of God, but as an indictment 
 of man. 
 
 He was a lover of justice, of mercy, of hu 
 manity. He was a true friend of the toiling 
 millions and in their behalf pleaded for a work 
 ing day of eight hours. Christianity had long 
 suffered it, but he was unwilling that a single 
 overburdened creature should "curse God and 
 die". 
 
 He pleaded for the abolition of the death 
 penalty, that relic of savagery. He hated all 
 forms of cruelty and violence, but especially 
 those that claim the sanction of law. He de 
 nounced the whipping post in Delaware and 
 Delaware replied by a threat to indict him for 
 blasphemy. 
 
 He pleaded for the abolition of poverty and 
 drunkenness, for the fullest liberation of 
 woman, for the rights of the child. 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 87 
 
 His great heart went out in sympathy to 
 everything that suffers to the dumb animals, 
 beaten and overladen; to the feathered victims 
 of caprice and cruelty. 
 
 The circle of this man s philanthropy was 
 complete. He filled the measure of patriotism, 
 of civic duty, of the sacred relations of hus 
 band and father, of generosity and kindness 
 toward his fellow men. But he had committed 
 treason against the Unknown, and this, in spite 
 of the fame and success which his talents com 
 manded, made of him a social Pariah. The 
 herd admired and envied his freedom, but for 
 the most part they gave him the road and went 
 by on the other side. 
 
 IX 
 
 THIS country is freer and better for the 
 life of Colonel Ingersoll. 
 
 There is more light, more air in the prison- 
 house of theology. 
 
 God may be a guess, but man is a certainty; 
 men are thinking more of their obligations to 
 ward those about them the weak, the help 
 less, the fallen, and less about securing for 
 themselves a halo and a harp in the New 
 Jerusalem. 
 
88 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Ingersoll s great lesson that men can not love 
 one another if they believe in a God of hate, 
 is bearing fruit. 
 
 The hypocrite shall not enter the Kingdom 
 of Heaven! 
 
 Truth will yet compel all the churches to 
 cease libelling God and to honor humanity. . . . 
 
 The great man whose worth and work I 
 have barely glanced at in these pages, said 
 bravely, that he cared less for the freedom of 
 religion than for the Religion of Freedom. 
 When that larger light shall flood the world 
 and not until then his services to the cause 
 of Truth, of Liberty and Humanity will be fitly 
 honored. 
 
 As for his literary testament, I find it easy 
 to believe that many a noble sentence winged 
 with the utmost felicity of speech, many a fine 
 sentiment, the fruit of his kindlier thought, 
 many a tender word spoken to alleviate the 
 sorrow of death, will long remain. Even the 
 professed critics who make so small ado of the 
 Colonel s literary merits, may well envy him 
 the noble essay on Shakespeare, the more 
 powerful one on Voltaire, or the beautiful 
 memorial tribute to Walt Whitman. And it 
 may be that "so long as love kisses the lips of 
 
IN RE COLONEL INGERSOLL 89 
 
 death", so long shall men and women, in the 
 nighted hour of grief and loss, bless the name 
 of him who touched the great heart of hu 
 manity in that high and unmatched deliverance 
 at his brother s grave. . . . 
 
 From a sunken Syrian tomb long antedating 
 the Christian era, Ernest Renan brushed away 
 the dust and found inscribed thereon the sin 
 gle word, 
 
 "Courage!" 
 
IV 
 
 RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE 
 
 THE story of the man of genius who 
 finds inspiration in another man s wife 
 is not a new one, and it may even be 
 called trite, but it is one to which the world 
 always lends a willing ear. 
 
 This is the story revealed in the English ver 
 sion of the letters of Richard Wagner to Ma- 
 thilde Wesendonck. In Germany, sweet land 
 of sentiment, the book has reached the twen 
 tieth edition and is generally acclaimed as a 
 true classic. In Germany, also, the alleged 
 Platonic motive of the letters, elsewhere looked 
 at askance, is easily admitted, since, as is well 
 known to the nightingales and the lindens, a 
 German lover will pursue an ardent courtship 
 through a dozen years without daring once to 
 put an arm around his divinity s waist. Art 
 and love are a great patience in Germany. 
 
 They were surely so in the case of Richard 
 Wagner; and it is characteristic of the Teuton 
 
 90 
 
RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE 91 
 
 that he has left the world in doubt as to 
 whether his patience was ever rewarded. 
 
 The doubt is indeed the chief provocation 
 of these letters (outside of Germany), and fur 
 nishes the artistic motive by which they will 
 endure. 
 
 Or, to put the matter plainly, the other 
 man s wife supplies the interest of this book. 
 As of many others in the chronicle of great 
 ness. 
 
 Think you, had these letters been addressed 
 to Frau Wagner, that all the chaste nightin 
 gales of Germany would now be tuning in their 
 praise? Or that our own sentimentalists, with 
 the unsexed Corybantes of music, would be 
 swelling such a chorus of acclaim? Would the 
 world be eager to identify Frau Wagner with 
 the conception of "Isolde", and should we be 
 hearing all this patter about ideal union of 
 souls, spiritual passion, etc., etc.? Not so! 
 the world will not tolerate the indecency of a 
 man of genius loving his wife and personifying 
 her in the creations of his art. 
 
 There is not a single truly famous book in 
 the world s literature, of letters written by a 
 man of genius to his wife. 
 
 The letters are always written to some other 
 
92 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 woman and, preferably, some other man s 
 wife. Why this should be so, only the good 
 Lord knows who made us as we are. 
 
 Poor Penelope keeps house, often red-eyed 
 and sad, during the excursions of genius; she 
 treasures up with a broken-hearted care and 
 stores away in a lavender-scented drawer with 
 the early- love-letters (of which the genius is 
 now ashamed) curt messages on postal cards 
 hurry-up requests for clean linen or an e^xtra 
 "nighty"; express tags speaking eloquently of 
 some cheap gift by which the great man dis 
 charged the obligation of writing (preserved 
 by the simple soul because he had scrawled her 
 name upon them) ; and perhaps a small packet 
 of letters that deal wholly with HIS ideas of 
 domestic government, usually couched in a 
 peevish tone and with a hard selfishness of in 
 tention that strangely contrasts with the man s 
 meditated, public revelation of self not a 
 flower of the heart in them all, as poor 
 Penelope, starving for a word of love, sees 
 through her dropping tears. 
 
 Now these things have some value to a neg 
 lected wife, but they can not usefully be worked 
 up in the biography of a man of genius. 
 
 What wonder that Penelope takes into her 
 
RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE 93 
 
 tender bosom the subtle demon of jealousy, be 
 comes a shrew and a scold, and presently 
 goaded by the man s cold and steady refusal 
 to satisfy her by giving her the lov,e which she 
 knows with a woman s sure instinct is being 
 secretly lavished upon another what wonder, 
 I say, that Penelope under such maddening 
 provocation, finding herself a cheated and un 
 loved wife, becomes that favorite handiwork 
 of the Devil on this earth a good woman 
 turned into a Fury! 
 
 And the beauty of it is, that at this moment 
 she sets out to justify, in the wrong-headed 
 fashion of a woman who knows that she can 
 take her marriage certificate to Heaven with 
 her, the infidelity of her husband! 
 
 He, being a man of genius, easily gets the 
 sympathy of the world especially of all good 
 and virtuous women, every one of whom feels 
 that she would have been able to satisfy the 
 gifted person and keep him properly straight. 
 And the great man adds to the laurel of fame 
 the crown of domestic martyrdom. 
 
 Of course, the injured wife might have 
 played her game better, but it was not in the 
 cards for her to win, having married a 
 genius. 
 
94 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 So it has come to be an axiom that the art 
 istic temperament disqualifies a man for the 
 sober state of matrifnony; and many are the 
 cases cited to prove it, from the wife of Socra 
 tes to Jane Welsh Carlyle or Frau Wagner. 
 The woes of the unhappily mated genius 
 clamor down the ages like the harsh echoes of 
 a family row before the policeman reaches the 
 corner. Also they make a large figure in what 
 is called polite literature, especially as the 
 sorely tried genius finds in the sorrows of his 
 hearth a strong incentive to the production of 
 copy. Hence the thing is not without its com 
 pensations, and the lovers of gossip, who are 
 always the chief patrons of literature, do not 
 seek their food in vain. 
 
 I suspect that the matter of vanity has much 
 to do with cooking the domestic troubles his 
 word is "tragedy" ! of the genius. It is very 
 hard to domesticate the species, and wonder 
 ful is the arrogance which the notion of genius 
 will breed in the homeliest man, causing him 
 to look with easy contempt on the beautiful 
 woman who perhaps married him out of pity. 
 The artist is the peacock among husbands his 
 lofty soul, his majestic port, his rainbow plu 
 mage, and even, as he thinks, the beauty of his 
 
RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE 95 
 
 voice that top note especially! move him to 
 a measureless disdain of the annoyingly con 
 stant, unvaried and tiresome hero-worship of 
 his plain little mate it is quite curious how, 
 after a time, he comes even to ignore her 
 beauty. To be sure, she has her home uses, 
 and very convenient on occasion these are, even 
 to the most glorious of peacocks; but he is for 
 the Cosmos and must not limit his resplendency 
 to a narrow poultry-yard go to, woman ! 
 And there you are. 
 
 Then, of course, the artist must always be 
 in quest of new sensations, in other words, 
 must feed his genius, to which satiety is death; 
 and it seems to be agreed that such sensations 
 and experiences are only to be had from other 
 women, or at least, some other woman and 
 how are you going to get away from that? 
 
 I have heard of a certain man, of coarse 
 fibre, who would have given his soul to be 
 thought an artist; who plotted, asleep and 
 awake, during long years, to get rid of his law 
 ful wife and take on a woman he believed to 
 be his affinity. The man s passionate desire to 
 work this wrong gave him a kind of power and 
 eloquence which, strange to say, failed him 
 when at last he had succeeded in carrying out 
 
96 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 his purpose. And then, so gossip ran, he wished 
 to win the old love back again (coupled in his 
 memory with both unrest and power), but that, 
 of course, was hopeless; so that verily the last 
 state of this man was worse than the first. 
 
 All of which is not without bearing upon the 
 story of Richard Wagner and Mathilde We- 
 sendonck. 
 
 I am not concerned to upset the Platonic 
 theory, so dear to German sentimentalists, of 
 the love-affair between the great Wagner and 
 the wife of Herr Wesendonck. People will 
 judge according to the evidence and their pri 
 vate feelings. It must be allowed that there 
 are expressions in the letters that would go far 
 toward establishing a cnm. con. in the case of 
 any but a German like Wagner, and a master 
 sentimentalist at that. Such a passage as this 
 for example : 
 
 "Once more, that thou couldst hurl thyself 
 on every conceivable sorrow of the world to 
 say to me, I love thee , redeemed me angl won 
 for me that solemn pause whence my life has 
 gained another meaning. 
 
 "But that state divine indeed was only to be 
 won at cost of all the griefs and pains of love 
 we have drunk them to their very dregs ! And 
 now, after suffering every sorrow, being spared 
 
RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE 97 
 
 no grief, now must the quick of that higher life 
 show clearly what we have won through all the 
 agony of those birth-throes." 
 
 I repeat, only a German sentimentalist could 
 hold such language without compelling an ob 
 vious conclusion. The fact that in the face 
 of this and similarly passionate avowals, public 
 opinion in Germany absolves the lovers of any 
 positive guilt in their relations, is a high tribute 
 to that national virtue which was anciently cele 
 brated by Tacitus and more recently by Hein- 
 rich Heine. 
 
 It is the greater pity that the present Eng 
 lish translation should have been made by a 
 gushing, lymphatic person, one W. Ashton 
 Ellis, who instead of suffering the letters to 
 speak for themselves, writes a silly preface 
 wherein he seeks to clear Frau Wesendonck s 
 character, in advance, and thereby naturally 
 awakens the reader s doubts. I protest but for 
 this marplot fellow I should have set it all 
 down to the account of German sentimentalism 
 and have laid the book aside without hearing 
 anything worse than the nightingale in the 
 linden, pouring forth his soul in the enchanted 
 moonlight of German poesy. But now it is 
 spoiled for me by such twaddle as this: 
 
98 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 "This placid, sweet Madonna, the perfect 
 emblem of a pearl, not .opal, her eyes still 
 dreaming of Nirvana, no ! emphatically no ! 
 she could not once have been swayed by carnal 
 passion. In these letters all is pure and spirit 
 ual, a Dante and a Beatrice; so must it have 
 been in their intercourse." 
 
 Which illustrates how the defence is so often 
 fatal in matters of literary biography. And yet 
 I have not heard of a literary man wise enough 
 to ask that neither his memory nor his acts 
 should ever be defended. 
 
 Many a small person contrives to attract a 
 moment s notice by defending the silent great. 
 
 Fame has no more subtle irony. 
 
 Richard Wagner met Mathilde Wesendonck 
 in 1852 when he was forty years old and she 
 twenty-four. He had already written "Rienzi", 
 u The Flying Dutchman", "Tannhauser" and 
 "Lohengrin". Nobody has ever dreamed of 
 attributing the inspiration of any of these 
 works to his wife Minna. 
 
 It is seldom indeed that a woman is credited 
 with inspiring a man of genius after she has 
 married him. As a literary theory the thing 
 is not popular. 
 
 Wagner s wife had been an opera singer. 
 
RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE 99 
 
 It is admitted even by the great man s jealous 
 biographers, that she was of more than ordi 
 nary beauty, that she shared bravely his early 
 hardships and that she was a pure and loyal 
 wife. 
 
 But it seems certain that she did not inspire 
 the great man. In his later life he was wont to 
 say that his wedlock had been nothing but a 
 trial of his patience and pity; perhaps he was 
 indebted for this to his vanity rather than his 
 recollection. 
 
 Mathilde, on the contrary, was Wagner s in 
 spiration, for has he not told us so? though, 
 to be sure, we may credit her with inspiring 
 only one opera, "Tristan and Isolde". Unfor 
 tunately, she was the wife of another man, but 
 again, fortunately, her husband was of a truly 
 Germanic simplicity and childlike trust. 
 
 Herr Wesendonck was also a man of means 
 and could give his wife the indulgence of many 
 luxuries and whims, which must have added to 
 her attractiveness in the eyes of the struggling 
 man of genius. Money has never been known 
 to cheapen the charms of a really desirable 
 woman. 
 
 Portraits of Mathilde show a Madonna-like 
 face of pure and delicate outline, with eyes of 
 
ioo AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 haunting tenderness and a mouth of sensitive 
 appeal such lips, so sweet yet sad, so inviting 
 yet so free from sensual suggestion, are seen 
 only among the higher types of German beauty. 
 Not, I grant you, a face indicating carnal pas 
 sion, but what then? many a woman who 
 looked like a Madonna has loved not wisely 
 but too well, and some have been known to 
 bear children in the human fashion. 
 
 I have never seen a portrait of Herr We- 
 sendonck. 
 
 Truly he deserves one for consenting to the 
 romance which has immortalized his name. 
 Wagner seems to have felt this when he once 
 wrote Herr Wesendonck that the latter should 
 have a place with him in the history of art. In 
 this letter Wagner says nothing of the fine set 
 of horns which (outside of Germany) an evil- 
 minded generation has freely awarded his 
 generous friend. 
 
 Mark here again the gushing Ellis: 
 
 "It is as a knightly figure that he (Herr 
 Wesendonck) will ever abide in the memory 
 of all who met him, and surely truer knightli- 
 ness than he displayed in a singularly difficult 
 conjuncture, can nowhere have been found out 
 side King Arthur s court. Undoubtedly it was 
 
RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE ioi 
 
 he who was the greatest sufferer for several 
 years, by no means Minna, years of per 
 petual heart-burnings bravely borne." 
 
 Herr Wesendonck was indeed a pattern 
 husband for a young woman of romantic 
 yearnings. 
 
 He shared her admiration for Wagner s 
 genius and for a long time refused to see that 
 his wife was actuated by any other motive. 
 
 He gave Wagner financial aid and finally 
 offered him, with Minna, a home in a pretty 
 cottage on his estate at Zurich. 
 
 He tolerated the connection even after it 
 had become the occasion of bitter quarrels on 
 his domestic hearth. 
 
 On the whole, I am persuaded that a figure 
 of like Chivalry is not to be found outside of 
 Germany, nor perhaps anywhere since the noble 
 Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. 
 
 Mathilde s few letters tell us nothing her 
 soul is never unveiled she compels us to take 
 Wagner s word for the whole of the romance. 
 Her attitude in this correspondence if such it 
 may be called puts the great man in a dubious 
 light. We may not think the less of the artist, 
 but the man loses nobility; Herr Wesendonck 
 gets his revenge. 
 
ro2 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 But at last Minna intercepted one of Wag 
 ner s letters to Mathilde (which is not given 
 in this collection), and delivered it herself, with 
 words suiting the occasion. Naturally, this 
 broke up the arrangements at Zurich; Wagner 
 sent his wife back to her parents and betook 
 himself to Venice. Herr Wesendonck s con 
 duct in the circumstances was without a flaw; 
 this admirable man seems truly worthy both of 
 Germany and Spain. 
 
 There is a harmless mania for identifying 
 particular persons with poetic creations, and 
 with such hints as Wagner constantly threw 
 out during the period of their attachment, it 
 was impossible that Mathilde should escape. 
 
 "With thee I can do all things," he said, 
 "without thee, nothing!" 
 
 This was not strictly true, however, and 
 must be taken as poetic license, since he wrote 
 several operas before meeting her and did 
 some of his greatest work long after the part 
 ing. 
 
 But let me not discourage the sentimentalists. 
 It is true that he said, "For having written the 
 Tristan I thank you from my deepest soul to 
 all eternity." 
 
 It is also certain that he used to write his 
 
RICHARD WAGNER S ROMANCE 103 
 
 music with a gold pen that Mathilde had given 
 him, and that in exile he received from her a 
 package of his favorite zwieback with tears of 
 joy. For these and other reasons I would not 
 deny her title to be regarded as the original 
 inspiration of "Tristan and Isolde". 
 
 Still, we have all heard of another enamored 
 young person who, when her lover had got 
 himself somewhat desperately out of the way 
 
 "Went on culling bread and butter." 
 
 Absence, it appears, had some effect in cool 
 ing the romantic fervors of Mathilde. Some 
 half-dozen years after the rupture at Zurich, 
 that "child of our sorrows, Tristan and 
 Isolde", as Wagner lovingly wrote her and to 
 which her name for good or evil is now linked 
 forever, was produced for the first time in 
 Munich. 
 
 Mathilde had the earliest invitation, with 
 the composer s own compliments; but she did 
 not attend, and the heart of Minna was not 
 harrowed by seeing her name "among those 
 present". 
 
 It is no reproach to the nightingales of Ger 
 many that they sang longer in the heart of her 
 lover. . . . 
 
 And the lindens bloom on immortally. 
 
IN THE RED ROOM 
 
 SURELY there was nothing supernatural 
 about the manner of it. The thing hap 
 pened in a brilliantly lighted room where 
 I was one of a hundred persons, all occupied 
 with the very material business of dining, and 
 dining well. No environment could be more 
 unsuited to a visitor or a message from the 
 Beyond. The lights, the music, the noise of 
 incoming or departing guests, the bustling 
 waiters, the hum of joyous conversation punc 
 tuated with the popping of wine corks, the deep 
 tones of men, the staccato laughter of women, 
 these were the accompaniment of the 
 strangest experience of my life, to which I hesi 
 tate to give a name. 
 
 And then, oh my God! can a Ghost eat? can 
 a Ghost drink? can a Ghost talk, and yet attract 
 no notice in a crowded company of feasting 
 men and women? 
 
 Let me re-word the matter a thing which 
 104 
 
IN THE RED ROOM 105 
 
 Hamlet tells us "madness would gambol 
 from"; let me by the strictest effort of memory 
 and reason strip the supernatural from it, if I 
 may. . . . 
 
 I was dining alone in a corner of his favor 
 ite French cafe; in the Red Room, too, of 
 whose cheerful warmth and brightness of color 
 he had been outspokenly fond in his hearty 
 way. He had introduced me to this place and 
 here we had often dined together. Here or 
 elsewhere, alas, we should dine together no 
 more ... he died suddenly in his youth and 
 strength some four years ago. 
 
 Always I think of him when I am in the Red 
 Room of this cafe, whether alone or in com 
 pany; but this night the thought, the image, 
 the vital recollection of him, faultless in every 
 detail, possessed me absolutely. I had made 
 very little progress with my dinner, and had 
 taken but one glass of Chateau Palmer, when I 
 resigned myself to the sad pleasure of keep 
 ing tryst with his memory. 
 
 First of all, my mind dwelt on our friend 
 ship: how sweet it was, how firm, how true; 
 with never a doubt to mar it, never a cold wind 
 of jealousy or envy to blow upon it. We were 
 lovers, for such friendship between men is a 
 
106 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 purer sentiment than the love of man and 
 woman, only the nobler emotions of the heart 
 being engaged. 
 
 We were neither too old nor too young for a 
 real friendship; both were still well under that 
 chilly meridian where men usually part with the 
 generosities and enthusiasms of life in order to 
 take on the prudences and self-calculations. 
 Of the two he was the junior, but he assumed 
 a kind of specious seniority by virtue of his 
 physical bigness and his greater success in bat 
 tling with the world. O friend, how true in 
 your case that the battle is not always to the 
 strong ! 
 
 I recalled how the anticipation of dining with 
 him, in this very Red Room, was quite the most 
 exquisite pleasure I have known, no woman 
 ever having given me the like though I am 
 anything but a hater of women. And I said 
 to myself with a sigh that there were not left 
 in all the world three men, the thought of 
 dining with whom could yield me an equal joy. 
 
 That is, I maintain, the crucial test of friend 
 ship. Do you like to dine with him? Not 
 without a deep meaning was of old the life of 
 a man held sacred with whom one had shared 
 bread and salt. The sacramental rite of an- 
 
IN THE RED ROOM 107 
 
 cient hospitality persists under our less simple 
 and less beautiful forms. Nor may we violate 
 it with impunity, barbarians as we are: Na 
 ture cries out against our performing this act 
 with one whom we dislike or mistrust, or even 
 toward whom we are indifferent. In a word, 
 I had rather make love to a woman who affects 
 me with a physical repulsion than dine with 
 a man I don t like. The fact proves the perfect 
 sympathy existing between our physical and 
 psychic selves, and from this dual voice there 
 is no appeal it is the highest court of human 
 nature. 
 
 This was the very thought in my mind when, 
 raising the second glass of Bordeaux to my 
 lips, I saw him . . . and set it down untasted. 
 
 He came into the room at the farthest en 
 trance leading direct to the street, and shoul 
 dered his way through the crowd of guests and 
 waiters in his old big careless manner, which 
 never failed to move the admiration of women 
 and the resentment of men. He was dressed 
 as I had so often seen him, not in regulation 
 evening clothes, but in a suit of some rich gray 
 material which he wore as if it were a part of 
 him, with a light overcoat tossed over his 
 arm: it was in the early days of April. 
 
io8 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 The shouldering gray-suited giant, picked 
 out in strong relief from all the black-clad 
 guests, came straight toward me Across the 
 crowded room, his fine head, crowned with 
 auburn curls, held solidly erect on a columnar 
 neck; the smiling, eager challenge of his eye 
 bent upon me. 
 
 What I thought God alone knows, if indeed 
 I was not deprived of all conscious power of 
 thinking in that terrible moment. And yet, 
 obedient to old habit, I tried to rise from my 
 chair to greet him, but found myself utterly 
 paralyzed. Neither hand nor foot could I 
 move. 
 
 But though my body was stricken lifeless by 
 the presence of the Supernatural, my soul, 
 strange to say, remained calm and without ter 
 ror. And great as was the physical shock of 
 the fear which held me now as in a. vise, I yet 
 wondered that our neighbors, almost elbowing 
 us, seemed to pay no attention either to him or 
 to me. . . . 
 
 "Don t get up, old fellow; you re a bit 
 shaken. I ll just sit here, if you don t mind, 
 and have a taste of your dinner and a sip of 
 your Chateau Palmer you always did like the 
 red." 
 
IN THE RED ROOM 109 
 
 His voice ! the same genial tones in it that 
 had ever such power to thrill me. Oh! I 
 could believe it all a dream, an hallucina 
 tion arising from some disorder of the senses, 
 were it not for that voice whose tones are 
 registered in my heart. In obedience to a nod 
 from me, for I could not have spoken had 
 my life depended on it, the waiter, without 
 the least apparent show of concern, laid an 
 other plate. From his manner I could not 
 divine if he were conscious of the presence of 
 my Guest. 
 
 Ah ! then I knew it was indeed my friend 
 over whose untimely grave the grass had with 
 ered and the winds had blown during four long 
 years. For in the old loving big-brotherly way, 
 he began to play the host as of yore, to heap 
 my plate with good things, and to fill my glass 
 with cheerful assiduity. "I m afraid you must 
 often go hungry without me to help you, old 
 boy", he said, with the old kind smile. 
 
 Still, I could not speak, but at his bidding 
 I ate my share of the dinner. He too partook, 
 though lightly, and soon we had made an end 
 of it. Then the waiter having cleared the 
 table and served the coffee, he offered me a 
 
no AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 cigarette from a full box his old favorite 
 brand, I noticed and lit one himself. 
 
 I watched him mutely, with emotions which 
 I may not describe perhaps rather with a 
 tense suspension of all emotion, save that of a 
 fearful expectancy. 
 
 He spoke : u You thought of me so lovingly 
 and insistently to-night, in this place where we 
 have often been happy together, that I had to 
 come to you. Love is the one thing, you see, 
 that has power to recall us from the Shadow." 
 
 He paused, and the flute-like laughter of 
 women rose high above the surrounding hum 
 of talk and the surded strains of the orchestra. 
 There came into his eye a light I well knew. 
 
 Nodding his head whence the laughter had 
 proceeded, he went on: 
 
 "The keenest part of your regret for me, my 
 friend, is that I who loved that so much should 
 have had to die in the flower of rny youth." . . . 
 
 Even as he spoke my mind like lightning 
 overran his brief career. I saw him as he was 
 when he came from the rugged North to the 
 Big Town, a young giant in his health and 
 strength, and in his eager appetite for pleasure. 
 I marked in him that terrible passion for 
 women to which so many splendid and gener- 
 
IN THE RED ROOM in 
 
 ous natures are sacrificed; that craving for ac 
 tion and excitement which eats the sword in 
 the scabbard; that tiger thirst for 1 the en 
 chanted Goblet of Life which would drain all 
 to the dregs at a single draught; that devouring 
 energy which knows no rest but with daring 
 hand would tear aside the curtain betwixt day 
 and day. 
 
 He went on as if I had spoken my thoughts 
 aloud: "Yes, there is nothing of all this about 
 us but I have had, my boy, and good measure- 
 as you were thinking. Life owes me nothing, 
 even though I did close my account at thirty; 
 I lived every minute of my time got all there 
 was coming to me or to any man. No regrets ! 
 If I could come back for keeps I would not live 
 otherwise, do otherwise, than I have lived and 
 done. Excepting, perhaps, that I would not 
 make such a hurried job of it. Yes, that was 
 my mistake, but you are not to pity me on this 
 account. For what matter a few years more 
 or less, a few dinners more or less aye, a few 
 passions, more or less, the best and only per 
 manently alluring pleasure that life can offer? 
 The end is the same, and the end comes as 
 surely to him who has outlived his digestion and 
 his capacity for enjoyment as to him who, like 
 
ii2 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 me, dies with every power and every appetite 
 at the full." 
 
 For a moment I took my eyes from my Guest 
 and looked anxiously about to assure myself 
 that nobody was listening to this confession of 
 the Dead. As before, we seemed not to attract 
 any special attention. Our nearest neighbors, 
 a man and a young woman a little the worse for 
 wine, hardly deigned us a glance, and were cer 
 tainly occupied with anything but spiritual af 
 fairs. This bit of the universal human comedy 
 was repeated here and there about the room. 
 Many diners had gone, and with each depar 
 ture the scattered lovers seemed to take on 
 fresh courage and confidence. The orchestra 
 continued to play intermittently and was ap 
 plauded ever the more wildly by the still linger 
 ing guests. 
 
 All this I saw in the space of less than a sec 
 ond or two during which my eyes had left his 
 face. 
 
 He continued: u You have grieved too much, 
 dear old boy, over the thought that I was 
 cheated, or cheated myself of my due share of 
 life. The cowards who dared not live, the 
 weaklings whose fill of life was starvation and 
 death to me, found a text and a moral in my 
 
IN THE RED ROOM 113 
 
 fate. Let not this be your thought, my friend, 
 when you sit here alone in the Red Room and 
 pledge me in old Bordeaux. Think rather that 
 I fulfilled my life, won every prize of my desire, 
 tasted every joy, scorned every fear, and died 
 in the flush of victory!" . . . 
 
 As he said these last words his voice sounded 
 like the distant note of a silver clarion. Could 
 it be possible that he was unheard by the neigh 
 boring diners? Again I stole a fearful glance 
 about the room. 
 
 Evidently nobody was concerned with us in 
 the now thinned-out company. The hour was 
 late. Leaning against the wall, at a little dis 
 tance, was our waiter, quietly observant of us, 
 as I thought, but not importunate with his at 
 tentions. 
 
 With a feeling of relief I turned again to 
 my Visitor. He was gone! but for some mo 
 ments my bewilderment and stupefaction were 
 such that I could not remove my eyes from the 
 vacant chair where he had been seated an in 
 stant before. 
 
 I must have cried out, recovering my speech, 
 for I awoke as from a trance to see that some 
 near-by people were looking toward me in a 
 
n 4 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 surprised fashion. In the same moment the 
 waiter came hastily forward. 
 
 u Did Monsieur call? Is anything the mat 
 ter with Monsieur?" 
 
 "No, no," I managed to articulate, my pres 
 ence of mind returning at sight of those staring 
 faces; "what should be the matter? Just bring 
 me a pony of brandy and the bill." 
 
 He was back in a moment with the liquor, 
 and having figured out the bill, laid it face down 
 on the table before me. 
 
 I tossed off the brandy, thinking that I had 
 just had the strangest hallucination that ever 
 sprang from a few glasses of old Bordeaux, 
 and unable to account for it upon any theory 
 of my previous experience, or temperament, or 
 constitution. 
 
 Then I took up the dinner check and, sur 
 prised at the amount, called the waiter. 
 
 "Haven t you made a mistake?" I asked, 
 indicating the charge. 
 
 "But . . . pardon! the other gentleman. 
 Monsieur is paying for two," said the waiter. 
 
VI 
 
 SAINT MARK * 
 
 RE-ENTER the Sieur de Conte ! . . . 
 Our gallant old friend makes as 
 knightly a show as of yore when first 
 he rode into the lists and pledged his fealty 
 to the stainless Maid. But alas! his hair that 
 rivalled the rutilant mane of Mars, is now 
 white as carded wool. Yet has that eye lost 
 nothing of its old fire, and the years have but 
 fetched new strength and cunning to his hand. 
 And methinks the Sieur fights with a tempered 
 skill and a wary shrewdness that were not al 
 ways his in the old days by my halidom, I 
 would not care to be the Holy Council at Rome 
 with such a champion pitted against me ! For 
 indeed the Holy Council may pow-wow as long 
 or as short as may please their holinesses the 
 
 *This essay was written before the Beatification of the 
 Maid (Beatification is not Canonization), but the fact does 
 not necessarily call for any change in what I have written. 
 See also the article on "The Maid" in the Author s "NEW 
 ADVENTURES." 
 
 "5 
 
n6 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 world at the challenge of the Sieur de Conte, 
 has awarded the crown of saintship to Joan of 
 Arc. The living voice, the magic pen of the 
 Sieur de Conte are worth all their musty raking 
 from the past; are more than worth their as 
 sumed authority to decide the question. If the 
 Holy Fathers have dropped the matter for the 
 nonce, as rumor now declares, they have but 
 done the thing that might have been expected 
 of them. The Church is ever too wise to in 
 vite defeat, too polite to issue a dead-letter, 
 too strong in its divine right to surrender on 
 heretic compulsion. Besides, it is here to stay 
 forever; and shall it be moved for a chit of a 
 girl who has been dead less than five hundred 
 years? Tut, tut, there is always plenty of 
 time! 
 
 The Sieur de Conte (otherwise Mark 
 Twain) in all that he has written on the sub 
 ject, has failed to point out one extraordinary 
 fact with regard to Joan of Arc. I am glad 
 that he has left it to me. It is this : Since that 
 fearful day in Rouen when she was led to her 
 martyrdom by fire, she has been the glory of 
 the faith and the shame of the Church. That 
 is why she has waited so long for the formal 
 warrant of saintship. That is why the Devil s 
 
SAINT MARK 117 
 
 Advocate has so far prevailed to deny her on 
 earth the crown she wears in Heaven.* 
 
 Do not think this a musty old question which 
 interests only a few droning priests sitting in a 
 back room of the Vatican, and here and there 
 a poetic idealist like the Sieur de Conte. By no 
 means ! it is a question as vital as the fame 
 of the Maid herself, calling forth champions 
 and antagonists in every age. It is a plague- 
 sore in the side of the Church put your finger 
 there ! It never has been settled because it 
 never could and never can be settled to the 
 credit of the Church. Also I believe it is bound 
 up with the eternal question of liberty, in whose 
 holy cause the Maid fought and suffered. 
 
 Joan of Arc was done to death by the priests 
 and theologians of the day, urged on by the 
 civil power in the hands of her French and 
 English enemies. I am aware that her death is 
 not chargeable, in a direct sense, to the Church, 
 and it is deemed likely by Lamartine that she 
 would have been saved, had she known enough 
 to appeal directly to Rome. I am aware that, 
 short of canonization, the Church has done 
 what it could to make amends to the memory 
 of Joan of Arc. To give her the crown of 
 
 * Joan was canonized in May, 1920. 
 
n8 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 saintship now, would not restore the credit of 
 the Church, but would rather irreparably dam 
 age it in the eyes of the world. For the two 
 or three hundred priests and theologians who 
 judged the Maid, as well as the godly men of 
 the Inquisition of Paris who damned her as a 
 child of the Devil, were in loyal communion 
 with the Church, and were, in fact, part of its 
 machinery. Still, it is certain that the Church, 
 in its true representative and executive charac 
 ter,* did not incur the guilt and odium of 
 Joan s death. But the whole system arrogat 
 ing divine powers and claiming the right to 
 draw supernatural warrants, was involved in 
 the trial and murder of the Maid; was judged 
 by the measure with which it meted to her; 
 and is now of a truth dead forever to the more 
 enlightened part of mankind. The blood of 
 the martyrs is the seed of liberty ! 
 
 A certain set of apologists on behalf of the 
 Church try to cast all the blame of Joan s per 
 secution and death upon the English. To be 
 sure, the English had the best right to hate her 
 and to seek her destruction, for had she not 
 beaten them in many battles and all but driven 
 them out of the fair land of France, which 
 
 *I.e. t the central authority at Rome. 
 
SAINT MARK 119 
 
 they had come to regard as their own? But 
 let us be fair; her own countrymen shared to 
 the full in the guilt and the shame of her death 
 nothing can clear them of that! Besides, 
 we are not to forget that both French and 
 English were in that day of the same religious 
 faith. Not a single heretic took part in the 
 proceedings against Joan, from the holy clerics 
 of the Inquisition of Paris who pronounced 
 anathema upon her, to Bishop Cauchon, that 
 zealous prototype of Fouquier Tinville, who 
 sought her blood openly and thirsted for it with 
 an eager relish that shocked even his fellow 
 judges; or the rude soldiers who kept guard 
 within her cell day and night, and probably 
 caused her as much anguish, at times, as the 
 threat of the fire. They were all believers in 
 the One True Faith, and the stain of her inno 
 cent blood is upon every one of them, French 
 and English. Make no mistake about that! 
 
 Indeed, we can not go astray as to the facts, 
 and these themselves can not be twisted to the 
 purpose of special pleading; for the whole plan 
 of the murder of Joan of Arc, the carefully 
 marked steps by which it was unrelentingly 
 carried out, the heroic but ineffectual struggles 
 of the victim, the unspeakable devices resorted 
 
120 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 to, in order to circumvent and destroy her, the 
 pitiless, unhalting purpose of her prosecutors, 
 marked as with a pencil of red, are laid bare 
 to us, by the sworn testimony of eye-witnesses, 
 with a fulness of detail and a veracity of state 
 ment which leave hardly a question to be asked 
 or a doubt to be solved. It is all there the 
 conspiracy of power, learning and holiness 
 (God save the mark!) against one brave, help 
 less, ignorant, innocent girl. We see the 
 suavely ferocious Cauchon pressing her with 
 both his holy hands toward the scaffold he 
 was excommunicated some years afterward, but 
 it didn t save the Church s credit. We see that 
 formidable array of priests setting the utmost 
 skill of their wits, the deepest resources of their 
 cunning, against a simple country girl who 
 could neither read nor write a name which is 
 now one of the best known on the earth; try 
 ing by every art of casuistry to wrest or sur 
 prise from her an admission that should send 
 her to the flames. 
 
 Let us be just: they were not all equally 
 guilty, not all equally intent on the slaughter 
 of the innocent lamb before them. Not one 
 was so bad as the monster Cauchon, and to be 
 strictly fair even to that consecrated beast, not 
 
SAINT MARK 121 
 
 one had Cauchon s motive but the fact does 
 not save the Church s credit. Some of those 
 priests had kind hearts and would gladly have 
 sent the child home to her mother; but they 
 lacked the power. Besides, they were cap 
 tives themselves, bound hand and foot with the 
 fetters of superstition and devil-born lunacy, 
 misnamed religious fervor; daunted by mon 
 strous ignorance, and mythic fears of Hell and 
 darkness, chrisomed and holy-watered into a 
 pretence of light and knowledge aye, they 
 were cowering slaves, branded and obedient to 
 the lash, and she standing free and enfran 
 chised in her chains! 
 
 Though I am perhaps the first to call atten 
 tion to the matter, there are many points of 
 likeness between the trial of Jesus Christ and 
 the trial of Joan of Arc. They were both sold 
 for a price of silver. Both were martyrs of 
 liberty. Both perished through a combination 
 of forces political and priestly. Christ had 
 Caiaphas; Joan had Cauchon, something the 
 worst of it. The chief accusers, the head 
 prosecutors of each were priests, and as the 
 Jews cried out at the trial of Jesus, "His blood 
 be upon us and upon our children!" so might 
 the priests have cried out at the condemnation 
 
122 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 of Joan, u Her blood be upon us and upon the 
 Church!" It is there yet the excommunica 
 tion of Cauchon and the reversal of the Judg 
 ment have not removed it. Something more 
 will have to be done ere that Great Wrong can 
 be righted. 
 
 But having shown the great similarity mark 
 ing the trials of Jesus Christ and Joan of Arc, 
 I now wish to call attention to a most striking 
 point of unlikeness, which is even more sug 
 gestive than the resemblance shown. It is this: 
 among the judges of Joan of Arc priests as 
 they were or deemed themselves to be, of the 
 Christ of love and mercy there was none so 
 merciful as Pontius Pilate, whose memory is 
 not held in much honor by the Christian world; 
 not one had the courage or the humanity to 
 wash his hands of the intended murder. Some 
 desired it out of their blind ignorance and cruel 
 fanaticism; many no doubt regretted it, as a 
 severe but salutary act of faith; all consented 
 to it! The responsibility is thus landed 
 squarely where it belongs, on the official reli 
 gion which was then in league with the secular 
 arm. If there had been the least available 
 doubt as to that if the damning record were 
 not in black and white, attested by the solemn 
 
SAINT MARK 123 
 
 oaths of so many witnesses of or participants in 
 the trial the Church would long ago, for her 
 own credit, have granted the saintship of Joan 
 of Arc, and to-day the altars of the Maid of 
 Orleans would flame in a hundred lands. But 
 perhaps, since the Eternal Church does not 
 count years as men count them, it is yet some 
 ages too soon to raise an altar to the Second 
 Great Martyr of Liberty. And maybe this is 
 a fortunate thing for Liberty and the Maid, 
 for on the day that the Church makes Joan of 
 Arc wholly her own, on that day she will step 
 down from the unexampled place she has so 
 long held in the love and pity and worship of 
 mankind.* Such a consummation would not, I 
 am sure, be agreeable to her leal knight and 
 devoted champion, the Sieur de Conte Mark 
 Twain. 
 
 IN the wide court of Heaven, on any of these 
 fine days, you may see if God has given 
 you sight above your eyes a Maid who has 
 been a maiden now during full five hundred 
 
 * It would be a nice question to decide how much of the 
 world-wide sentiment of affection and veneration for Joan 
 is due to the fact that she has always been regarded at a 
 victim of the Church, 
 
i2 4 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 years. Her hair is the color of the corn-silk 
 at harvest-time, and her eyes of the early 
 for-get-me-not. She is slender as of old when, 
 clad in shining armor and mounted on her milk- 
 white steed, she led the long dispirited war 
 riors of France to victory, or upheld her won 
 drous standard at the coronation of her King. 
 Often she may be seen leaning over the crystal 
 battlements, chin on hand and looking down 
 with pensive gaze on France, and Orleans, and 
 Domremy, and Rouen whence her soul, like a 
 white dove, ascended in the flame of her coun 
 try s cruel ingratitude. 
 
 But sometimes she turns her glance from 
 scenes like these, charged with sweet and ter 
 rible memories, and looks down with loving 
 intentness toward a certain spot on earth where 
 an old white-haired man raises eyes of love and 
 almost worship to hers. They see and salute 
 each other oh, be sure of that! The old man 
 was many years younger when they first be 
 came acquainted, but the Maid is always the 
 same age, for they grow no older in Heaven. 
 Who shall explain the spell (since the Sieur de 
 Conte will not confess his dreams) that has 
 joined in a perfect love and understanding these 
 two children of Nature, separated by the dif- 
 
SAINT MARK 125 
 
 ference of race and the shoreless gulf of five 
 hundred years? Who can but wonder at the 
 enchanting touch of a white hand from out the 
 past which has turned the bold scoffer and 
 jeerer, the wild man of the river and the mining 
 camps, into such a knight as was rarely seen 
 in the most gracious days of chivalry? And to 
 see him now, when he should be taking the rest 
 he has so gloriously earned, still eager to bat 
 tle in her cause, daring the world to the onset, 
 fighting for her with the passionate heart of 
 youth, pleading for her with a burning zeal, as 
 if in the five centuries that have rolled away 
 since her death no other cause worthy to be 
 named with hers has appealed to the award 
 of sword or pen to see this rightly and with 
 eyes cleared for the perception of that Truth 
 which is the only thing really precious in the 
 world, is to rejoice at the finest spectacle that 
 has been given to the wondering eyes of men 
 in our day. 
 
 Whether the brave old knight will yet win 
 the whole world over to her side, I can not 
 say, though I think he will, if he be given time 
 enough; but, at any rate, he has already made 
 sure of all kind and feeling hearts. I believe 
 his devotion to Joan of Arc is the finest and 
 
iz6 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 most ideal poem of our age an age, to be sure, 
 which has known too little poetry, and which 
 has never thought of looking to the Sieur de 
 Conte to supply it. And I believe, further, 
 that the Book of the Ideal contains the story 
 of no love more pure and beautiful than this 
 which unites the Old Man and the Maid.* 
 
 This essay (entitled "Saint Mark") was first published 
 in the Papyrus in 1904, and drew from our glorious Mark 
 Twain the following: 
 
 "It is strong and eloquent and beautiful. The inspiration 
 which tipped your pen with fire is from the Maid. After all 
 these centuries that force still lives lives and grows, I 
 think. 
 
 "I was struck by a remark of yours (and I agree with it) 
 that from the day of the martyrdom the Maid has been the 
 glory of the faith and the shame of the Church. 
 
 "I was hoping she would never be canonized. One doesn t 
 build monuments to Adam: he is a monument himself." 
 
VII 
 
 THE POET S ATONEMENT 
 
 IT HARDLY seems a decade since the dis 
 grace, the trial and sentence of Oscar 
 Wilde. His death followed so close upon 
 his punishment as to give the deepest tragic 
 value to the lesson of his fall. There was in 
 truth nothing left him to do but die, after he 
 had penned the most poignantly pathetic poem 
 and the most strangely moving confession 
 (which is yet a subtle vindication) that have 
 been given to the world since the noon of 
 Byron s fame. 
 
 Until the present hour * the world has with 
 held its pity from that tragedy, as complete in 
 all its features as the Greek conscience would 
 have exacted, and Oscar Wilde has stood be 
 yond the pale of human sympathy. Only 
 seemed to stand, however, for there are many 
 signs of the reaction, the better judgment which 
 never delays long behind the severest condem- 
 
 * First published about 1906. 
 127 
 
128 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 nation of the public voice when, as in this case, 
 the circumstances justify an appeal to the 
 higher mercy and humanity. 
 
 Socially, Oscar Wilde was executed, and for 
 a brief time it seemed as if his name would 
 stand only in the calendar of the infamous. 
 But men presently remembered that he was a 
 genius, a literary artist of almost unique dis 
 tinction among English writers, a wit whose 
 talent for paradox and delicately perverse 
 fancy had yielded the world a pure treasure 
 of delight. In the first hue-and-cry of his dis 
 grace, the British public and to a large extent, 
 the American public also had taken up moral 
 cudgels not merely against the man himself, 
 but against the writer. His plays were with 
 drawn from the theatres, his writings from 
 the libraries and bookstalls, and his name was 
 anathema wherever British respectability wields 
 its leaden mace. But though you can pass sen 
 tence of social death upon a man, you can not 
 execute a Book! You can not lay your hang 
 man s hands upon an Idea, and all the edicts of 
 Philistinism are powerless against it. For true 
 genius is the rarest and most precious thing in 
 the world, and God has wisely ordained that 
 the malice or stupidity of men shall not destroy 
 
THE POET S ATONEMENT 129 
 
 it. And this the world sees to be just, when it 
 has had time to weigh the matter, as in the 
 present instance. 
 
 Oscar Wilde went to his prison with the 
 burden of such shame and reprobation as has 
 never been laid upon a literary man of equal 
 eminence. Not a voice was raised for him 
 the starkness of his guilt silenced even his 
 closest friends and warmest admirers. The 
 world at large approved of his punishment. 
 That small portion of the world which is loth 
 to see the suffering of any sinner, was revolted 
 by the nature of his offence and turned away 
 without a word; the sin of Oscar Wilde claimed 
 no charity and permitted of no discussion. Had 
 his crime been murder itself, his fame and 
 genius would have raised up defenders on every 
 hand. As it was, all mouths were stopped, and 
 the man went broken-hearted to his doom. 
 
 But while his body lay in prison, the children 
 of his mind pleaded for him, and such is the 
 invincible appeal of genius, the heart of the 
 world began to be troubled in despite of itself. 
 His books came slowly forth from their hiding- 
 places; his name was restored here and there 
 to a catalogue; a little emotion of pity was 
 awakened in his favor. Then from his prison 
 
130 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 cell arose a cry of soul-anguish, of utter pa 
 thos, of supreme expiation, which stirred the 
 heart of pity to its depths. The feigner was 
 at last believed when the world had made sure 
 of the accents of his agony and could put its 
 finger in each of his wounds. Society had sen 
 tenced this poet: the poet both sentenced and 
 forgave society, in "The Ballad of Reading 
 Gaol", thus achieving the most original para 
 dox of his fantastic genius and throwing about 
 his shame something of the halo of martyrdom. 
 He did more than this, in the judgment of his 
 fellow artists he purchased his redemption 
 and snatched his name from the mire of infamy 
 into which it had been cast. Strange how the 
 world applauded the triumphant genius which 
 only a little while before it had condemned to 
 ignominy and silence ! 
 
 II 
 
 THE utter and incredible completeness of 
 Wilde s disgrace satisfies the artistic 
 sense, which is never content with half-results. 
 We know that it afforded this kind of satisfac 
 tion to the victim himself, exigent of artistic 
 effects even in his catastrophe and the proof 
 of it is "De Profundis". This book will take 
 
THE POET S ATONEMENT 131 
 
 rank with the really memorable human docu 
 ments. It is a true cry of the heart, a sincere 
 utterance of the spiritual depths of this man s 
 nature, when the angels of sorrow had troubled 
 the pool. The only thing that seems to militate 
 against its acceptance as such, is the unfailing 
 presence of that consummate literary art, too 
 conscious of itself, which, as in all the author s 
 work save "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", 
 draws us constantly from the substance to the 
 form. Many persons of critical acumen say 
 they can not see the penitent for the artist. 
 The texture of the sackcloth is too exquisitely 
 wrought and too manifestly of the loom that 
 gave us "Dorian Gray", "Salome", and the 
 rest. How could a man stricken unto death 
 with grief and shame so occupy himself with 
 the vanity of style, a dilettante even in the 
 hour when fate was crushing him with its 
 heaviest blows? Does not this wonderful 
 piece of work, lambent with all the rays of his 
 lawless genius, show the artificial core of the 
 man as nothing that even he ever did before? 
 And what is the spiritual value of a "confes 
 sion" which is so obviously a literary tour de 
 force; in which the plain and the simple are 
 
132 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 avoided with the "precious", lapidary art of a 
 prince of decadents? 
 
 So say, or seem to say, the critics. For my 
 self, I can accept as authentic Wilde s testament 
 of sorrow, even though it be written in a style 
 which often dazzles with beauty, surprises with 
 paradox, and sometimes intoxicates with the 
 rapture of the inevitable artist. He could not 
 teach his hand to unlearn its cunning, strive as 
 he might. Like Narcissus wondering at his 
 own beauty in the fountain, no sooner had he 
 begun to tell the tale of his sorrow than the 
 loveliness of his words seized upon him, and 
 the sorrow that found such expression seemed 
 a thing almost to be desired. 
 
 So when Oscar Wilde took up the pen in his 
 prison solitude to make men weep, he did that 
 indeed, but too soon he delighted them as of 
 yore. Art, his adored mistress, whispered her 
 thrilling consolations to the poor castaway 
 they had taken all from him liberty, honor, 
 wealth, fame, mother, wife, children, and shut 
 him up in an iron hell, but by God ! they should 
 not take her! With this little pen in hand they 
 were all under his feet, solemn judge, stolid 
 jury, the beast of many heads, and the whited 
 British Philistia. Let them come on now! 
 
THE POET S ATONEMENT 133 
 
 But soft, the poet s anger is gone in a moment, 
 for Beauty, faithful to one who had loved her 
 t other side o madness, comes and fills his 
 narrow cell with her adorable presence, bring 
 ing the glory of the sweet world he has lost, 
 the breath of dawn, the scented hush of sum 
 mer nights, the peace of April rains, the pag 
 eant of the Autumn lands, the changeful won 
 der of the sea. Imagination brushes away his 
 bounds of stone and steel to give him all her 
 largess of the past; gracious figures of poesy 
 and romance known and loved from his sinless 
 youth (the man is always an artist, but you see 1 
 he can weep) ; the elect company of classic ages 
 to whom his soul does reverence and who seem 
 not to scorn him; the fair heroines of immortal 
 story who in the old days, as his dreams so 
 often told him, had deemed him worthy of 
 their love he would kneel at their white feet 
 now, but their sweet glances carry no rebuke; 
 the kind poets, his beloved masters in Apollo, 
 who bend upon him no alienated gaze; the he 
 roes, the sages who had inspired his boyish 
 heart, the sceptred and mighty sons of genius 
 who had roused in him a passion for fame all 
 come thronging at the summons of memory and 
 fancy a far dearer and better world than that 
 
134 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 which had denied, cursed and condemned him, 
 and which he was to know no more. 
 
 Then, last of all, when these fair and noble 
 guests were gone, and the glow of their visita 
 tion had died out into the old bitter loneliness 
 and sorrow, there came One whose smile had 
 the brightness of the sun and the seven stars. 
 And the poor prisoner of sin cast himself down 
 at the feet of the Presence, as unworthy to 
 look upon that divine radiancy, and the foun 
 tains of his heart were broken up as never be 
 fore. Yet in his weeping he heard a Voice 
 which said, "Thy sin and sorrow are equal, and 
 thou hast still but a little way to go. Come !" 
 
 Then rose up the sinner and fared forth of 
 the spirit with Christ to __,mmaus. . . . 
 
 And men will yet say that the words which 
 the sinner wrote of that Vision have saved his 
 soul (which not long thereafter was demanded 
 of him) and sweetened his fame forever. But 
 the critics who forget the adjuration, "Judge 
 not lest ye be judged", cry out that the sinner 
 is never to be trusted in these matters, because 
 he writes so well! God, however, is kinder 
 than men or critics. He will forgive the poor 
 poet, in spite of his beautiful style. 
 
VIII 
 
 CHILDREN OF THE AGE 
 
 I HAVE been reading the "Last Letters of 
 Aubrey Beardsley". A strange book, full 
 of a sort of macabre interest. Not really 
 a book, and yet peculiarly suggestive as an end- 
 of-the-century document. The soul of Beards- 
 ley here exposed with a kind of abnormal 
 frankness that somehow recalls the very style 
 of art by which he shocked and captured the 
 world s regard. And the obvious purpose of it 
 all, to show how he attained peace of the spirit 
 and a quiet grave in his early manhood. 
 
 Poor Beardsley was bitten deep with the 
 malady of his age he ranks with the most in 
 teresting, though not, of course, the greatest 
 of its victims. He died under thirty, and his 
 name is known to thousands who know nothing 
 of his art nor perhaps of any art whatever. 
 To very many his name stands as a symbol of 
 degeneracy. There is an intimate legend which 
 attaints him with the scarlet sins of the newer 
 135 
 
136 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 hedonism. He is closely associated in the pub 
 lic mind with the most tragically disgraced 
 literary man of modern times. In art he was 
 a lawless genius, but a genius for all that, else 
 the world would not have heard so much of 
 him. The fact that counts is, that in a very 
 brief life he did much striking work, and for a 
 time, at least, gave his name to a school of 
 imitators. Whether his artistic influence was 
 for good or evil, does not matter in this view 
 of him let the professors haggle about that. 
 What does matter is the fact and sum of his 
 accomplishment, which justifies the continued 
 interest in his name. 
 
 One naturally associates with Beardsley 
 other ill-fated victims of the age, such as Mau 
 passant, Bastien Lepage, Marie Bashkirtseff, 
 Oscar Wilde, Ernest Dowson, to cite no 
 more. They were all martyrs of their own 
 talent, and martyrs also of that ravaging 
 malady of the heart, that devouring casuistry, 
 so peculiar to the last quarter of the Nineteenth 
 century. We may be sure the disease was not 
 confined to a few persons of extraordinary 
 talent of them we heard only because of their 
 position in the public mind, and also because, 
 as artists, they were bound to reveal their suf- 
 
CHILDREN OF THE AGE 137 
 
 ferings. Nay, we were the more keenly inter 
 ested in their painful confessions, knowing that 
 they spoke for many condemned to bear their 
 agonies in silence. For the world will soon 
 turn away from an isolated sufferer, as from a 
 freak on the operating table let it fear or 
 recognize the disease for its own and it will 
 never weary of seeing and hearing. This 
 commonplace truth explains, I think, the great 
 and continuing interest which the persons above 
 named have excited. 
 
 All of these were unusually gifted, whether 
 as artists or writers, and all strove to fulfill 
 their talents with an almost suicidal fury of ap 
 plication. It seemed as if each had a prescience 
 of early death and labored with fatal devotion 
 that the world might not lose the fruit which 
 was his to give. Generous sacrifice, which 
 never fails to mark the rarest type of genius. 
 Maupassant, perhaps the most gifted, the most 
 terribly in earnest of all, went to work like a 
 demoniac, pouring forth a whole literature of 
 plays, poems, stories, romances, all in the space 
 of ten years. Such fecundity, coupled with an 
 artistic practice so admirable and a literary 
 conscience so exacting, was perhaps never be 
 fore witnessed in the same writer. But the 
 
138 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 world presently learned a greater wonder still 
 that this unwearied artist had, in those ten 
 years of apparently unremitting labor, lived a 
 life that was not less full of romance, of pas 
 sion, of variety and excitement than the crea 
 tions of his brain. He had accomplished, as it 
 were, a twofold suicide in life and in art. 
 
 Maupassant died mad, his brain worn out 
 by constant production, his heart torn by the 
 malady of his age, which we can trace in so 
 many pages of his work. But at least he died 
 without disgrace, and in this respect his fate 
 was far happier than that of Oscar Wilde, his 
 contemporary and equal in genius, whose bril 
 liant career closed in the darkest infamy. Poor 
 Wilde sinned greatly no doubt, the English 
 courts settled that, though his atonement was 
 of a piece with his offending. The man dies, 
 but the artist lives; and Wilde has work to his 
 credit which will long survive the memory of 
 his tragic shame. 
 
 In his last wretched days Wilde turned for 
 consolation to the Catholic Church, which, with 
 a deeper knowledge of human nature than her 
 rivals can understand, still makes the worst sin 
 ner, if repentant, her peculiar care. Wilde be 
 came a Catholic, and he recorded that had he 
 
CHILDREN OF THE AGE 139 
 
 but done so years before, the world would not 
 have been shocked by the story of his disgrace. 
 This is less a truism than a confession. At 
 any rate, one is not sorry to know that the 
 poor, broken-hearted wretch found sanctuary 
 at the last, and died in that divine hope which 
 he has voiced in the noblest of his poems. 
 
 Like Wilde, Beardsley became a Catholic at 
 the last when he was under sentence of death 
 from consumption, and the "Letters" are ad 
 dressed to a worthy Catholic priest who in 
 structed him in the faith. Beardsley was of 
 versatile talents, but he could not fairly be 
 called a writer, and these letters were obviously 
 written in perfect candor and with no thought 
 of their ever meeting any eyes save the good 
 priest s for which they were intended. All the 
 same they are, as I have already said, curiously 
 interesting, and they do not lack touches of 
 genuine insight and emotion. The fantastic 
 artist grew very sober in the shadow of death, 
 and the riot of sensuality in which his genius 
 had formerly delighted, was clean wiped from 
 his brain. Wilde himself, in his last days of 
 grace, might have penned this sentence : 
 
 "If Heine is the great warning, Pascal is the 
 great example to all artists and thinkers. He 
 
140 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 understood that to become a Christian the man 
 of letters must sacrifice his gifts, just as Mag 
 dalen sacrificed her beauty." 
 
 Strange language this, from an end-of-the- 
 century decadent, whose achievement in art was 
 that he had carried to an extreme the sug 
 gestions of the wildest sensualism. But per 
 haps it was not the same Beardsley who made 
 the pictures to "Salome" and who, through the 
 most original, creative part of his career, 
 worked like a man in the frenzy of satyriasis. 
 No, it was not the same Beardsley the sen 
 tence of premature death had turned Pan into 
 a St. Anthony. 
 
 Not long after penning the words I have 
 quoted, Beardsley made a sacrifice of his gifts 
 and was received into the Catholic Church. 
 Within a year thereafter he died. There is 
 nothing to mar the moral of his conversion and 
 edifying change of heart, except the reflection 
 that, like so many other eleventh-hour peni 
 tents, he put off making a sacrifice of his gifts 
 until he had no further use for them. And at 
 last, one can t help thinking that if Beardsley 
 had not made some fearfully immoral pictures, 
 this book, with the highly moral story of his 
 
CHILDREN OF THE AGE 141 
 
 conversion, would not have been put before the 
 world. . . . 
 
 I have mentioned Ernest Dowson, a minor 
 poet, the singer of a few exquisite songs. Less 
 talented than the others, yet a true child of the 
 age and stricken at the heart with the same 
 malady, Dowson owes his fame more to the 
 memorial written by his friend and brother 
 poet, Arthur Symons, than to his own work, 
 which in bulk is of the slightest. His short 
 life was frightfully dissolute Symons speaks 
 of his drunkenness with a kind of awe. It was 
 not an occasional over-indulgence with com 
 rades of his own stamp, passing the bottle too 
 often while their heads grew hot and their 
 tongues loosened; it was not the solitary, sod 
 den boozing to which many hopeless drunkards 
 are addicted. For weeks at a stretch Dowson 
 would give himself up to a debauch with the 
 refuse of the London slums, and during that 
 time he would seem an utterly different being, 
 with scarcely a hint of his normal self. I wish 
 some one would explain how this brutal sot- 
 tishness can co-exist with the most delicate in 
 tellectual sensibility, with the poet-soul. We 
 have had many explanations of the puzzle, and 
 they have only one fault they do not explain. 
 
1 42 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Dowson left us little, not because he drank 
 much, but because he could rarely satisfy his 
 own taste, which kept him as unhappy in a 
 literary sense as his conscience did in a religious 
 one. He wrote some fine sonnets to a young 
 woman whose mother kept a cheap eating- 
 house: she married the waiter. The genius 
 of Beardsley could alone have done justice to 
 this grotesque anti-climax. 
 
 Like Beardsley, Dowson died a Catholic 
 he had barely passed thirty but unlike 
 Beardsley, he had expected to do so all his 
 life, for he was born in the faith. Yet the 
 faith had not saved him from le mal du siecle, 
 nor had it kept him from the foul pit of de 
 bauchery. What it did and this was much 
 was to give him a hope at the end. . . . 
 
 Oh, sad children of the age, why wait so long 
 before coming to your Mother, the ancient 
 Church? She alone can heal your cruel 
 wounds, self-inflicted, and bind up your bleed 
 ing hearts. She alone can succor you; she alone 
 can give your troubled spirit rest and quiet 
 those restless brains that would be asking, ask 
 ing unto madness. See ! she has balsam and 
 wine for your wayfaring in this world, and 
 
CHILDREN OF THE AGE 143 
 
 something that will fortify you for a longer 
 journey. Hear ye the bells calling the happy 
 faithful who have never known the hell of 
 doubt; hear ye the organ pealing forth its jubi 
 lation over the Eternal Sacrifice ! Come into 
 the great House of God, founded in the faith, 
 strong with the strength, sanctified by the 
 prayer, and warm with the hope of nineteen 
 hundred years. Come, make here at the altar 
 a sacrifice of your poor human gifts, and ex 
 change them for undying treasures. Painter, 
 for your bits of canvas, the glories of heaven; 
 poet, for your best rhyme the songs of the 
 saved. Come, though it be not until the last 
 hour yet come, come, even then! . . . 
 
 Whether the old Church can really give 
 what she promises, I know not, but sure am I 
 that men will go on believing to the end. For 
 faith is ever more attractive than unfaith, and 
 human nature craves a comfortable heaven; 
 and, after all, it takes more courage to die in 
 the new scientific theory of things than in the 
 simple belief of the saints. And alas ! the cold 
 affirmations of science can not cure nor genius 
 itself satisfy the stricken children of the age. 
 
IX 
 
 THE BLACK FRIAR 
 
 Beware! beware! of the Black Friar 
 
 Who sitteth by Norman stone, 
 For he mutters his prayer in the midnight air, 
 
 And his mass of the days that are gone. 
 
 * * * 
 
 And whether for good or whether for ill 
 
 It is not mine to say, 
 But still to the house of Amundeville 
 
 He abideth night and day. 
 
 DON JUAN 
 
 ONE may wonder what my Lord Byron 
 in the shades thinks of his noble 
 grandson s performance in summon 
 ing the obscene Furies to a final desecration of 
 his grave. Surely the ghouls of scandal that 
 find their congenial food in the shrouds of the 
 illustrious dead, have never had richer quarry. 
 True, they have already had their noses at the 
 scent (through the sweet offices of an Ameri 
 can authoress),* and have even picked a little 
 
 * Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose book "Lady Byron Vindi 
 cated" made so great a sensation nearly fifty years ago, and 
 is now all but forgotten. Mrs. Stowe s posthumous hanging 
 144 
 
THE BLACK FRIAR 145 
 
 at the carrion; but the full body-of-death was 
 never before delivered to them. 
 
 This point has been clouded over in the pub 
 lic discussion of the infamy. It should be made 
 clear in order that the Earl of Lovelace may 
 receive his due credit. Mrs. Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe s revelations were, of course, to the 
 same purport, but they were based on the un 
 supported word of Lady Byron and some very 
 free readings of certain passages in the poet s 
 works. Everybody was shocked, nobody con 
 vinced. Mrs. Stowe s book was damned by 
 universal consent and withdrawn from public 
 sale. 
 
 Lord Lovelace has about the same story to 
 tell, and his revival of the horrid scandal would 
 go for naught, were it not that he is himself a 
 kind of witness against the dead. It would be 
 foolish to deny that many people will as such 
 accept him. There is nobody now living to 
 share or dispute his preeminence in shame. 
 Lord Lovelace should have a portion, at least, 
 of the burden of Orestes. . . . 
 
 Yes, there are terrible things in this darkly 
 perplexed drama of the house of Byron, which 
 
 of Byron in chains was strongly disrelished by the English- 
 reading public. One does not easily pick up a copy of her 
 book. 
 
i 4 6 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 make it seem like a modern version of the old 
 Greek tragedy. Look at the figures in it. A 
 great poet among the very greatest of his 
 race beautiful as a god, born to the highest 
 place, the spoiled darling of nature and of for 
 tune, dazzling the world with his gifts, drunk 
 himself with excess of power, crowding such 
 emotion and enthusiasm, such vitality and pas 
 sion, such adventure and achievement, such a 
 fulness of productive power within the short 
 span of a life cut off in its prime, as have 
 scarcely ever marked the career of another 
 human being. Never have men s eyes wonder- 
 ingly followed so splendid and lawless a comet 
 in the sky of fame. Never was man loved 
 more passionately, hated more bitterly, ad 
 mired more extravagantly, praised more 
 wildly, damned more deeply. His quarrel di 
 vided the world into armed camps which still 
 maintain their hostile lines. He was the Na 
 poleon * of the intellectual world and bulked as 
 large as the Corsican, with whom indeed he 
 shared the admiration of Europe. And by 
 
 * Byron scandalized the England of his day by his great 
 and (as it was then regarded) disloyal admiration for 
 Napoleon. The text is justified by his famous boast in 
 "Don Juan". "Even I myself", he says 
 Was reckoned a considerable time 
 The Grand Napoleon of the realms of rhyme. 
 
THE BLACK FRIAR 147 
 
 Europe he was acclaimed and almost deified 
 when England had first exiled and later denied 
 him a place in the pantheon of her great. 
 
 Never, too, were great faults redeemed by 
 grander virtues, worthy of his towering genius 
 virtues to which the eyes of those who loved 
 him still turned with shining hope after each 
 brief eclipse of his nobler self, as when the 
 sudden summer storm has passed over, men 
 seek the sun. Virtues which drew the hatred 
 of his race and caste, and have left his name 
 as a sword and a burning brand in the world. 
 
 Such is the chief actor in this terrible and 
 sinister drama which has lately been unveiled 
 by the perfidy of the heir of his blood the 
 son of that "Ada" whom his verse has immor 
 talized. The remaining characters are few, 
 which is also fatally in accordance with the 
 rules of Greek tragedy. For the most tremen 
 dous dramas of the flesh and the spirit do not 
 ask a crowd of performers; two or three per 
 sons will suffice and the eternal elements of 
 love and hate. 
 
 So here we have, besides the poet, only the 
 unloved and unloving wife, who meekly dis 
 charged her bosom of its long-festering rancor 
 ere she left the world; the beloved perhaps 
 
148 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 too wildly beloved half-sister of the poet, 
 whose memory (in spite of the hideous 
 calumny laid upon her) is like a springing foun 
 tain of bright water in the hot desert of his 
 life; * and, lastly, the evil grandson in whom 
 the ancestral curses of the house of Byron have 
 found a terribly fit medium of execution and 
 vengeance. It seems a circumstance of added 
 horror that this parricidal slanderer should be 
 a hoary old man, while the world can not 
 imagine Byron save as he died, in the glory 
 and beauty of youth. 
 
 What madness possessed the man? Was it 
 perhaps the hoarded rage and bitterness of 
 many years, that he should have been com 
 pelled to live his long life without fame or 
 notice, in the shadow of a mighty name? A 
 wild enough theory, but such extraordinary 
 madness as my Lord Lovelace s will not allow 
 of sane conjecture. One does not pick and 
 choose his hypotheses in Bedlam. 
 
 That my Lord Lovelace is mad doth suf 
 ficiently, indeed overwhelmingly, appear from 
 
 * In the desert a fountain is springing, 
 
 In the wide waste there still is a tree, 
 And a bird in the solitude singing 
 Which speaks to my spirit of thee. 
 
 [Byron to his sister.] 
 
THE BLACK FRIAR 149 
 
 his part in this shameful and lamentable busi 
 ness; but, as often happens in cases of reason 
 ing dementia, the truth comes out rather in 
 some petty detail than in the general conduct, 
 Thus, at the outset, he orders his charges very 
 well and maintains a semblance of dignity that 
 would befit a worthier matter. One is, pass 
 ingly, almost tempted to believe that the noble 
 lord has been moved to the shocking enter 
 prise by a compelling sense of moral and even 
 filial obligation. He seems to speak more in 
 sorrow than in anger and comes near to win 
 ning our sympathy, if not our approval. This 
 at the threshold of his plea. But his malignity 
 soon reveals itself, horrifying and disgusting 
 us, and suddenly the detail crops up the little 
 thing for which intelligent alienists are always 
 on the alert and losing all control, he aban 
 dons himself to the utter freedom of his hatred 
 and his madness. I refer now to the atrocious 
 passage in his book in which he exults over 
 the alleged fact revealed by the post-mortem 
 examination of Byron s remains that the 
 poet s heart was found to be partly petrified or 
 turned into stone! 
 
 A pretty bauble this to play with ! There 
 are saner men than my Lord Lovelace trying 
 
150 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 to seize the moon through their grated win 
 dows, and coming very near to doing it oh, 
 very near! 
 
 But I should like to have a look at my Lord 
 Lovelace s heart! . . . 
 
 Lovers of Byron s fame may be glad, at 
 least, that the worst has now been said and 
 calumny can not touch the great poet further. 
 Ever since his death nearly a hundred years 
 ago,* the hyenas of scandal have wrangled 
 over his grave, shocking the world in their 
 hunt for uncleanness. All the nameless things 
 that delight to see greatness brought low, 
 genius disgraced, the sanctuary of honor defiled 
 and the virtue of humanity trampled in the 
 dirt, were bidden to the feast. Those obscene 
 orgies have lasted a long time: they are now 
 at an end. The unclean have taken away the 
 uncleanness, if such there was, and are dis 
 persed with their foul kindred in the wilder 
 ness. The clean remains, and all that was truly 
 vital and imperishable of Byron the legacy of 
 his genius, the inspiration of his example in 
 the cause of liberty, the deathless testimony of 
 his spirit for that supreme cause, and his flame- 
 
 * Byron died in 1824. 
 
THE BLACK FRIAR 151 
 
 hearted protest against the enthroned Sham, 
 Meanness and Oppression which still rule the 
 world. These precious bequests of Byron we 
 have immortal and secure. As for the rest 
 
 Glory without end 
 Scattered the clouds away, and on that name 
 
 attend 
 The tears and praises of all time! 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 
 
 HAS the Silence fallen upon thee, O 
 Lafcadio, in that far Eastern land of 
 strange flowers, strange gods and 
 myths, where thou, grown weary of a world 
 whence the spirit of romance had flown, didst 
 fix thy later home ? Art thou indeed gone for 
 ever from us who loved thee, being of thy 
 brave faith in the divinity of the human spirit, 
 and art thou gathered to a strange Valhalla 
 of thy wiser choice, naturalized now, as we 
 may of a truth believe, among the elect and 
 heroic shades of old Japan? Is that voice 
 stilled which had not its peer in these lament 
 able days, sounding the gamut of beauty and 
 joy that has almost ceased to thrill the souls 
 of men? Child of Hellas and Erin, are those 
 half-veiled eyes, that yet saw so deeply into 
 the spiritual Mystery that enfolds our sensu 
 ous life, forever closed to this earthly scene? 
 Hath Beauty lost her chief witness and the 
 152 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 153 
 
 Lyre of Prose her anointed bard and sacerdos? 
 Shall we no more hearken to the cadences of 
 that perfect speech which was thy birthright, 
 sprung as thou wert from the poesy of two 
 immemorial lands, sacred to eloquence and 
 song? . . . 
 
 Ill shall we bear thy loss, O Lafcadio, given 
 over as we are to the rule and worship of 
 leaden gods. Thou wert for us a witness 
 against the iron Law that crushed, and ever 
 crushes, our lives; against the man-made su 
 perstition which impudently seeks to limit the 
 Ideal. From beyond the violet seas, in thy 
 flower-crowned retreat, thou didst raise the 
 joyous paean of the Enfranchised. Plunged 
 deep into mystic lore hidden from us, explor 
 ing a whole realm of myths and worships of 
 which our vain science knows nothing, thou 
 wouldst smile with gentle scorn at the mon 
 strous treadmill of creeds and cultures gods 
 and words where we are forever doomed to 
 toil without fruit or respite. 
 
 We hearkened to thy wondrous tales of a 
 land whose babes have more of the spirit of 
 Art than the teachers of our own; where love 
 is free, yet honored and decency does not con 
 sist in doing that privately which publicly no 
 
154 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 man dare avow; where religion, in our sophis 
 tical sense, does not exist, and where crime, 
 again in our brutal sense, is all but unknown. 
 We heard thee tell, with ever more wonder, 
 how this people of Japan has gone on for hun 
 dreds, nay, thousands of years, producing the 
 humblest as well as the highest virtues with 
 out the aid of an officious religion; how these 
 Japanese folk have the wisdom of age and the 
 simplicity of childhood, being simple and 
 happy, loving peace, contented with little, re 
 spectful toward the old, tender toward the 
 young, merciful toward women, submissive 
 under just authority, and loving their beautiful 
 country with a fervor of patriotism which we 
 may not conceive.* 
 
 All this and more didst thou teach us, Laf- 
 cadio, in the way of thy gracious art, with 
 many an exquisite fancy caught from the legen 
 dary lore of ancient Nippon, and with the 
 ripe fulness of thy strangely blended genius. 
 So we listened as to a far-brought strain of 
 
 *This was written shortly after the death of Hearn in 
 1905. Elsewhere I have noted (vide "NEW ADVENTURES") 
 that in his later years Hearn experienced a certain dis 
 illusionment in regard to the Japanese. It appears from his 
 letters that as his exile lengthened he felt the prose of the 
 East more than the poetry ; while to the very end he resented 
 the Occidentalizing process at work in Japan. 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 155 
 
 music, and were glad to hear, hailing thee 
 Master a title thou hadst proudly earned. 
 Yet even as we sat at thy feet drinking in the 
 tones of thy voice, there came One who touched 
 thee quickly on the lips and we knew the rest 
 was Silence. . . . 
 
 Peace to thee, Lafcadio, child of Erin and 
 Hellas, adopted son and poet of Nippon. Thy 
 immortality is sure as the dayspring; for thou 
 sleepest in the Land of the Sunrise . . . and 
 Nippon, who has never learned to forget, 
 watches over thy fame ! 
 
 II 
 
 LAFCADIO HEARN was a poet working 
 in prose, as all true poets now inevitably 
 are, a literary artist of original motive and 
 distinction among the rabble of contemporary 
 scribblers. For these two things a man is not 
 easily forgiven or forgotten when he has 
 passed the Styx. 
 
 Half Irish, half Greek, the flower of this 
 man s genius took unwonted hue and fragrance 
 from his strangely blended paternity; the 
 hybrid acquired a beauty new and surprising 
 in a world that looks only for the stereotype. 
 
156 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Despairing of the tame effects produced by 
 regularity, Nature herself seems to have set an 
 example of lawlessness. 
 
 Lafcadio Hearn took care to avoid the con 
 ventional in the ordering of his life as sedu 
 lously as in the products of his brain. For 
 this, the man being now dead and silent, the 
 conventional takes a familiar revenge upon his 
 memory. 
 
 The conventional lest we forget is the 
 consensus of smug souls, the taboo uttered by 
 mediocrity, the Latin invidia whereat Flaccus 
 flickered, with all his assurance. It has much 
 the same voice in every age. 
 
 Notwithstanding, one plain fact, avouched 
 by all human experience, may reassure the 
 wide-scattered fraternity of those who prize 
 the work and cherish the memory of Lafcadio 
 Hearn. It is this: No man ever succeeded in 
 writing himself down better or worse than he 
 really was. You may write, but the condition 
 is that you make a faithful likeness of yourself 
 nothing extenuate nor set down aught in 
 malice. 
 
 The true Lafcadio Hearn, the shy, pitiably 
 myopic genius nursed on tears, the dreamer of 
 strange dreams, the prose poet of a new dower 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 157 
 
 of fancy, the weaver of hitherto unwrought 
 cadences for the inner ear, the latest brave 
 worshipper of truth and beauty, where shall 
 we look for him but in his enduring work? 
 soul and man to the essential life! 
 
 I have been re-reading the work of Hearn, 
 and an old conviction of mine is thus reaf 
 firmed, that in him we have to reckon with 
 one of the few men of the Nineteenth century 
 who made literature that promises to endure. 
 
 The "Life and Letters" by Elizabeth Bis- 
 land is a worthy piece of literary craftsman 
 ship. The appreciation of Hearn both as man 
 and artist is suffused with the warmth and 
 color of a generous woman s temperament. 
 More critical and tempered estimates will be 
 written, as time goes by and he comes into his 
 own, but none that can ever supersede Eliza 
 beth Bisland s charming work. She has done 
 well for her friend throughout, but her care 
 in gathering and presenting the Letters is 
 really a priceless service to his memory and an 
 addition to the treasures of literature. 
 
 Hearn was often doubtful of his blessings, 
 and there was one which he perhaps never 
 justly estimated. I mean his relation to a small 
 but interested circle of friends for whom he 
 
i $8 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 was moved to pour himself out with the frank 
 ness and force that characterize his letters. 
 Mind, I do not say that Hearn failed to ap 
 preciate his friends, but I suspect that he did 
 not fully realize his blessedness in having a 
 few friends whom he found a real pleasure in 
 writing to, and who challenged him, as it were, 
 to the fullest self-revelation. 
 
 Literary men nowadays are too self-con 
 scious to write good letters, or they lack the 
 talent (which is perhaps nearer the mark), or 
 they prefer to telegraph, or they wish to save 
 all for the shop. But we must not forget that 
 it takes two to write a real letter one to sum 
 mon and one to send it. In very truth, such 
 letters as give the world delight are a real 
 collaboration, though the work be signed by 
 only one hand. 
 
 We should not have Lamb s Letters (choic 
 est of all the epistolary tribe) but for Words 
 worth, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Procter, Manning, 
 Gary, et al.; and we should not have Hearn s 
 but for Miss Bisland and Messrs. McDonald, 
 Chamberlain, Krehbiel, Hendrick, and others. 
 
 Moreover, if the credit of authorship is but 
 for the hand that held the pen, there is honor 
 and remembrance for the silent collaborators. 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 159 
 
 I doubt if Hearn ever thought of his letters 
 as a literary asset, yet they are being eagerly 
 read by many who are incapable of the deli 
 cate esoteric beauty of his Japanese creations. 
 The reason is plain: Hearn s letters tell the 
 most fascinating story in the world. The story 
 of a man of true genius who fought a brave 
 fight through long years against poverty, half- 
 blindness, and all the misfortunes of an un 
 toward fate, until he finally achieved some 
 image of the Ideal that haunted him, and set 
 his light on a hill where all the world might 
 see it. The story, too, of a man who never 
 took himself as a hero, nor asked to be taken 
 as such, but made his hard course as pluckily 
 as if the world s applause attended him. Who 
 was never at pains to make himself out dif 
 ferent from what he was, but gave a true like 
 ness which, by the grace and fortune of genius, 
 turns out to be an incomparable Portrait of a 
 Man! 
 
 These letters of Hearn are, in truth, hardly 
 inferior to any in our literature. I am not sure 
 but that they give us the most interesting and 
 faithful picture of a true literary man s life, 
 of his soul and his environment, that literature 
 affords. Like Lamb s letters, they complement 
 
160 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 his formal literary work, and are even su 
 perior to it on several counts, as in their deep 
 human interest, their flashing fun and satire, 
 their touches of quaint wisdom, their treasures 
 of patient observation. 
 
 ill 
 
 r I^HESE ten or a dozen handsome volumes, 
 A then, represent the literary bequest of 
 Lafcadio Hearn: it was to give these that he 
 lived and toiled and suffered. "Give" is the 
 word, for little enough he got from them in 
 the way of compensation. No writer ever 
 more fully exemplified the truth that the high 
 est service in literature goes unpaid. Compen 
 sation of a kind there was indeed for Lafcadio 
 Hearn, the compensation that arises from the 
 doing of one s chosen work, the fulfilment of 
 one s artistic instinct, the gratification of that 
 craving need of expression which is at once 
 the joy and penalty of such a nature as his. 
 But of money, or success in the common accep 
 tation, there was so little for him that he may 
 truly be said to have given all his work for art s 
 sake. In 1903, with less than two years to live, 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 161 
 
 we find him writing to Mrs. Wetmore (Eliza 
 beth Bisland) : 
 
 "Literary work is over. When one has to 
 meet the riddle of how to live, there is an end 
 of revery and dreaming and all literary labor- 
 of-love. It pays not at all. A book brings 
 me in about ikioo aftpr i-wn *7ot-o *:*: 
 
 chose as his literary executor, Paymaster 
 Mitchell McDonald of the United States 
 Navy, stationed then at Yokohama : 
 
160 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 his formal literary work, and are even su 
 perior to it on several counts, as in their deep 
 human interest, their flashing fun and satire, 
 their touches of quaint wisdom, their treasures 
 of patient observation. 
 
 ERRATA 
 
 The reader s indulgence is asked for these 
 corrections : 
 
 Page 159, line 10 until he had finally 
 
 achieved. 
 
 20 1, line 7 armies and sentinels. 
 203, line 1 6 accusing text. 
 223, line 2 party to the cheat. 
 329, last paragraph any of these, 
 
 who constantly solicits thee. 
 333) ^st line Ad majorem, etc. 
 
 Paris, October, 1922 
 
 tation, there was so little for him that he may 
 truly be said to have given all his work for art s 
 sake. In 1903, with less than two years to live, 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 161 
 
 we find him writing to Mrs. Wetmore (Eliza 
 beth Bisland) : 
 
 "Literary work is over. When one has to 
 meet the riddle of how to live, there is an end 
 of revery and dreaming and all literary labor- 
 of-love. It pays not at all. A book brings 
 me in about $300 after two years waiting. 
 My last payment on four books (for six 
 months) was $44. Also, in my case, good 
 work is a matter of nervous condition. I can t 
 find the conditions while having to think about 
 home, which is the most soul-satisfying of 
 fears, according to Rudyard Kipling." 
 
 But all his life he had been dedicate to the 
 stern muses of Poverty and Labor. Utterly 
 incapable of business and bargain-making 
 ( u the moment I think of business," he says, "I 
 wish I had never been born") he could not 
 peddle his precious mental wares to advantage, 
 and so abandoned everything to the shrewd 
 bargainers of the publishing trade, glad to 
 do it, too, if they would only let him correct 
 his proofs ! This is the recurrent note in his 
 private, unreserved correspondence. In 1899 
 he writes to one of his best friends, whom he 
 chose as his literary executor, Paymaster 
 Mitchell McDonald of the United States 
 Navy, stationed then at Yokohama : 
 
1 62 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 "Don t know whether I shall appear in print 
 again for several years. Anyhow, I shall never 
 write again except when the spirit moves me. 
 It doesn t pay, and what you call reputation 
 is a most damnable, infernal, unmitigated 
 misery and humbug. . . . While every book I 
 write costs me more than I get for it, it is evi 
 dent that literature holds no possible rewards 
 for me; and like a sensible person, I m going 
 to do something really good that won t sell." 
 
 Let us look a little at the artist. I have here 
 tofore set down my own appreciation of Laf- 
 cadio Hearn as thinker and writer: my pur 
 pose now is merely to indicate by extracts from 
 his letters the considerations by which his ar 
 tistic conscience was quickened and governed. 
 Hardly any writer has expressed himself more 
 frankly and with less reserve on the self-im 
 posed canons of his art. Not Flaubert himself 
 held a more rigorous conception of the func 
 tion and obligation of the writer the priest- 
 ship of art than this man who advised one 
 of his correspondents, a young man debating 
 the choice of literature as a profession, to take 
 literature seriously or leave it alone! 
 
 How seriously he took it himself, we have 
 already seen, and the following extracts 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 163 
 
 gleaned at hazard from his letters help us the 
 better to understand: 
 
 "All the best work is done the way ants do 
 things by tiny but untiring and regular ad 
 ditions." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "Work with me is a pain no pleasure till 
 it is done. It is not voluntary; it is not agree 
 able. It is forced by necessity. The necessity 
 is a curious one. The mind, in my case, eats 
 
 itself when unemployed." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "I write page after page of vagaries, meta 
 physical, emotional, romantic, throw them 
 aside. Then, next day, I go to work rewriting 
 them. I rewrite and rewrite them till they be 
 gin to define and arrange themselves into a 
 
 whole, and the result is an essay." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "Of course, I like a little success and praise, 
 though a big success and big praise would 
 scare me; and I find that even the little praise 
 I have been getting has occasionally unhinged 
 my judgment. And I have to be very careful." 
 
 And hearken to this, O ye impatient acolytes 
 in the Temple of Literature, who dream only 
 of golden rewards, and ye others, bold traf 
 fickers in a debased art, who measure achieve 
 ment by its money price in the market. 
 
1 64 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 "Literary success of any enduring kind is 
 made only by refusing to do what publishers 
 want, by refusing to write what the public 
 wants, by refusing to accept any popular stand 
 ard, by refusing to write anything to order." 
 * * * 
 
 "I am going to ask you simply not to come 
 to see your friend, and not to ask him to see 
 you, for at least three months more. I know 
 this seems horrid but such are the only con 
 ditions upon which literary work is possible, 
 when combined with the duties of a professor 
 of literature." 
 
 And this, than which even the letters of 
 Lamb yield nothing finer: 
 
 u My friends are much more dangerous than 
 my enemies. These latter with infinite sub 
 tlety spin webs to keep me out of places 
 where I hate to go, and tell stones of me to 
 people whom it would be vanity and vexation 
 to meet; and they help me so much by their 
 unconscious aid that I almost love them. They 
 help me to maintain the isolation indispensable 
 to quiet regularity of work. . . . Blessed be 
 my enemies, and forever honored all those that 
 hate me ! 
 
 "But my friends! ah, my friends! They 
 speak so beautifully of my work; they believe 
 in it; they say they want more of it, and yet 
 they would destroy it! They do not know 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 165 
 
 what it costs, and they would break the wings 
 and scatter the feather-dust, even as the child 
 that only wanted to caress the butterfly. And 
 they speak of communion and converse and 
 sympathy and friendship, all of which are in 
 deed precious things to others, but mortally 
 deadly to me, representing the breaking up of 
 habits of industry, and the sin of disobedience 
 to the Holy Ghost, against whom sin shall 
 not be forgiven, either in this life or the life 
 
 to come." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "The strong worker and thinker works and 
 thinks by himself. He does not want help or 
 sympathy or company. His pleasure in the 
 
 work is enough." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "One thing is dead sure: in another genera 
 tion there can be no living by dreaming and 
 scheming of art; only those having wealth can 
 indulge in the luxury of writing books for 
 their own pleasure." 
 
 Hearn s philosophy of life, the daily human 
 habit of the man, as revealed in these letters to 
 a few chosen friends, is not less racy and in 
 teresting than his literary side, and it shows 
 him in genial, lovable aspects that will sur 
 prise many who yet recall the old libels upon 
 his personal character. He had strong native 
 wit (of which he was too sparing in his formal 
 
1 66 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 literary productions), and, for a dreamer, as 
 tonishing shrewdness of observation. Of him 
 it might be said as of Renan, that he thought 
 like a man and acted like a child. Though ab 
 normally sensitive and shy, disliking society in 
 the most limited sense, on account of his devo 
 tion to his work and also because of certain 
 personal disadvantages, his affections were 
 warm, sincere and constant. One cannot re 
 sist the belief, of which indeed there is no 
 lack of testimony, that he was a true friend, 
 a fond husband and father, and a genuine lover 
 of humanity. 
 
 This article is running beyond bounds, but 
 I venture to cite a few more extracts, always 
 from his personal letters, that shed light on 
 the man rather than the writer: 
 
 "We can reach the highest life only through 
 that self-separation which the experience of 
 illness, that is, the knowledge of physical weak 
 ness, brings." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "How sweet the Japanese woman is! all 
 the possibilities of the race for goodness seem 
 
 to be concentrated in her." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "My little wife said the other morning that 
 there was a mezurashii kedamono in the next 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 167 
 
 yard. We looked out, and the extraordinary 
 
 animal was a goat!" 
 
 * * * 
 
 ( You do not laugh when you look at moun 
 tains, nor when you look at the sea." 
 
 * * * 
 
 u No man, as a general rule, shows his soul 
 to another man; he shows it only to a wo 
 man. . . . No woman unveils herself to an 
 other woman only to a man; and what she 
 
 unveils he cannot betray." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "It is only in home-relations that people are 
 true enough to each other, show what human 
 nature is, the beauty of it, the divinity of it. 
 We are otherwise all on our guard against 
 
 each other." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "No man can possibly know what life means, 
 what the world means, what anything means, 
 
 until he has a child and loves it." 
 
 * * * 
 
 "Perhaps if my boy grows old, there will 
 some day come back to him memories of his 
 mother s dainty little world, the hibachi, 
 the tako, the garden, the lights of the shrine, 
 the voice and hands that shaped his thought 
 and guided every little tottering step. Then 
 he will feel very, very lonesome, and be 
 sorry he did not follow after those who loved 
 
i68 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 him into some shadowy resting place where the 
 
 Buddhas still smile under their moss!" 
 
 * * * 
 
 "I have at home a little world of about 
 eleven people to whom I am Love and Light 
 and Food. It is a very gentle world. It is 
 only happy when I am happy. If I even look 
 tired, it is silent and walks on tiptoe. It is a 
 moral force. I dare not fret about anything 
 when I can help it, for others would fret more. 
 So I try to keep right." 
 
 IV 
 
 THE close of Lafcadio Hearn s life was 
 embittered by the loss of his position as 
 professor of English Literature at the Im 
 perial University of Tokyo, and no doubt his 
 days were shortened by the terrible anxieties 
 into which he was thus thrown. His state was 
 never so bad as it appeared to his sensitive 
 imagination, to his boding spirit hopelessly 
 clouded by the misfortunes of his youth; and a 
 remedy was found, alas ! too late. His letters 
 about this time are not cheerful reading, but 
 they are of the most painful interest and they 
 will ever call forth love and pity for the 
 struggling and afflicted man of genius who in 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 169 
 
 life had known too little of these qualities. I 
 quote from one letter written in this sad and 
 anxious time to Mrs. Wetmore; it is especially 
 poignant, but the burden is that of others. 
 
 "You will be glad to hear that I am almost 
 strong again, but I fear that I shall never be 
 strong enough to lecture before a general pub 
 lic. . . . The great and devouring anxiety is 
 for some regular employ something that will 
 assure me the means to live. ... I am wor 
 ried about my boy how to save him out of 
 this strange world of cruelty and intrigue. 
 And I dream of old ugly things things that 
 happened long ago. I am alone in an Ameri 
 can city, and I have only ten cents in my pocket, 
 and to send off a letter that I must send will 
 take three cents. That leaves me seven cents 
 for the day s food!" 
 
 Lafcadio Hearn died on September 26th, 
 1904, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. The 
 story of his last illness and death, as told by 
 his faithful Japanese wife, is most quaint and 
 pathetic and marked by little touches that re 
 veal the spiritual nobility of the man. True 
 to his life-long revolt against the religion of 
 gloom and sorrow, he bade her not to weep for 
 him, but to buy for his coffin a little earthen 
 flower pot, and to bury him in the yard of a 
 
170 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 small temple in some lonesome quarter. (In 
 death as in life the man shrank from the 
 world.) Then she was to play cards with their 
 children, and if any people came to ask for 
 him, she was to say that he had died some time 
 before. 
 
 Though his physical breakdown was gradual 
 and he had noted in himself many warnings of 
 the Great Change at hand, the end came sud 
 denly. On the eve of his death he dreamed 
 that he had gone on a long and distant journey : 
 the fulfilment came to him with no more pain 
 or struggle than u a little folding of the hands 
 to sleep" . . . 
 
 Of him a noble Japanese has written: 
 
 "Like a lotus this man was in his heart . . . 
 a poet, a thinker, a loving husband and father, 
 and a sincere friend. Within him there burned 
 something pure as the vestal fire, and in that 
 flame dwelt a mind that called forth life and 
 poetry out of the dust, and grasped the highest 
 themes of human thought." 
 
 Lafcadio Hearn lies at rest in the far 
 Eastern land of Japan, among the strange peo 
 ple whose life he adopted, who gave him a 
 home and the love of wife and children, whose 
 bravery and virtue, whose national spirit, 
 
LAFCADIO HEARN 171 
 
 whose beautiful legends and folklore, whose 
 ancient and wondrous religion, he interpreted 
 with perfect art and deep divining sympathy, 
 for an alien world; building thereupon his chief 
 title to remembrance. Few writers of our time 
 have achieved a more worthy or left a more 
 lasting fame. 
 
XI 
 
 THE DEFENCE OF DAMIEN 
 
 A PERSON all unknown to fame, one 
 Rev. Frederic Rowland Marvin, 
 makes a sinister bid for notice by im 
 peaching the integrity of Robert Louis Ste 
 venson s motives in writing the celebrated Let 
 ter on Father Damien. 
 
 Needless to recall, the Letter was addressed 
 to the Rev. Dr. Hyde, of Honolulu, who had 
 cast some very gross and unmerited aspersions 
 upon the martyr priest. 
 
 Damien, as all the world knows, was a Bel 
 gian missionary priest who had devoted him 
 self to the service of the lepers at Molokai, 
 and who, contracting the disease, at the height 
 of his vigorous ministry, died among them. 
 The question of his saintship cannot be taken 
 up by the Church until a hundred years after 
 his death. Meantime many people of different 
 religions, and some of none at all, regard 
 
 Damien as the only authentic saint of modern 
 
 172 
 
THE DEFENCE OF DAMIEN 173 
 
 times. Robert Louis Stevenson was unques 
 tionably of this opinion. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Hyde, of Honolulu, in a letter 
 to a brother parson (the Rev. H. B. Gage) 
 made the hideous charge that Damien had be 
 come infected with leprosy through sexual in 
 tercourse with the women lepers of Molokai; 
 characterized him as "a coarse, dirty man, 
 headstrong and bigoted", and sneered at the 
 chorus of praise which his heroic death had 
 evoked. All of which was extensively circu 
 lated by religious papers of the Hyde denomi 
 nation. 
 
 This precious testimony came under the eye 
 of Robert Louis Stevenson, who had himself 
 visited the leper colony when Damien was "in 
 his resting grave", and had collected the whole 
 truth regarding him from the witnesses of his 
 life and death. By a useful coincidence, the 
 author had likewise seen the reverend slan 
 derer Hyde and held converse with him at his 
 "fine house in Beretania street" (Honolulu). 
 
 The posthumous attack upon Damien by a 
 rival but recreant missioner, breathing a sec 
 tarian malignity rare in our time, touched that 
 fiery intrepid soul to an utterance which ranks 
 with the highest proofs of his genius and the 
 
174 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 best fruits of the liberal spirit. His Letter 
 on Father Damien is, in truth, the quintessence 
 of Stevenson, the choice extract of his passion 
 and power, his deep-hearted hatred of injus 
 tice, his princelike contempt of meanness, his 
 loathing scorn of religious bigotry, his tender 
 ness, delicacy, and chivalry, all conveyed in 
 a flawless triumph of literary art. Not vainly 
 did he boast: 
 
 "If I have at all learned the trade of using 
 words to convey truth and to arouse emotion, 
 you have at last furnished me with a subject." 
 And again: "I conceive you as a man quite be 
 yond and below the reticences of civility; with 
 what measure you mete, with that it shall be 
 measured to you again; with you, at last, I re 
 joice to feel the button off the foil and to 
 plunge home." 
 
 I can never read the Letter to Hyde without 
 seeing a flame run between the lines; I never 
 lay it down that I do not at once bless and 
 damn the Rev. Dr. Hyde for having provoked 
 it: indeed there is a sort of merit in having 
 challenged such a flagellation. But not being 
 myself parson-led, I wish the gentleman no 
 worse damnation than is assured to him in 
 Tusitala s honest tribute. 
 
THE DEFENCE OF DAMIEN 175 
 
 Well, this is the piece of work which Dr. 
 Marvin he is, it appears, a parson like the 
 eternally disgraced Hyde seeks to disparage 
 by attainting the integrity of the knightliest 
 figure of modern letters. Let us see how this 
 bold parson achieves the asinine exploit of 
 kicking the dead lion and betraying his folly to 
 the world. 
 
 After stating the extraordinary assumption 
 that Stevenson s Letter on Father Damien 
 "was never regarded as anything more than a 
 striking exhibition of literary pyrotechny", Dr. 
 Marvin proceeds to judgment as follows : 
 
 "Stevenson s letter was, I am fully per 
 suaded, more the work of the rhetorician than 
 of the man. He was carried away by the op 
 portunity of making a rhetorical flourish and 
 impression, and so went further than his own 
 judgment approved. Stevenson was a man of 
 many noble qualities, and conscience was not 
 wanting as an element of power in his life, but 
 his letter to Dr. Hyde was not honest, nor had 
 it for any length of time the approval of his 
 own inner sense of right and justice. He did 
 not really believe what he wrote, neither did 
 he intend to write what he did. The tempta 
 tion from a literary point of view was great, 
 and the writer got the better of the man." 
 
176 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Here the parson speaks in no uncertain 
 tone a mere literary man would not so frame 
 his indictment. But what a gorgeous piece of 
 impudence ! 
 
 I would not take the Rev. Dr. Marvin too 
 seriously, but lest any person with the wit of 
 three asses should be deceived by his shallow 
 effrontery, one feels bound to notice it. And 
 since the Rev. Doctor has of his own free will 
 made himself yoke-fellow with the defamatory 
 Hyde, it is but just that he be clothed with the 
 full dignity of his election. 
 
 To discuss the foolish, nay vicious question 
 which he has raised concerning Stevenson s 
 honesty of motive in writing the Letter to Dr. 
 Hyde, would shame any man not a parson 
 of common sense. Nor is it needful in any 
 case, Dr. Marvin sufficiently putting himself 
 out of terms in these words: "The temptation 
 from a literary point of view was great, and 
 the writer got the better of the man" 
 
 Now, lovers of Stevenson have no need to 
 be reminded that such was his passionate care 
 to avoid the slightest doubt of his sincerity in 
 writing as he did upon Damien and to repel 
 the stock literary imputation here uttered by 
 
THE DEFENCE OF DAMIEN 177 
 
 a worthy champion of Hyde, that the Jitter 
 was printed originally for private distribution 
 only. Although the public demand for it soon 
 became irresistible, Stevenson consistently re 
 fused to touch a penny from the publication. 
 In 1890 he put this bluntly to a London pub 
 lisher who wished to bring out an edition: 
 "The Letter to Dr. Hyde is yours or any 
 man s. I will never touch a penny of remunera 
 tion. I do not stick at murder: I draw the 
 line at cannibalism. I could not eat a penny 
 roll that piece of bludgeoning had gained for 
 
 me." 
 
 "If the world at all remember you" (said 
 the Letter to Hyde) "on the day when Damien 
 of Molokai shall be named Saint, it will be in 
 virtue of one work : your letter to the Rev. 
 H. B. Gage." 
 
 Was ever such a sight vouchsafed to gods 
 or men as this of the Rev. Dr. Marvin 
 struggling belatedly to win for himself a small 
 title in that infamous remembrance to snatch 
 a rag from the garment of shame which the 
 great artist fitted upon Dr. Hyde in 
 his character of Devil s Advocate against 
 Damien? . . . 
 
 The defence of Damien remains one of the 
 cherished documents of the free spirit. I thank 
 
178 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Dr. Marvin for having given me an occasion 
 of re-reading it, and I cheerfully accord him 
 the grace of having moved me to perform this 
 religious duty twice, instead of (my usual 
 practice) once, in the year. I can but wonder 
 what manner of man is he that it should have 
 done him so little good; yet I know I shall love 
 it the more that its truth is thus again proven 
 by the futile attacks of a spiritual fellow to 
 Hyde. 
 
 Yes, I re-read as, please God, often I shall 
 re-read that true story of Damien s martyr 
 dom, bare and tragic as Molokai itself, traced 
 by the hand of one who had no sympathy of 
 religious faith with him but only the common 
 kinship of humanity "that noble brother of 
 mine and of all frail clay". I read again, with 
 quickened pulse, of the lowly peasant priest, 
 who, in obedience to the Master s call, "shut 
 to with his own hand the doors of his 
 sepulchre!" I saw once more that woeful pic 
 ture of the lepers island, surrounded by a great 
 waste of sea, which to those condemned 
 wretches spells the black despair of infinity: 
 in its midst the hill with the dead crater, the 
 hopeless front of precipice, the desolation there 
 
THE DEFENCE OF DAMIEN 179 
 
 prepared by nature for death too hideous for 
 men to look upon. Again I made that melan 
 choly voyage to Molokai and wept with Tusi- 
 tala as he sat in the boat with the two sisters, 
 "bidding farewell, in humble imitation of 
 Damien, to the lights and joys of human life". 
 I shuddered to mark the fearful deformations 
 of humanity that awaited us on the shore the 
 population of a nightmare every other face 
 a blot on the landscape. I saw the place was 
 an unspeakable hell even with the hospital and 
 other improvements, lacking when Damien 
 came there and "slept that first night under a 
 tree amidst his rotting brethren". I visited 
 the Bishop-Home, whose every cup and towel 
 had been washed by the hand of "Dirty 
 Damien". I saw everywhere the tokens of his 
 passage, who "by one striking act of martyr 
 dom had directed all men s eyes on that dis 
 tressful country who at a blow and the price 
 of his life had made the place illustrious and 
 public". I thought upon that great and simple 
 renunciation, daunting the mind with its sheer 
 sacrifice which, better far than all the loud- 
 .-ongued creeds, brought the living Christ 
 within sight and touch and understanding. 
 And these wonderful lines of Browning came 
 
i8o AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 into my mind with a sudden vividly realized 
 meaning and pathos : 
 
 Remember what a martyr said 
 
 On the rude tablet overhead : 
 
 "I was born sickly, poor and mean, 
 
 A slave no misery could screen 
 
 The holders of the pearl of price 
 
 From Caesar s envy; therefore twice 
 
 I fought with beasts, three times I saw 
 
 My children suffer by his law; 
 
 At last my own release was earned; 
 
 I was soYne time in being burned, 
 
 But at the close a Hand came through 
 
 The fire above my head, and drew 
 
 My soul to Christ whom now I see. 
 
 Sergius, a brother, writes for me 
 
 This testimony on the wall 
 
 For me, I have forgot it all." 
 
 (Since this essay was written, I have met 
 with other writings of Dr. Marvin s which 
 justify a more favorable estimate of his mind 
 and motives than is herein expressed. No 
 doubt he erred chiefly through excess of loyalty 
 to his cloth but his error remains, uncon- 
 fessed and unexpiated, in a printed book. Even 
 so, a humble servant of Literature may be al 
 lowed to owe a duty to his order, which in 
 this instance, he conceives, is also a duty to the 
 higher cause of Truth. MM.) 
 
XII 
 
 A PORT OF AGE 
 
 READER, when for you as for me the 
 wild heyday of youth is past, and the 
 heart of adventure all but pulseless, 
 there is yet remaining to us a wonderful and 
 untried realm of romance. When churlish 
 Time shall think to retire us from the heat and 
 zest of life, classing us, too prematurely, as 
 "old boys," there is still a trick we may turn to 
 his discomfiture. When the younkers club their 
 foolish wits for a poor joke at our expense 
 what is so utterly inane to maturity as juvenile 
 humor, green-cheese pleasantry, pithless, 
 fledgeling conceits? we who are wise know 
 that the best of the game is still for us; nor 
 would we change with the reckless spendthrifts 
 who mock us from the vanity of twenty year. 
 
 It s ho for candles, a book and bed! 
 
 For candles, the modern equivalent, of 
 course. I prefer a strong, well-shaded lamp 
 
 to electric light or gas; the rockefeller burns 
 181 
 
182 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 with a steady flame, does not sputter, or 
 dwindle, or go out entirely, leaving you in a 
 sulphuric darkness. But the wick should be 
 trimmed by the hand of her who loves you best 
 in the world; by her, too, must the reading 
 table be adjusted cosily at the head of the bed, 
 so that the incidence of the gently burning 
 flame may be just right the more or less in 
 these matters is of infinite significance; by her 
 must the books and, above all, The Book, be 
 disposed ready to the discriminating hand of 
 the Sovereign Lector. 
 
 Oh! and, of course, the pipes or cigars. 
 No smokeless person hath any rights in this 
 kingdom; he cometh falsely by his investiture; 
 he is a Bezonian without choice; a marplot and 
 spy out with him ! . . . 
 
 As to the time of going to bed, I would say 
 eight o clock, or half after eight; not earlier 
 nor later, though the point need not be strained 
 to a finical nicety. But one can not conven 
 iently go to bed amid the daylight business of 
 the house, nor before supper, nor too soon 
 after it. I knew a man who perversely in 
 sisted upon going to bed at five o clock; he 
 never rose to the dignity of a true bed-reader, 
 and that which is, properly used, the most de- 
 
A PORT OF AGE 183 
 
 lightful of indulgences, became in the end, to 
 this person, a formidable dissipation. Like a 
 bad mariner, he was constantly out of his reck 
 oning and at last came to grief : the fact that 
 he was a hater of the emollient weed no doubt 
 aided the catastrophe. 
 
 But assuming that all the unities have been 
 fulfilled, that the Book, the Reader and the 
 Bed are in the most fortuitously fortunate con 
 junction, will you tell me that the world has 
 a sweeter pleasure to bestow, a more pro 
 foundly satisfying, yet not enervating, luxury 
 of indulgence? 
 
 Recall an instant that first delicious thrill of 
 relaxed ease, of blissful security, of complete 
 physical well-being every nerve telegraphing 
 its congratulations and your spinal column in 
 toning a grand sweet song of peace! You are 
 now between the snowy sheets, and the Elect 
 Lady is looking tenderly to the pillows, etc., 
 while you are tasting the most exquisite of 
 sensations in the back of your calves. This is 
 the veritable mine dimittis moment of the ex 
 perience; you are prepared, soothed and dulci 
 fied for what the Greeks called euthanasy; 
 could that old classic idea of dissolution afford 
 you a sweeter pang? 
 
1 84 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 But, man, you re not dying like a rose in 
 aromatic pain you re simply going to bed to 
 read. And here the Elect Lady, giving a final 
 pat to the pillows, leans over, kisses you fondly 
 and says, "All right now, dear?" 
 
 To which you reply (dissembling an internal 
 satisfaction violent enough to alarm the po 
 lice) "All right now, darling, thank you 
 but just push the cigars a bit nearer there. 
 And be sure you tell Mary to keep the children 
 quiet. And, of course, you won t forget to 
 bring it up later with a good bit of ice; so 
 soothing after the mental excitement of a 
 strong author. Thank you, dear." 
 
 These details will often be varied the un- 
 wedded reader is not, I think, steeped in such 
 felicity, and of course there be instances where 
 the married lector does not come at his desire 
 so featly but the outline remains the same. 
 And the result arrives, as the French say: that 
 is, my gentleman comes to book and bed. 
 
 Then truly is he in that happy state de 
 scribed by the poet, 
 
 "The world forgetting, by the world forgot" ; 
 
 raised to the Nirvana of the mind; close- 
 wrapped in the eider-down security of his little 
 
A PORT OF AGE 185 
 
 kingdom that knoweth no treasons, stratagems 
 or insurrections; in the world and yet not of 
 it, like unto, though in a different sense from, 
 the Apostolic figure; tasting the pure pleasures 
 of the intellect with a delicious feeling of men 
 tal detachment and at the same time a caress 
 ing consciousness of bodily ease; no other 
 troubling imperium in his imperio no thief 
 in his candle no fly in his ointment nothing 
 but the Book and his Absoluteship ! 
 
 It is, Socratically considered, the only ra 
 tional method of reading the most univer 
 sally abused of all the liberal arts. Are there 
 not persons who make a foolish pretence of 
 reading on railways trains, or in public res 
 taurants, or in hotel lobbies, or even in theatres 
 between the acts; nay, sometimes, by a piece 
 of intolerable coxcombry, during the play it 
 self? Whip me such barren pretenders! 
 there is not a reader among them all. 
 
 I am not sure that there is higher praise 
 (for the intellectuals) than to be called a good 
 reader, which is to say, a bed-reader. For the 
 true reader (lector in sponda) is only less rare 
 than the genuine writer; his genius no less a 
 native and unacquired attribute; his setting 
 apart from the common herd as clearly defined 
 
1 86 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 and delimited. To be a reader in this, the 
 only true sense, is to belong to the Aristocracy 
 of Intellect, and to be assured of a philosophy 
 which brings to age a crown of delight. 
 
 No man should take up the noble habit of 
 reading abed before the age of discretion, that 
 is to say, the fortieth year for at the eighth 
 lustrum comes the dry light of reason, which is 
 the true essential flame of the bed-reader, and, 
 lacking which, he hath as little profit of his 
 vocation as the owl at noonday. 
 
 II 
 
 I HAVE for some years made a practice of 
 shrewdly canvassing my friends and corre 
 spondents (more or less bookish) on this deli 
 cate subject. I say delicate because, owing to 
 a sort of housewifely intolerance much to be 
 deplored, the pleasure of reading abed is here 
 and there regarded as an illicit and reprehen 
 sible one I have even heard of one or two 
 strong-minded ladies who condemned it as 
 "positively immoral". However, as a result of 
 my inquiries, I am enabled to pronounce that 
 the most delightful of intellectual pastimes is 
 in no likelihood of falling into neglect. This, 
 too, in spite of the fact that the habit of smok- 
 
A PORT OF AGE 187 
 
 ing at the same time a necessary concomitant, 
 as I have shown makes of the indulgence a 
 "fearful joy", and occasionally creates a little 
 business for the insurance companies. 
 
 But there is scarcely an act of our daily life 
 that does not involve some risk or peril, and 
 the stout bed-reader (and smoker) will not suf 
 fer himself to be daunted by a slight accident 
 or so, or even a hurry call from the fire de 
 partment. Besides, there are some obvious 
 precautionary measures which elderly gentle 
 men (in particular) might take in order to 
 combine the two delicious habits of reading 
 and smoking abed with reasonable safety: e.g., 
 neat, removable book-covers of asbestos might 
 be provided, with gloves of vulcanized rubber 
 or some similar non-inflammable material; and 
 if one have the unlucky habit of nodding into 
 the lamp, the bonnet de null might also be of 
 rubber or asbestos. Such an apparatus should 
 render the careless bed-reader immune against 
 any but the most extraordinary accidents. I 
 would not have him feel too safe, however, for 
 as stolen pleasures are known to be sweetest, 
 so in this matter the bed-reader s gratification 
 is heightened and dulcified by a titillant sense 
 of lurking danger. Indeed, I make no doubt 
 
1 88 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 that a spark now and then dropping in the bed 
 clothes, or in the folds of the reader s nighty, 
 or in his whiskers (should he haply be val- 
 anced) and discovered before any great dam 
 age is done or profanity released, adds appre 
 ciably to the pleasure of the indulgence, and 
 is not a thing to be sedulously guarded against. 
 However, this is all a matter of taste, for we 
 know, without reference to theology, that some 
 persons can stand more fire than others. 
 
 This point being settled, I am asked to give 
 a list of books or authors suitable to the re 
 quirements of the mature bed-reader (there 
 are no others). I do not much relish the task, 
 as I can not bear to have my own reading se 
 lected for me, and the priggish effrontery of 
 those lettered persons who are constantly pro 
 posing lists of u best books" (in their estima 
 tion, forsooth!) moves my spleen not less than 
 the purgatorial industry of the Holy Office. 
 But perhaps I may indirectly oblige my friends 
 by glancing slightly at the preferences or 
 mere crotchets, if you will of an irreclaimable 
 bed-reader, who, being entirely quit of the 
 vanities of careless youth, has now reached 
 that mellowed philosophic age when he would 
 rather lie snugly abed with a bright lamp at 
 
A PORT OF AGE 189 
 
 his pillow and a genial author to talk to him 
 than do anything else in the world. Oh, by 
 my faith! 
 
 In the first place, then, I would put books 
 of a meditative personal cast, such as have the 
 privilege of addressing themselves to the 
 reader s intimate consciousness and of beguil 
 ing him into the illusion that their written 
 thoughts and confessions are his very own. Of 
 such favored books, beloved and cherished of 
 the true bed-reader, are the great essayists or 
 lay preachers, Montaigne, Bacon, Swift, Addi- 
 son, Voltaire, Rousseau, Rochefoucauld, Ma- 
 caulay, Lamb, Emerson, Carlyle, Thackeray 
 (in his Lectures and Roundabouts), Renan, 
 Amiel but I am resolved not to catalogue. 
 These and such as these are emphatically 
 thinking books, fit for the quiet commerce of 
 the midnight pillow; trusted confessors of the 
 soul, through whom it arrives the more per 
 fectly to know itself; faithful pilots in the per 
 plexed voyage of life; wise and loving friends 
 whose fidelity is never suspect or shaken; 
 solemn and tender counsellors who give us their 
 mighty hearts to read; august nuncios that de 
 liver the messages of the high gods. 
 
 I would bar all modern fiction, books of the 
 
1 90 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 hour that swarm of summer flies all trum 
 pery love stories founded on the longings of 
 puberty and green-sickness, all works on 
 theology and hagiography (except St. Augus 
 tine s Confessions), political histories, cyclo 
 pedias, scientific treatises, the whole accursed 
 tribe of world s condensed or canned literatures 
 and such like compilations, the books of Hall 
 Caine, Marie Corelli and G. Bernard Shaw,* 
 newspapers that fell brood of time-devourers 
 and magazines those pictured inanities. 
 
 After this summary clearing of the field, the 
 task of selection should not be difficult; but 
 even at this stage the prudent bed-reader can 
 not afford to go it blind. 
 
 I would not advise books of a violently hu 
 morous character more recent than Rabelais, 
 Don Quixote or Gil Bias, even though I may 
 here seem to utter treason against my beloved 
 Mark Twain. But I must be honest with my 
 readers bed-readers, of course and truth 
 compels me to say that a recumbent position 
 is not favorable to much exercise of the dia 
 phragm, which such reading calls for. I took 
 Huck Finn to bed with me once when I lay 
 
 *This without prejudice I am merely indicating a pref 
 erence of the "desipere in loco" order. 
 
A PORT OF AGE 191 
 
 down for a long illness, and hung to him in 
 spite of the doctor and the nurse, until the 
 happy meeting with Tom Sawyer, when I wan 
 dered off into a fantastic world where fictions 
 and realities were one. The doctor afterward 
 said I might have died laughing at any time, 
 and now I sometimes think that it wouldn t 
 have been such a bad thing nay, I even be 
 lieve that one couldn t chance upon a happier 
 kind of death. . . . 
 
 However, I must insist that my friends shall 
 sit up to Huck Finn, the Innocents and all that 
 glorious family connection, as also to their co- 
 sharers in a smiling immortality, Mr. Pickwick 
 and Sam Weller. Nor let me forget another 
 genial figure who has taken a tribute of harm 
 less mirth, scarcely inferior to theirs, from 
 thousands of hearts and whom they would wel 
 come to their benign fellowship I strongly 
 urge the reader who would have a care of his 
 health, not to go to bed with Mr. Dooley. 
 
 Ill 
 
 NEXT to the great essayists mentioned 
 above, the poets offer the best reading 
 for night and the bed indeed I am not sure 
 
192 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 but that it is the only way to read certain 
 poets. 
 
 I am equally fond of the prose and the 
 poetry of Heine, and think he furnishes a 
 variety of entertainment which, on several 
 counts, is unmatched by any writer. But Heine 
 gives no rest, and one is soon overborne by the 
 charges of his wit and the unceasing attacks of 
 his terrible raillery. 
 
 In the most intimate sense Horace is (of 
 course) without a rival as a companion and 
 comforter of the nightly pillow. This charm 
 ing Pagan has confessed and will always con 
 fess the best minds of the literate Christian 
 world. I know one person who owes his dear 
 est mental joys, his best nocturnal consolations, 
 and the very spring of hope itself to the little 
 great man of Rome. But he must be read in 
 the original a condition which unfortunately 
 disqualifies too many readers. The songs of 
 Horace, written in the immortal tongue of 
 Rome, can never become antiquated. Though 
 the Pontifex and the Virgin ceased hundreds 
 of years ago to climb the Capitolian hill, 
 though the name of Aufidus is lost where its 
 brawling current hurries down, still that treas 
 ure of genius endures, more lasting than brazen 
 
A PORT OF AGE 193 
 
 column, a joy and a refreshment ever to the 
 jaded souls of men. 
 
 Horace has the supreme and almost unique 
 fortune to appear always modern, his genius 
 being of the finest quality ever known and hap 
 pily preserved in an unchanging tongue. He 
 is, for instance, far more modern than Dante 
 and distinctly nearer to us than the Eliza 
 bethans. Alone, he constitutes a sufficient 
 reason for the admirable, though sometimes 
 foolishly censured, practice of reading abed. 
 
 I do not care to read the plays of Shake 
 speare betwixt the sheets it seems a piece of 
 coxcombry to coolly degust the accumulated 
 horrors of Macbeth and Lear while lolling on 
 your back and sybaritically exploring the soft 
 est places in your downy kingdom truly a 
 case of what s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba 1 
 But I find it quite different with the Poems, 
 which (I may remark) are too frequently 
 overlooked even by those who pride themselves 
 on knowing their Shakespeare. Lately, in Dr. 
 Rolfe s admirable edition, I so re-read the Son 
 nets, and for the first time arrived at some 
 thing like a true sense and appreciation of 
 their deep organ melodies, and at least a par 
 tial understanding of the strange lawless pas- 
 
i 9 4 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 sion which inspired those wonderful poems that 
 witness forever the glory and mayhap the 
 shame of Shakespeare.* 
 
 No doubt, the learned Dr. Rolfe had to sit 
 up to write his invaluable commentary, with a 
 thorny desk at his breast; how much more for 
 tunate I to digest it with unlabored impar 
 tiality, now and then calmly approving or, it 
 may be, controverting the Doctor, but without 
 heat; reclining at my ease, in a silence and ab 
 straction so perfect that fancy could almost 
 hear the living voices of the actors in this 
 strange, repellent drama of the greatest of 
 poets stranger and more darkly perplexed 
 than any which his genius gave to the stage 
 and the mind overleaped three full centuries to 
 that memorable English Spring 
 
 "When proud-pied April dress d in all his trim 
 Did put a spirit of youth in everything, 
 That heavy Saturn laugh d and leap d with 
 him!" 
 
 Letters of memorable men and women are 
 among the pleasantest and most profitable 
 reading for the bed. There is so great a plenty 
 
 *The question will, however, always remain a debatable 
 one, while Time and the enduring greatness of Shakespeare 
 evermore tend to silence it. 
 
A PORT OF AGE 195 
 
 of such books that I need not be at pains to 
 specify and as said before, I refuse to 
 catalogue. 
 
 In this domain Voltaire is facile princeps: 
 his wise, witty, enchanting letters (which have 
 survived in point of living interest the bulk of 
 his hundred volumes) give you the very heart 
 of that wonderful Eighteenth century that 
 Sphinx rather, some of whose propounded 
 riddles the world is even now striving to an 
 swer with enormous travail of blood and tears. 
 
 I may confess that, to my humor, Lamb s 
 letters are among the rarest deliti<z deliciarum, 
 the most enjoyable reading, of this rather fas 
 tidious description. 
 
 Dickens s letters are valuable beyond those 
 of most later English moderns, for their brave 
 and hopeful spirit. And to take a more recent 
 instance, Lafcadio Hearn s letters from Japan 
 are worthy to be included in our select bed- 
 reader s library; indeed there are some not un- 
 sapient critics who prefer them to his more 
 formal writings. 
 
 Books of autobiography are good, so that 
 they be not too veracious, like Franklin s; a 
 defect which pertaineth not to the far prefer 
 able Messer Cellini. Memoirs and personal 
 
196 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 chronicles I would not forbid, though the Pepy- 
 sian hunt has been run to death, out of com 
 pliment to the modern fashion of glorifying the 
 indecent Past, and is too often the mark of 
 snobbery and a vulgar soul. A man shall not 
 leave the empyrean of the poets to put his eye 
 to chamber keyholes and his nose to chamber 
 utensils with Samuel Pepys. . . . 
 
 Still, I would not deny that there be some 
 engaging scoundrels, like Cagliostro and the 
 before mentioned Cellini, with whom one may 
 have profitable commerce in bed : a thing that 
 during the lives of these worthies rarely 
 chanced to any man or, more especially, any 
 woman. 
 
XIII 
 
 THE KINGS 
 
 IT is still summer with the kings, God save 
 them ! a summer that has lasted for 
 many of them over a thousand years. 
 They make as brave a show to-day as ever in 
 the past. It is said they are neither loved nor 
 feared so much as of old, and I know not how 
 that may be; but of this I am sure, that the 
 glory of kings is the envy of the world. The 
 sunlight gilds their palaces and royal capitals, 
 and strikes through the many-hued windows of 
 their cathedrals in which they deign to accept 
 a homage second only to that paid to Divinity 
 itself. God is in His heaven, and they are on 
 their hundred thrones. 
 
 And these thrones are quite as safe to-day 
 as in the olden time when few or none doubted 
 that the kings were set upon them by Divine 
 Will. Thousands of armed men watch day 
 and night to guard their peace. Cannon flank 
 the entrances to their castles and palaces. The 
 197 
 
198 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 life of the king is the chief care and preoccu 
 pation of every people many starve that he 
 may live as befits his royal state many die in 
 battle that his throne may be secure. Yet it is 
 true, as in the olden time, that a king falls now 
 and then under the assassin s hand; and the 
 wisdom of man has never rightly explained this 
 seeming failure of the providence of God. But 
 there is a lot for kings as for common men, 
 and accidents prove nothing. Kingship is still 
 the best job in the world and there are no 
 resignations. Once in a while, it is true, an 
 abdication has to be declared on account of the 
 imbecility of some crowned head but think 
 how long kings have been breeding kings! 
 What wonder that the distemper should now 
 and then break out in the royal stud? 
 
 It is summer with the kings. They have 
 never been a costlier luxury than they are to 
 day, except that they are not suffered to make 
 war so often.* Yet the world continues to 
 pay the price of kings with gladness, and 
 though we have heard so much of the rising 
 tide of democracy, it has not wet the foot of a 
 single throne in our time. No doubt it will 
 sweep over them all some day, but our chil- 
 
 * Written before the Great War, 1914-1918! 
 
THE KINGS 199 
 
 dren s children shall not see it. There is hardly 
 a king in Europe whose tenure is not quite as 
 good as that of our glorious Republic. King 
 ship is even a better risk than when Canute 
 set his chair in the sands of the shore. Wrap 
 it up in what shape of mortality you please 
 let it look out boldly from the eyes of a real 
 king, as rarely happens; let it peer from under 
 the broken forehead of a fool or ogle in the 
 glances of a hoary old Silenus, it is still the 
 one thing in the world which absolutely com 
 pels reverence. Other forms of authority are 
 discounted more and more; the Pope who once 
 had rule over kings, sees his sovereignty 
 dwindled to a garden s breadth; the chiefs of 
 republics wield a precarious power, often with 
 out respect : the glory that hedges a king re 
 mains undiminished and unaltered. The kings 
 owe much to God, and God owes something 
 to the kings when the world shall have seen 
 the last of these, it will perhaps discard the 
 old idea of Divinity. But, as I have said al 
 ready, that will take a long, long time so long 
 that it is quite useless to form theories on the 
 subject. 
 
 It is summer with the kings. Nowhere such 
 radiant, golden summer as in royalty-loving 
 
200 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Germany. There, big thrones and little thrones 
 such a lot of them ! are all sound and safe 
 sounder and safer than some of the royal 
 heads that peer out from them. There the 
 play of kingship has been played with the best 
 success to an audience that seldom criticizes 
 and never gets tired nor steals away between 
 the acts. If the good God composed this play, 
 as so many people piously believe, then 
 He must hold the honest Germans in special 
 favor as an author He can not but be flat 
 tered. That he does so hold them is evident 
 from His permitting them to triumph over 
 those incomparably better actors, the French.* 
 This charming, prosaic, joyous, antiquated, 
 picturesque, yet somewhat dull pageant of 
 royalty goes on in Germany forever. If it ever 
 came to a stop for but one day, we may be sure 
 the honest sun that has beamed approvingly 
 upon it for centuries would do likewise. The 
 people fully believe that God wrote the play, 
 and they cling the more fondly to the belief for 
 the reason aforesaid that it is, like them 
 selves, a little dull. And what matters the 
 sameness of the plot or the occasional inca 
 pacity of the leading actors, since the proper- 
 
 *In 1870-1871. 
 
THE KINGS 201 
 
 ties are as rich as ever and the stage-setting 
 worthy of the best representations in the past? 
 Yes, it is summer with the kings, and never 
 have they seemed safer on their hundred 
 thrones. But now as ever in the long story of 
 kingship, their safety lies not so much in their 
 castles and forts, their arms and sentinels, their 
 myriad spies and their hundred-handed police. 
 Not so much in these things as in the sufferance 
 of the patient people, and also their childlike 
 enjoyment of the old play. From time to time 
 the end of the piece is predicted; but it has 
 had a famous run, and it will surely keep the 
 boards while there is summer with the kings. 
 
 II 
 
 SOME time ago I wrote that it was sum 
 mer with the kings, but wondrous is the 
 change wrought within a few short months. 
 Now instead of golden summer, with the cour 
 tier sun gilding their palaces and domes and 
 towers, and all the world eager to win a smile 
 of them, a ray of royal favor, there is win 
 ter, black with dread, lurid with rebellion, and 
 sinister with every threat of treason and 
 anarchy. 
 
 Though the kings yet hold some show of 
 
202 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 sovereignty, they are as prisoners in their own 
 strong places, beleaguered by the victorious 
 people and feeling no trust in the very guards 
 of their person. The grand palaces are closed 
 up and deserted, and the splendid cathedrals, 
 in which so often the Te Deum has been raised 
 in celebration of some royal victory, are now 
 dark and silent, save for the threnody of 
 mourning bells. 
 
 Yes, it is winter with the kings. Panic, ter 
 ror and wild-eyed unrest hold the place of that 
 mailed security which had sate at scornful ease 
 there during a thousand years. The kings look 
 fearfully forth from their strong towers and 
 castles, marking the flames of revolution that 
 creep steadily nearer and hearing the distant 
 shouts of the advancing army of rebellion. No 
 heart of grace do the kings find in the thick 
 ness of the encompassing walls or the yet un 
 broken ranks of their soldiery. For every wind 
 is now the courier of some new treason or blow 
 at their power. Fealty is become a snare that 
 watches its chance to kill or betray he that 
 rides forth with the royal command shall turn 
 traitor ere yet he hath passed the shadow of 
 the towers. It is marvellous how loyalty de 
 serts a falling kingl 
 
THE KINGS 203 
 
 Come now the priests in their most gorgeous 
 vestments and bearing their most sacred 
 images to cheer and console the dejected 
 monarch. Of their fidelity he is at least as 
 sured, for to him and him alone they owe the 
 grandeur of their state. But alas ! what are 
 priests to a king who has lost his people? . . . 
 nay, they but remind him in his bitter despair 
 of that Power which "hath put down the 
 mighty from their seat and hath exalted them 
 of low degree". Idly as he had often marked 
 the solemn words, they come back to him now 
 with a terrible weight of meaning. Almost he 
 could bring himself to spit upon these fawning 
 priests who had ever feared to show him the 
 naked purport of the accusing test that now 
 pierces his heart like a sword. And he turns 
 away from their mummeries lest he should cry 
 out against the treachery of their God and his 
 who has thus abandoned him in his need. 
 
 It is winter with the kings. That old habit 
 of loyalty and obedience which held their 
 thrones as if mortised and tenoned in granite, 
 has vanished in an hour. Oh, the kings can 
 not see how long it took to mine and shatter 
 their rock of sovereignty, and they blindly re 
 gard as the madness of a moment what has 
 
204 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 been the patient labor of centuries. Do not 
 flout them in their fallen state by telling them 
 that no hands wrought so busily at the work 
 of destruction as their own. Have pity on the 
 humbled kings ! 
 
 But wait! all can not yet be lost. Call in 
 the leaders of the people and let us pledge our 
 kingly word anew to grant the things they ask. 
 Tis but a moment s humiliation and the fools 
 will be content and huzza themselves back into 
 our royal favor. Think you we do not know 
 the cattle? Ho, there! let the varlets be 
 shown into our presence. 
 
 Alas, Sire! it is now too late. Hard 
 though it be to credit, the besotted people 
 pardon, Sire, for reporting the accursed heresy 
 have at last abandoned that to which they 
 fondly clung in anguish and misery and trial, 
 against even the evidence and reason of their 
 brute minds, and in spite of all that your royal 
 ancestors could do to alienate and destroy 
 their faith in kings! 
 
 But this is madness! it can not be. What 
 will the infatuate, misguided wretches do with 
 out their sovereign? Answer us that! 
 
 Craving your gracious pardon, Sire, they 
 will do as well as they can. And from what 
 
THE KINGS 205 
 
 we, your humble councillors, can learn, they ex 
 pect to make shift with a saucy jade wearing 
 a Phrygian cap, whom they name Lib 
 erty ! . . . 
 
 It is winter with the kings, but summer with 
 the peoples who have waited long enough for 
 their turn. Lustily are they girded up and 
 made ready for the gleaning. Boldly and 
 unitedly they march upon the ripe and waiting 
 fields which, so often sowed with their blood 
 and sweat, they now claim for their very own. 
 God grant they may bring the harvest home ! 
 
XIV 
 
 LOUIS THE GRAND 
 
 Yes, I like to dream of the rare old time 
 
 When Louis the Grand was King; 
 And here I am moved to say in rhyme 
 
 What his poets might not sing: 
 The mask of powder and scent and lace, 
 
 The court with its splendors gay, 
 The sly intrigues, with their wicked grace, 
 
 And the King s own part in the play. 
 [My Favorite Poet] 
 
 AMONG kings the star performer was 
 easily Louis Fourteenth of France. 
 He knew his role better than any 
 crowned mime that has ever lived. He was 
 perfect in every detail of its business, and of 
 all men who have worn a crown he left the 
 largest and most flattering memory of himself. 
 The story of Louis Fourteenth has been 
 variously told, and most people agree that it 
 
 is one of the most interesting in the world. In 
 
 206 
 
LOUIS THE GRAND 207 
 
 truth, Clio has lavished upon it much of her 
 art and not a little of her irony. There have 
 been many attempts to depreciate Louis, or at 
 least to measure him by merely human stand 
 ards without exaggeration, he was God to 
 his own world as much as Caesar Augustus was 
 to his. The Jacobins during the Revolution 
 dragged him from his royal tomb and, apply 
 ing a tailor s tape to the cadaver, found that 
 he was a few inches shorter than his Court be 
 lieved. But it seems to me that they should 
 have allowed for shrinkage. Voltaire the 
 mocker who, though a courtier, was no great 
 lover of kings, writes of Louis with as much 
 respect as he could command. The terrible 
 rictus the grin flickers out here and there, 
 to be sure, but for the most part Monsieur 
 Arouet keeps his countenance well. An ex 
 cellent judge of ability in kings and commoners, 
 there is no doubt that he regarded Louis as 
 an able man. As a mere man he was never 
 thought of by his own world during the long 
 years of his grandeur. People could not look 
 at him without a sun-dazzle in their eyes that 
 glory which shut out so much waste of blood 
 and treasure, such ruinous devastation of 
 peaceful lands, such misery among the serfs of 
 
208 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 the soil, such terror of conscription stalking 
 abroad everywhere like a universal Death I 
 
 Daudet tells a pretty story of a young 
 dauphin of France who, with charming naivete, 
 alluded to God as "Our Cousin". Louis had 
 too much taste to make such a solecism, but 
 had he done so we may be sure the Court would 
 not have minded it, and the Archbishop of 
 Paris would have offered no objection. Heaven 
 was never so near any place on this earth as 
 it was to Versailles in those days. When 
 Madame de Maintenon complained to her 
 brother that she could not endure the burden 
 of her relations with the King, he remarked, 
 "Perhaps you have an idea of marrying 
 Almighty God!" 
 
 There were some great men in the time of 
 Louis the Grand, but nobody thought of in 
 sulting the King by a comparison with his 
 sovereign Majesty. Truly the world never 
 saw a more finished actor. Great generals 
 trembled when ushered into the Presence and 
 scarcely dared look above the King s knee. 
 Racine, the greatest poet of the age, having 
 written something which gave his Majesty of 
 fence, actually went home and died of grief 
 because Louis would not speak to him. This 
 
LOUIS THE GRAND 209 
 
 is the saddest of his tragedies. There was also 
 a caterer who killed himself in the most heroic 
 manner because a supply of fresh fish had 
 failed to reach Versailles in time for the King s 
 dinner. In short, all persons, high or low, 
 shared in the illusion produced by the power 
 and grandeur, and above all, the personality 
 of Louis. For him all poets sang, all sculptors 
 carved, all painters painted. Comedy gave 
 him her brightest smiles and Tragedy her rar 
 est tears; while in his august cause on a hun 
 dred bloody fields the crested chivalry of 
 France rode smiling to death ! 
 
 But nowhere was the dominion of Louis so 
 absolute as in the hearts of the women. For 
 women love a King God bless them! and 
 worship, especially of a man, is second nature 
 to them. Therein is the secret of their passion 
 ate attachment to royalty in every age and 
 country, and doubtless also of their devotion to 
 the Church, in which the same idea is symbo 
 lized. Madame de Sevigne was as clever a 
 woman as ever lived, with a most penetrating 
 look into human nature and much experience 
 of life. Yet her letters betray that she was 
 under the universal illusion as to Louis, and if 
 there be scandal in the Court of Heaven, it 
 
210 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 could not be whispered more delicately than 
 Madame de Sevigne does it. 
 
 Perhaps as an artist the King makes the 
 most favorable showing in his affairs with 
 women, and to many readers this is the most 
 attractive part of his wonderful history. How 
 he contrived to carry on his amours, in view 
 of the whole Court, without loss of dignity and 
 even with perfect decorum, is as choice a bit 
 as Clio has in her wallet. He never bungled, 
 or hurried, or made a mess of matters, or for 
 got an instant that he was King. In this, as 
 in all other things, he was truly magnificent, 
 and the lady upon whom his choice happened 
 to fall, though she were among the proudest 
 and loftiest in the realm, was consumingly en 
 vied for and scarcely deemed herself worthy 
 of the intended honor. 
 
 The King s choice of a new favorite was 
 usually announced by a gorgeous fete designed 
 to express the royal desire. Very soon every 
 body was in the secret, including the Queen, 
 who no doubt had the earliest intimation of it, 
 and whose admirably resigned conduct, under 
 such trying circumstances, was perhaps as 
 creditable to Louis as any exploit sculptured 
 on his monuments. There were several sue- 
 
LOUIS THE GRAND 211 
 
 cessive favorites, but Louis was not a volup 
 tuary, in the worst sense, and he never kept a 
 half-dozen mistresses in commission at once, 
 like the Merry Monarch across the Channel. 
 Versailles under Louis never ceased to be a 
 palace. Whitehall under Charles the Second 
 became and long remained a brothel. A deli 
 cate odor of romance still hovers about the 
 adulteries of Louis; the amours of the Stuart 
 belong to the pornography of history. 
 
 Another point of difference : the women 
 whom Louis had honored with his august affec 
 tions never betrayed and disgraced him, like 
 the concubines of Charles, and upon his leav 
 ing them, never turned to other men for con 
 solation. Aut Casar, aut nullus! Like the 
 lovely La Valliere, they went into convents, or 
 like the superb Montespan, withdrew from the 
 Court. It was doubtless of the La Valliere 
 that Voltaire was thinking when he said that 
 women give themselves to God when they are 
 no longer acceptable to men. 
 
 The King was very liberal to his lady 
 friends, as well he might be, since it was al 
 lowed that he owned all the wealth of the 
 country, and it cannot be denied that he spent 
 it accordingly. He showered titles and estates 
 
212 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 upon his mistresses, and made no distinction 
 between his bastards and the legitimate royal 
 issue. In this he proved that a strong man can 
 overrule every convention. Louis s mistresses 
 were in turn the true queens of France, and 
 alliance with his bastards was eagerly sought 
 by the noblest houses in the kingdom. 
 
 Strange to say, although Louis was one of 
 the best Catholics in the world, the Church 
 seems to have winked at these little irregulari 
 ties. Bossuet the eloquent never made them 
 the subject of a sermon delivered in the pres 
 ence of the great Monarch. In his old age, 
 however, Louis did penance for his good times 
 by revoking the Edict of Nantes and causing a 
 great persecution of his Protestant subjects. 
 Some writers ascribe this foolish and cruel act, 
 so contrary to Louis s natural kindness, to the 
 influence of Madame de Maintenon, who was 
 first the mistress and then the privately wedded 
 but unacknowledged wife of the King. This 
 lady was far from being the most beautiful of 
 his mistresses, but she outpointed them all in 
 sense and tact. She was of a deep religious 
 cast of mind, which in that age was not deemed 
 inconsistent with the acceptance of such pleas 
 ures as fell to ladies of high station. The rec- 
 
LOUIS THE GRAND 213 
 
 onciling of piety and pleasure was, in truth, the 
 consummate comedy of the reign of Louis the 
 Grand. 
 
 I have taken the somewhat original view that 
 Louis was an artist, since he shaped his life in 
 such superb fashion, and came tardy off neither 
 in his least nor greatest efforts. 
 
 I add a proof: Does not the coquetry of the 
 artist speak in his leaving to the world the un 
 solved mystery * of the Man in the Iron Mask? 
 
 * For the solution of this long baffling enigma, which was 
 too much even for the keen-witted Voltaire, see the Author s 
 "Adventures in Life and Letters." 
 
XV 
 
 DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER * 
 
 I WAS dining lately at Mouquin s, alone. 
 You had better not so dine there, unless 
 you have reached that melancholy climac 
 teric, "a certain age" (I do -not plead guilty 
 myself). It is not good for men to dine alone 
 at Mouquin s, and it is even worse for Mou 
 quin s. All here is planned for sociability and 
 the sexes the menu is a paean of sex as frankly 
 declarative as a poem of Walt Whitman s; 
 the wines, the suave, light-footed French wait 
 ers (really French), seeing all and nothing, the 
 softly refulgent electric bulbs, the very genius 
 of the place, all bespeak that potent instinct 
 which harks back to the morning of the world. 
 One sees it in the smallest matters of detail and 
 arrangement. Elsewhere there is room and 
 entertainment for the selfish male, but here 
 go to ! The tables are not adapted for solitary 
 
 * Since we are now under the Dry Dispensation, I reprint 
 this bit of impressionism mainly for historic reasons. M. M. 
 214 
 
DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER 215 
 
 dining; at the very tiniest of them there is 
 room for two : an arrangement that would have 
 moved the irony of Schopenhauer, and that 
 signalizes the grand talent of Monsieur Mou- 
 quin. To conclude, a solitary diner is an em 
 barrassment, a reproach, a fly in the ointment 
 of Monsieur Mouquin. I was all three to him 
 lately, but I make him my most profound apolo 
 gies it shall not occur again. Why, I am now 
 to tell. 
 
 I was dining at Mouquin s alone, and it 
 seemed as if the spirit of Schopenhauer sud 
 denly descended upon me, who had been there 
 so often, joyous and joyously companioned. 
 The waiter took my order with a veiled hint 
 of disapproval in his manner. He forgot, too, 
 that he was of Mouquin s and therefore, an 
 teriorly of Paris he spoke English far too 
 well for the credit of the house. At Mouquin s, 
 you know, the wines and the waiters are alike 
 imported. I knew what the waiter was think 
 ing about I felt and understood his subtly in 
 sinuated reproach: I was alone. There was no 
 person of the opposite sex with me to double 
 or treble the bill, and to obey whose slightest 
 hinted wish the garden would fly with winged 
 feet, a la Mercure. Decidedly it is a violence 
 
216 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 to the Parisian waiter to dine alone at Mou- 
 quin s, for it robs him of that pleasing incen 
 tive which is essential to the perfect exhibition 
 of his art. I do not qualify the phrase the 
 French waiter at Mouquin s is an artist, and 
 never more so than when he rebukes me, word 
 lessly and without offence, for dining alone. 
 
 However, I was a good deal worse than be 
 ing alone or in company, for have I not said 
 that Schopenhauer was with me? Do you 
 know Schopenhauer? Is he anything more 
 than a name to you, that giant sacker of 
 dreams, that deadly dissector of illusions, that 
 pitiless puncturer of the poetry of the sexes, 
 that daring exposer of Nature s most tenderly 
 cherished and vigilantly guarded secrets, whose 
 thought still lies like a blight upon the world? 
 Do you know his beautiful theory of love which 
 is as simple as the process of digestion, and in 
 deed very similar to it? Once in Berlin an 
 enthusiast spoke in Schopenhauer s presence of 
 the "immortal passion". The Master turned 
 upon him with his frightful sneer and asked if 
 his bowels were immortal ! . . . 
 
 When Actaeon surprised the chaste Diana 
 at her bath, he was merely torn to pieces by 
 his own hounds. Schopenhauer s punishment 
 
DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER 217 
 
 for betraying the deepest arcana of Nature was 
 worse, yet not worse than the crime merited- 
 he was compelled to eat his own heart! . . . 
 Not, I grant you, a cheerful table-mate for a 
 dinner at Mouquin s, when the lights glow 
 charmingly, and the bustling waiters, the in 
 coming guests, the rustling of skirts, the low 
 laughter indicative of expectancy, and the con 
 fused yet agreeable murmur of voices the 
 bass or baritone of the men mingled with the 
 lighter tones of the women announce a joy 
 ous evening. Charming fugue, in which a deli 
 cate ear may detect every note of appetite and 
 passion, though the players use the surd with 
 the most artistic precaution. (Mouquin s is 
 the most discreet and admirably regulated of 
 cafes.) Polite overture to the orgasm of the 
 Belly-God and perhaps to the satisfaction of 
 certain allied divinities whom I may not spec 
 ify. Admirable convention, by which men and 
 women come in sacrificial garments, or evening 
 attire, to worship at the shrine of the Flesh. 
 
 The climacteric, perhaps? My dear sir, 
 when I tip the waiter to-night, I can get him to 
 say easily that I am not a day over thirty. . . . 
 
 Throughout the large room (we are up 
 stairs, gentle reader) the tables are filling rap- 
 
2i8 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 idly with well-dressed men and women. Noth 
 ing in their appearance, generally, to challenge 
 remark; a conventional crowd of male and fe 
 male New Yorkers, intent on a good dinner and 
 subsidiary enjoyments. For the first time, per 
 haps, I notice how pleasant it is to observe 
 everything at leisure, without having to talk 
 to anyone you really can not see things in a 
 detached, philosophic manner when you have 
 to jabber to a pretty woman. 
 
 A clerical-looking gentleman, with a severe 
 forehead, is one of my near neighbors. His 
 companion is a handsome young woman, rather 
 highly colored, who seems more at home than 
 the forehead. A couple take the table next to 
 mine; the young fellow is well-looking enough, 
 the girl has the short, colorless, indeterminate 
 American face, with its pert resolve to be 
 pretty; both are young and have eyes only for 
 each other that s the point. They sit down 
 to the table as if preparing for the event of 
 their lives; this eager young expectancy is 
 smilingly noted by others than myself. 
 
 A large man convoying three heavy, ma 
 tronly women who yet do not look like mothers 
 you know that familiar New York type 
 takes a favorable station against the wall 
 
DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER 219 
 
 where there is much room for eating and 
 whence the outlook is commanding. The large 
 one perjures himself fearfully in explaining 
 how he had it specially reserved. I know him 
 for a genial liar, and maybe the ladies do, too. 
 These four have evidently come to eat and 
 drink their fill, and to look on: Schopenhauer 
 is no concern of theirs, nor they of his. 
 
 Not so this elderly man with the dashing 
 young woman on his arm the man is too hand 
 some to be called old, in spite of his white hair. 
 The young woman has that look of complete 
 self-possession and easy tolerance which such 
 young women commonly manifest toward their 
 elderly admirers this is not romance, but what 
 is generically termed the "sure thing". Scho 
 penhauer is but faintly interested, and my eyes 
 wander toward the little American type. She 
 has had her second glass of wine by this time, 
 and it has hoisted a tiny flag in her cheek. A 
 little more and she will succeed in her deter 
 mination to be pretty, the dinner is only half 
 under way. Schopenhauer bids me note now 
 that she eats with undisguised appetite, and 
 that she fixes a steadier gaze upon her young 
 man than he can always meet. Both young 
 heads are together and they eat as fast as they 
 
220 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 talk but youth atones for all. These two 
 continue to draw the gaze of most persons in 
 their vicinity. 
 
 There have been one or two mild selections 
 by the orchestra, but they passed unnoticed in 
 the first stern business of eating. It is a pity 
 that artists should be subjected to such an in 
 dignity, but it can not well be avoided by artists 
 who play for hungry people. The leader of 
 Mouquin s orchestra perhaps I should say 
 the orchestra at Mouquin s is a young man 
 with a high forehead and long hair. I am not 
 a critic of music, like my friend James Huneker, 
 and I am unhappy in the difficult vocabulary 
 which that gifted writer employs. But it seems 
 to me the conductor and first violinist at Mou 
 quin s is an artist. A veritable artist! No 
 doubt I shall be laughed at for this I have 
 said that I am ignorant of the technique of 
 criticism. 
 
 When the orgasm of eating had in a degree 
 subsided, Schopenhauer nudged me to observe 
 how the company began to give some attention 
 to the music and even to applaud a little. Ah, 
 it was then the young leader seemed grand 
 and inspired to me. He looked as if he did 
 not eat much himself; and his music some- 
 
DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER 221 
 
 thing from Tannhauser fell on my ears like 
 a high rebuke to those guzzling men and 
 women. I do not know for sure what the 
 "motif" of it was (this word is from James 
 Huneker), but the refrain sounded to me like, 
 "Do not be swine! Do not be swine!" 
 
 The swine were in no way abashed per 
 haps they did not understand the personal allu 
 sion. I have read somewhere in James Hune 
 ker that the Wagnerian "motif is often very 
 difficult to follow. 
 
 II 
 
 WE had reached the coffee, that psychic 
 moment when the world is belted with 
 happiness; when all our desires seem attain 
 able; when with facile assurance we discount 
 the most precious favors of love or fortune. 
 
 "You will now observe," whispered my in 
 visible guest, "that with these animals the 
 present is the acute or critical moment of diges 
 tion, from which result many unclaimed chil 
 dren and much folly in the world. The edge 
 of appetite has been dulled, but there is still a 
 desire to eat, and the stage of repletion is yet 
 to be reached. These animals now think them 
 selves in a happy condition for the aesthetic 
 
222 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 enjoyment of art and even for the raptures of 
 love. They have been fed." 
 
 The terrible irony of the tone, more than 
 the words, caused me to turn apprehensively; 
 but no one was listening, and my hat and coat 
 occupied the chair where should have sat my 
 vis-a-vis. 
 
 With the coming of the cordials and the 
 lighting of cigarettes, the music changed to 
 gayer measures. The young maestro s head 
 was thrown back and in his eye flamed the fire 
 of what I must call inspiration, in default of 
 the proper phrase or hunekerism; while his 
 bow executed the most vivid lightning of 
 melody. This was the moment of his nightly 
 triumph, when his artist soul was in some de 
 gree compensated for the base milieu in which 
 his genius had been set by an evil destiny. He 
 now saw before him an alert, appreciative audi 
 ence, instead of an assembly of feeding men 
 and women. For the moment he would not 
 have changed places with a conductor of grand 
 opera. 
 
 "Note that foolish fellow s delusion," said 
 Schopenhauer. "I have exposed it a hundred 
 times. He thinks he is playing to the souls, 
 the emotions of all these people, and he plumes 
 
DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER 223 
 
 himself upon his paltry art. They also are a 
 party to his cheat. He is really playing to 
 their stomachs, and their applause, their ap 
 preciation, is purely sensual. Yet I will not 
 deny that he is doing them a service in assisting 
 the process of digestion; but it is purely physio 
 logical, sheerly animal. The question of art 
 does not enter at all, any more than the ques 
 tion of love does in the mind of yonder old 
 gentleman who has eaten and drunk too well, 
 and is now doting with senile desire upon that 
 young woman." 
 
 I noticed indeed that the elderly gentleman 
 had become gay and amorously confidential, 
 while his companion smiled often with affected 
 carelessness, yet seemed to be curiously ob 
 servant of his every word and gesture. But 
 their affair was no matter for speculation. 
 
 I glanced toward the clerical gentleman with 
 the severe forehead. Both he and the fore 
 head had relaxed perceptibly, and there was 
 evident that singular change which takes place 
 when a man doffs the conventional mask of self. 
 His lady friend seemed disposed to lead him 
 further. No romance here, I thought. . . . 
 "It is the stuff of all romances," snarled Scho 
 penhauer. 
 
224 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 The heavy women waddled out once or twice 
 to the retiring room and came back to drink 
 anew. No man looked at them, save in idle 
 curiosity they were beyond tempting or temp 
 tation. "These represent the consummate 
 flower of the sexual or passional instinct," re 
 marked the sage. "Gross as they now seem, 
 they were once young and what is called de 
 sirable. They yielded fully to their animal 
 requirements they ate, drank and loved, or to 
 speak more correctly, digested with such re 
 sults as we now see." 
 
 I shuddered . . . but the large women were 
 indubitably enjoying themselves. 
 
 There was more music the guests ap 
 plauded ever the more generously. The leader 
 now condescended like a veritable artist 
 abas I e cafe! 
 
 I noticed that my little American beauty left 
 the room (without her wraps) a bit unsteadily, 
 and came back presently, very high in color. A 
 drink was waiting for her, and she began talk 
 ing with her young man as if he and she were 
 alone in the world. I noticed also that the 
 young man carried his liquor rather better and 
 seemed to shrink a little under the eyes at- 
 
DINING WITH SCHOPENHAUER 225 
 
 tracted by the girl s condition. In my ear I 
 heard the sardonic whisper of Schopenhauer: 
 "They call this love!" . . . 
 
 I would rather dine with a pretty woman at 
 Mouquin s or elsewhere, than with any philoso 
 pher, living or dead. Especially Schopen 
 hauer: a has the climacteric! 
 
XVI 
 
 ON LETTERS 
 
 THE pleasantest thing in the world to 
 receive is a good letter. 
 Our dearest literary joys are not 
 to be weighed in comparison; indeed they are 
 not at all of the argument, for we share them 
 with many. But a letter a true letter I would 
 say belongs to us in an intimate and peculiar 
 sense; something in ourselves has summoned it, 
 and perhaps the deepest source of our pleasure 
 is, that it could not have been written to an 
 other. 
 
 For it takes two to make a true letter one 
 to inspire and one to write it; one to summon 
 and one to send. 
 
 Such a letter is the child of love, and we 
 rightly hold ourselves blessed for it. A few 
 such letters none of us can expect many 
 make shining epochs in our lives. 
 
 But these letters are of the rarest, and I 
 
 would now speak rather of such as we may not 
 226 
 
ON LETTERS 227 
 
 too uncommonly hope to receive, supposing 
 (egotistically) we have that in us which has 
 grace to summon them. 
 
 A genuine letter is the best gift and proof of 
 friendship. No man can write it who is only 
 half or three-quarters your friend; he might 
 give you money this he could not give. 
 
 I have sometimes been convinced that a man 
 was heartily my friend until I received a letter 
 from him which showed me my error. Not in 
 deed that such was his desire, nor could I point 
 out the word or phrase that enlightened me. 
 I knew that was all. 
 
 This will perhaps seem the very opposite of 
 the truth to persons who have never considered 
 the matter deeply, and who think nothing is so 
 easily given and obtained as a letter. But I am 
 writing for those who understand. 
 
 If you have ever been deceived in your 
 dreams of friendship, look now over those old 
 letters you kept, and you will wonder how you 
 could have cheated yourself; the truth you were 
 once blind to, stares out from every written 
 page. It was there always, but your self-love 
 would not see. 
 
 Into every real letter the soul of the writer 
 passes. It is this that gives a fabulous value 
 
228 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 to the letters of great and famous persons con 
 cerning whom the world is ever curious mak 
 ers of history, poets, warriors, kings and 
 criminals, queens and courtesans, all who for 
 good or evil cause^ have gained a lasting re 
 nown. The collectors are justified by a psy 
 chology which few of them can penetrate. 
 
 The letters of some persons of whom we 
 possess not a scrap of writing, would be abso 
 lutely priceless. 
 
 Is there, for example, enough worth in 
 money to estimate the value of a letter written 
 by the hand of JESUS? Can you imagine any 
 thing that would so thrill the world? . . . 
 
 Or, to take a lower and more probable in 
 stance : A First Folio of Shakespeare is worth 
 several thousand dollars, and the owner of one 
 never has to haggle for his price the book it 
 self is the ready money. The number of copies 
 in the world is accurately known, as well as the 
 fortunate owners. Some rich men are content 
 with the distinction of possessing this rare vol 
 ume, and they would like to have the fact men 
 tioned on their tombstone. Well, a genuine 
 letter of Shakespeare s say to "Mr. W. H.", 
 for example would probably be worth more 
 than all the First Folios in existence. True, 
 
ON LETTERS 229 
 
 the poet had hardly a thought or sentiment or 
 idea that he did not express somewhere in his 
 plays or poems. No matter these were of 
 public note, in the way of his calling; what the 
 world wants is a look into the innermost soul 
 of the man Shakespeare, who has escaped amid 
 the glory of the poet. A letter! a letter! 
 
 Charles Lamb offers a notable proof of the 
 superiority of genuine letters over mere literary 
 compositions. He wrote many letters to his 
 friends from his high stool in Leadenhall 
 street; letters that have never been equalled for 
 quaint humor, shrewd-glancing observation, 
 kindly comment on men and manners, and, 
 above all, the intimate revelation of one of the 
 most charming personalities ever known. Being 
 thrifty in a literary sense, and by no means a 
 ready writer he speaks of composing with 
 "slow pain" it was his habit to make his per 
 sonal letters do a double service by turning 
 them into essays for the press and, generally, 
 spoiling them. At any rate, I prefer the let 
 ters. 
 
 The truth behind this matter is, that if a 
 man be capable and make a practice of writing 
 many good letters, he will surely fall off in 
 other lines of literary effort. Renan discov- 
 
230 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 ered this early in his career, and was very 
 sparing thereafter of letters which took any 
 thing out of him in a literary way. One might 
 call this a sort of economy, keeping the honey 
 for the hive. It is not a bad plan, in a thrifty 
 sense, but this article can not sympathize with 
 it, as it makes for the poverty of letters. 
 
 II 
 
 ONE hears it said often that the age of 
 letter-writing is past, and certainly it may 
 be granted that the heavy firing in this depart 
 ment of Literature is over and done with. 
 Chesterfield and Madame de Sevigne we have 
 not always with us, save in their classic re 
 siduum, and few are those who seek to chal 
 lenge their long-maintained primacy. Letter- 
 writing is regarded as "slow work" in this 
 rapid age there are the telephone and tele 
 graph, those arch-enemies of the Epistolary 
 Muse ; and alack ! there is the typewriter, that 
 marvellous aid to novelists and most effectual 
 kill-joy of the letter-writer why this should 
 be so is another curious point of psychology, 
 but so it is, as all the world agrees. 
 
 The shy Genius of Letter-writing revolts 
 from this mechanical, public contrivance which 
 
ON LETTERS 231 
 
 must have everything in crude black-and-white, 
 and permits of no subtle reticence or half-dis 
 closure, or discreet adumbration, such as we 
 may confide to the intimate pen. Perhaps let 
 ter-writing went out with the advent of this 
 so-called Tool of Progress and multiplier of 
 Popular Fiction. Indubitable it is at any rate 
 that while the blood of the true letter-writer 
 circulates genially in his pen, it never seems to 
 get into the typewriter. 
 
 Even literary persons nowadays, nay, these 
 particularly, I am assured, are but little given 
 to the gentle art of letter-writing. I have been 
 astonished by the inept, spiritless, even dull let 
 ters of two or three authors of my acquaintance 
 who have a great public vogue on account of 
 their reputed wit and brilliancy; one would 
 no more suspect it from their letters than from 
 their laundry-bills. Why this anomaly? 
 "Thrift, Horatio, thrift !" these gifted 
 authors bring to letter-writing the dregs of 
 their minds, saving their spirit, grace, charm 
 and sincerity for the shop, i.e., the professional 
 "copy". The vital note of sympathy, the in 
 stant flow from mind to mind, in a word, all 
 that goes to make a genuine letter, is vain to 
 seek in their postal effusions. 
 
232 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 However, admitting a sensible abatement 
 and falling off in the epistolary province, and 
 allowing that the classic letter-writers are in 
 no danger from contemporary rivalship, I be 
 lieve there is still abundant reason for hope 
 and comfort on the part of all who cherish 
 true letters. A very ancient scribe has observed 
 that the thing which hath been is that which 
 shall be. So I think one is justified in holding 
 that there will always be good letters written, 
 and especially by women bless their kind 
 hearts and busy, fertile minds ! who, literary 
 or unliterary, have from the first use of post or 
 messenger scribbled off the best letters in the 
 world. 
 
 And why? the skeptical reader may ask. . . . 
 
 It is a large subject and an intricate, com 
 prehending the whole difference between the 
 sexes, but for the present occasion we may con 
 tent ourselves with this: There is a peculiar 
 sort of abnegation and devotion, an unselfish 
 and naive desire to please, implicit in the true 
 letter-writer, which rarely falls to the endow 
 ment of mere Man! It must also be conceded 
 that in the subsidiary graces of the epistolary 
 art, women have always excelled their lords 
 and masters (pre-Twentieth century style). 
 
ON LETTERS 233 
 
 Finally, the deepest word on this point is yet 
 to be said, and it is suggested by the Scriptural 
 phrase, "Out of the mouths of babes and suck 
 lings". Goodness and purity, loving faith and 
 loyalty will continue, as always, to signalize 
 this medium of expression. 
 
 I have said that women write the best let 
 ters, and for their dear sake I shrink not from 
 what is both a truism and a tautology. Should 
 I ever be able to acknowledge the debt I owe 
 them? to pay it were not possible, even in 
 dreams. There is dear "E. W. W.", who 
 came, a late blessing into my life, just when I 
 sorely needed such a friend, and who sends me 
 frequently of her rich store of wisdom and 
 sweetness and strength, though her pen knows 
 no rest and the publishers will not be denied. 
 Strange ! I find in these gracious letters, alive 
 with the breath of her spirit, something that 
 even she is unable to express in her public writ 
 ings or is it the vitality of the personal note, 
 the concentrated challenge of the intimate 
 word, that makes me think so? ... There is 
 charming "T. G.", more beautiful even than 
 her poetry, who writes too seldom (thriftiest 
 she of the daughters of the Muse), but each of 
 whose joyous letters fills with light the happy 
 
234 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 week of its arrival. And U D. H.", who was 
 not long ago "D. M." what pleasure have I 
 not received from her demure gayety and the 
 sweet cordial note of her letters! . . . And 
 "E. R.", who was even more recently U E. H." 
 (ah, happy he who won her gracious youth !) 
 in what book shall I find a hint of her tricksy 
 humor and bewitching pertness? . . . And 
 U B. A.", whose pensive spirit ever seeking the 
 Unknown, often startles me with its clear 
 divinations the privilege of the white-souled. 
 . . . And "T. S.", whose prattling pen has 
 given me cheer when weary and cast down, and 
 who is so near to me in faith and sympathy, 
 though I have never looked into her candid 
 eyes. And "S. B.", the sweet silent Quakeress, 
 who too rarely writes, and the thought of 
 whom often lies like a sinless peace upon me. 
 But let me cite no more lest I tempt the envious 
 fates by a rash disclosure of my joys. 
 
 All these most fragrant friendships, enrich 
 ing my else flowerless life with beauty and 
 grace and precious consolation, giving me in 
 deed the rarer life of the spirit, do I, though 
 undeserving, hold . . . through letters. 
 
XVII 
 
 THE SONG THAT IS SOLOMON S 
 
 THERE is always a Jewish renaissance, 
 and that is why we have lately been 
 talking about the beauty of the 
 Jewess. 
 
 It is a great theme and there is none other 
 in the world charged with more sweet and ter 
 rible poetry. 
 
 The beauty of the Jewish woman is the eter 
 nal witness of the great epic of the Bible. If 
 that divine Book were to be lost in some un 
 thinkable catastrophe, it could be re-written 
 wholly from the lips and eyes of Jewish beauty. 
 
 In no long time we should have again the 
 complete stories of Sarah and the daughters of 
 Lot (those forward but provident young per 
 sons) ; of tender-eyed Leah, of Rebekah and 
 Rachel, sweet rivals in love; of Deborah and 
 Hagar and Jael; of Ruth, that pensive figure 
 whom so many generations have strained to 
 see, "standing breast-high amid the corn"; of 
 235 
 
236 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Rahab the wise harlot and Jezebel the furious; 
 of Tamar who played her father-in-law Judah 
 so shrewdly wanton a trick; of Esther who 
 fired the heart of the Persic king, saving hon 
 est Mordecai a painful ascension and much 
 slaughter of the Chosen People; of Susanna, 
 whom the elders surprised in her bath, not the 
 first nor the last instance of the folly of old 
 men; of Bathsheba, the fatal "one ewe lamb" 
 or wife of Uriah, the lust for whose perfect 
 body drove the holy king David to blood- 
 guiltiness; of the Shulamite (lacking a name) 
 whom Solomon, son of David, has sung to the 
 world s ravishment; lastly why not? of her 
 who has glorified Israel among the Gentiles 
 and hath honor beyond all the daughters of the 
 earth, Mary of Bethlehem. 
 
 In this way, I repeat, the Bible could easily 
 be put together again it can never perish 
 while a Jewish woman remains on the earth. 
 
 There never was a book written (worthy of 
 the name) but that was more or less directly 
 inspired by a woman. Cherchez la femme is 
 the true theory of literary origins. 
 
 This is eminently true of the Bible, with 
 which women have had (and still have) more 
 
THE SONG THAT IS SOLOMON S 237 
 
 to do than with any other book in the history 
 of the world. 
 
 The beauty of Jewish women is a wine that 
 needs no bush; it is the sacred treasure that 
 kept alive the hope of the race during the weary 
 ages of shame and bondage. But for that 
 jealously guarded talisman, the Jew would 
 long ago have lost both place and name upon 
 the earth. 
 
 Much of the old, consecrated, fatidic charac 
 ter attaches to the Jewish woman of the better 
 class, even in this faithless day. She is hon 
 ored above the wife of the Gentile, and she is 
 conscious of a mission which fills her with the 
 pride of an immemorial race. One fancies that 
 no other woman either inspires or returns love 
 in such measure as the Jewess; that she has 
 some profound joys to give whose secret she 
 alone possesses. The Jew has found in his 
 home compensations for all the cruelty and 
 ignominy which he has had to suffer from the 
 world. 
 
 I admire true Jewish beauty so much that I 
 would make a slight discrimination. Not all the 
 Grecian women were Helens, and it need not 
 be said that the highest type of beauty among 
 Jewish women is less often seen than praised. 
 
238 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 In truth, the rule holds good here, that great 
 beauty and great ugliness are found side by 
 side. 
 
 One reason for this is, undoubtedly, the bad 
 taste of the average Jew, who can not have his 
 women fat enough and who, therefore, en 
 courages such departures from the ideal stand 
 ard as serve to caricature the natural beauty 
 and comeliness of Hebrew women. I believe 
 there are Jews who would like to grow their 
 women in a tub, according to the mediaeval 
 method of producing monstrosities. This bad 
 taste the Jew comes by as a part of his Orien 
 tal inheritance the Turk similarly fattens his 
 women with all kinds of sweetmeats and suets. 
 On account of this vicious taste among too 
 many Jews, one often sees women of hideous 
 corpulence at thirty who were types of ideal 
 beauty at sixteen. Flesh is a good thing, but 
 the Jew should not seek to suffocate himself in 
 it, like Clarence in his Malmsey butt. Certes, 
 it was not for an excess of "adipose tissue" 
 that the Royal Poet named his love the rose 
 of Sharon and the lily of the valleys. 
 
 Let the Jewish woman, therefore, vigilantly 
 cherish the wonderful beauty which has come 
 down to her from those historic sisters of her 
 
THE SONG THAT IS SOLOMON S 239 
 
 race whom kings desired with a passion that 
 kindled the land to war, whom prophets and 
 sages glorified, with whom heroes and mar 
 tyrs walked and concerning whom God Him 
 self has written many of the best pages in His 
 own Book. Let her keep as near as she can to 
 the ideal of loveliness which the great king, 
 drunk with beauty and rapture, pictured thou 
 sands of years ago in the lineaments of his 
 Beloved: 
 
 Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet and thy 
 speech is comely; thy temples are like a piece 
 of pomegranate within thy locks. 
 
 Thy two breasts are like two young roes 
 that are twins which feed among the lilies. 
 
 Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honey 
 comb; honey and milk are under thy tongue 
 and the smell of thy garments is as the smell 
 of Lebanon. 
 
 Thy neck is like a tower of ivory. Thine 
 head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of 
 thine head like purple : the king is held in the 
 galleries. How fair and how pleasant art 
 thou, O love, for delights ! 
 
XVIII 
 
 IN PRAISE OF LIFE 
 
 I HAVE to thank the many loyal friends 
 who gave me their sympathy and support 
 during an illness that cut nearly three 
 months out of my working calendar and sus 
 pended two issues of The Papyrus * To have 
 learned that there is such a stock of pure kind 
 ness in the world, is worth even the price I 
 paid for it. 
 
 The desire of life prolongs it, say the doc 
 tors. Tis true, and when the wish for life 
 gets its force from the strong motive of doing 
 one s chosen work in the only world we surely 
 know, then is Death driven back and to Life 
 goes the victory. 
 
 Oh! Life, Life, how much better art thou 
 than the shadowy hope of an existence beyond 
 the grave ! I can hold thee, taste thee, drink 
 thee, wrap myself in thee thou art a most 
 dear reality and not a shadow. I kneel before 
 
 * April and May, 1904. 
 240 
 
IN PRAISE OF LIFE 241 
 
 thee and proclaim myself more than ever thy 
 true lover, believer and worshipper. Let me 
 still be a joyous living pagan and I will not 
 change with all the saints that have spurned 
 thee and gone their pale way to Nothingness. 
 I breathe thy warm, perfumed air as one newly 
 escaped from the ante-chamber of Death. It 
 is the last week of May sweet May, I had 
 thought never to see thee again! and the 
 whole world is fragrant with lilac. It is an 
 efflorescence of life and hope and joy, Nature s 
 largess after the dearth and desolation of win 
 ter. My soul is inundated with the golden 
 waves of light and warmth and melody. Some 
 thing of the sweetness and vague longing of 
 adolescence revives in my breast. My heart 
 trembles with a sudden memory of old loves, a 
 memory called up by the sunshine and lilac 
 scents and bird music with which the glad 
 world is running over. Youth smiles a sly 
 challenge at me, and Love holds forth his in 
 effable promise. I am drunk with the rapture 
 of May for I live ... I live ... I live ! 
 
 Henley the brave, who not long ago cap 
 tained his soul out into the Infinite, was moved 
 by his experiences in hospital to write some of 
 
242 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 his most striking poems. No doubt there is 
 matter enough for a poignant sort of poetry 
 in the House of Sickness. But literary inspira 
 tion fails a man when both his mind and body 
 are disintegrating. I have brought nothing 
 from my white nights in the hospital, but I 
 left there a good deal of myself corporeally, 
 and something, as I am admonished by a pres 
 ent difficulty in writing of my admirable liter 
 ary style. I think with pain and shame of the 
 utter weakness to which I was then reduced, 
 and I wince at the recollection of some con 
 cessions wrung from dismantled nature. I do 
 not care to reflect upon the long blank hours 
 or days, or weeks, during which I kept my bed 
 in passive endurance, or upon one terrible night 
 when I waited for what seemed to be the End 
 with such courage as I could command. Ac 
 cording to the Christian precept, I should have 
 seen in all this the hand of chastening and 
 meekly accepted the portion dealt out to me. 
 But had I yielded to this comfortable sort of 
 spiritual cowardice, I should probably not be 
 alive to tell the story. Many good Christians 
 are thus soothed out of this weary life into a 
 better world, for a mental attitude of pious 
 resignation is the hardest condition with which 
 
IN PRAISE OF LIFE 243 
 
 the doctor has to contend and an unrivalled 
 fattener of graveyards. 
 
 In the next room to mine was a fine young 
 man who had undergone an operation for ap 
 pendicitis. The nurses told me there was no 
 hope for him, as he had been brought in too 
 late the nurses never contradict the doctors. 
 Poor fellow, I could hear his every sigh and 
 groan in the vain but heroic struggle he was 
 making for life. Presently a stout clean-shaven 
 man in clerical garb passed my door: it was 
 the minister. He remained about ten minutes 
 with the young man, who was a member of his 
 church. When he left I watched from my win 
 dow and saw him mount his bicycle and ride 
 away. He did not return. The young man 
 died next day. I made up my mind more de 
 cidedly that I would get better. 
 
 As a boy I used to read in my prayer book 
 the supplication against the "evil of sudden 
 death". In this is contained the very essence 
 of the Christian idea, since death being synony 
 mous with judgment, must needs appear terri 
 ble to the soul unprepared. Indeed, a sudden 
 death in the case of an irreligious person is 
 always hailed as a judgment by people of strict 
 
244 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 piety. On the other hand, the favor of heaven 
 is shown by the grace of a long sickness with its 
 leisure for repentance and spiritual amend 
 ment. No picture is so edifying in a religious 
 sense as that of the repentant sinner, over 
 whom we are told there is more rejoicing in 
 heaven than is called forth by the triumph of 
 the just. Especially if the sinner have repented 
 barely in time to be saved that is the crucial 
 point. If he should make his peace too soon, 
 or if his repentance should come tardy off, it is 
 not difficult to fancy the angels cheated of their 
 due excitement. Such a blunderer would, I 
 imagine, get more celestial kicks than compli 
 ments. God help us ! I fear me these death 
 bed repentances are the sorriest farce acted in 
 the sight of heaven. 
 
 Yet farcical as they are, religion owes to 
 them a great part of its dominion over the 
 conscience of men. The Catholic faith, in par 
 ticular, has invested the final repentance and 
 absolution with a potency of appeal which few 
 indeed are able to withstand. That is the 
 meaning of the phrase, "Once a Catholic, al 
 ways a Catholic". And there is doubtless a 
 grandeur subduing the imagination in the 
 proud position of the Church, that no soul need 
 
IN PRAISE OF LIFE 245 
 
 be lost which has ever known her sacraments. 
 Whatever the cold reason may make of this 
 assumption, we may not forget how much it 
 has contributed to the peace and consolation of 
 humanity. 
 
 As for myself, having had two long and 
 desperate sicknesses in the course of a half- 
 dozen years, having been so near the Veil 
 which hides the Unknown that I could have 
 touched it, my prayer now and forever shall 
 be : Lord, deny us not the blessing of sudden 
 death. Even as quickly as Thou pleasest, call 
 us hence, O Lord! 
 
 To be at home once more in mine own place, 
 to sit under the cheerful lamp with pipe and 
 book, to taste the small honors of domestic 
 sovereignty, to look forward with a quiet hope 
 to the morrow s task, to watch the happy faces 
 of the children in whom my youth renews it 
 self, and to share the peace of her who has so 
 long partnered my poor account of joy and 
 sorrow all this is a blessedness which I feel 
 none the less that I do not weary a benign 
 Providence with fulsome praise. 
 
 Many pious works have been written on the 
 incomparable advantage of being dead, that 
 
246 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 is, on the superior felicity of the life to come. 
 The most eloquent and convincing of these 
 macabre essays were composed by a set of men 
 who had resigned nearly all that makes life 
 dear to humanity. It is enough to say that they 
 knew not love, the most powerful tie that at 
 taches us to life. On this account their valu 
 able works no longer enjoy the great popu 
 larity which they had in a simpler time. In 
 deed, the decline of this religious Cult of Death 
 is one of the marks of an advancing civiliza 
 tion. No doubt it served a humane purpose in 
 those dark centuries which we call the Ages of 
 Faith, when life was far more cruel than it 
 now is for the mass of mankind. Amid con 
 stant wars, bloodshed, oppression, famine, and 
 their attendant evils, from which only a privi 
 leged few were exempt, what wonder that men 
 turned eagerly to a gospel which to us seems 
 charged with despair? So the ages of history 
 during which Hell was most completely and 
 perfectly realized on this earth, were also 
 those in which faith in Heaven and the Church 
 was universal. But with the slow growth of 
 liberty and the partial emancipation of the 
 human conscience during the past three centu 
 ries, there has gradually been formed a truer 
 
IN PRAISE OF LIFE 247 
 
 and better appreciation of life. The Cult of 
 Death has lost its hold upon the masses, with 
 the dissolution of the old terrible dogma of 
 eternal punishment. Men are more in love 
 with life at this day than ever in the past 
 with life, and love, and happiness, and free 
 dom, all of which were more or less limited 
 and tabooed in the blessed Ages of Faith. As 
 Heine said, "Men will no longer be put off 
 with promissory notes upon Heaven they de 
 mand their share of this earth, God s beautiful 
 garden". . . . 
 
 Let us have life, and ever more life I 
 
XIX 
 
 THE FORBIDDEN WAY 
 
 I AM asked if, in my opinion, suicide is ever 
 justifiable. 
 The question is one for the individual 
 conscience. Men and women are answering it 
 with a dreadful yea, yea, every day, casting 
 away life as they might reject a worn-out gar 
 ment. 
 
 By social consent, founded on religious feel 
 ing, suicide is a crime against God. It is also 
 held to be a crime against society. Persons 
 attempting suicide and failing in the act are 
 subject to the rigor of the law. No legal pun 
 ishment is (of course) provided for those who 
 succeed, but they do not escape in the next 
 world the churches take care of that: all 
 theologians agree that the suicide is eternally 
 reprobate and damned. 
 
 I dissent utterly from this inhuman teaching, 
 while I can conceive of no circumstances that 
 
 would make suicide justifiable for myself. For 
 248 
 
THE FORBIDDEN WAY 249 
 
 so dissenting I shall be told that I render my 
 self liable to damnation. Is it not strange that 
 a man should be damned for holding too favor 
 able an opinion of God? 
 
 But it may not be so bad as that we have 
 only some men s word for it! 
 
 We are told that hardly a soul comes into 
 the world but at some time or other thinks of 
 voluntarily quitting it, and is only restrained 
 by the fear of eternal punishment. 
 
 I would change this I would make life here, 
 present, hopeful and abundant, the restraining 
 influence. I would pit Life against Death and 
 turn my back on the kingdom of shadows. 
 
 I do not defend suicide, but I plead for the 
 many upon whom fate imposes this bitter des 
 tiny. 
 
 For myself I believe that life at the very 
 worst is too precious a gift to throw away. 
 Steep me in shame and sorrow to the very lips, 
 exile me from the charity of my kind, pile on 
 my bare head all the abuses and humiliations 
 which human nature is capable of inflicting or 
 enduring my cry shall still and ever be for 
 life, more life 1 
 
 Though the wife of my youth should betray 
 me again and again, though my children prove 
 
250 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 false and dishonor my gray hairs, though my 
 oldest, truest friends abandon me and I be 
 come a "fixed figure for the time of scorn to 
 point his slow unmoving finger at", still shall 
 I cling to this boon of life life life ! 
 
 For now I tell you, heart-burdened, weary 
 and despairing ones, if only you will be patient 
 a little longer and wait, life itself shall heal 
 your every sorrow. 
 
 I give you this Gospel of Hope, this water 
 of refreshing in the arid desert of your de 
 spair 
 
 Life is the Healer, Life the Consoler, Life 
 the Reconciler! 
 
 In earlier years I used to hear the most elo 
 quent sermons on the blessedness of death, 
 which always left me cold and unpersuaded. 
 To such gloomy homilies is perhaps due the 
 aversion I now feel toward most preaching. 
 No ! talk not to me of death, that ironic Phan 
 tom, that grisly Sophist by whose aid religion 
 maintains the unworthiest part of its conquest. 
 I hate and abominate from my deepest soul this 
 plausive, solemn, unctuous, lying cant of dark 
 ness and the grave. He that preaches fears 
 it as much as he that hears, and will move 
 
THE FORBIDDEN WAY 251 
 
 heaven and earth to escape the inevitable doom. 
 Away with such mummery I 
 
 Death in the ripe course of nature is beau 
 tiful and seemly, but death by disease, or vio 
 lence, or accident, is horrible, for no man 
 should be cheated or cheat himself of his due 
 share of life. And this which is now an empty 
 axiom shall one day be the highest law of a 
 better state of society than we yet dream of, 
 wherein disease shall be unknown and death 
 by violence, public, private, or judicial, a thing 
 without precedent. 
 
 My cry is for life more life ! 
 
 Look, ye impatient ones I, too, have been 
 down, down, down in those abysmal depths 
 where hope is a mockery and the mercy of God 
 despaired of; I have tasted the bitterness of 
 betrayal by those most sacredly pledged to 
 keep faith with me; I have known the utter 
 most treason of the heart; I have been made 
 to feel that there was not one soul in all the 
 living world joined to me by any true or lasting 
 bond; I have seen the destruction of my own 
 house of life, that temple of the soul, losing 
 which a man is homeless on the earth. 
 
 And yet I rose out of this lowest hell of deso 
 lation, borne as I must believe by some late- 
 
252 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 succoring, strong-winged Angel of Hope and 
 blessed God to see again the cheerful face of 
 life! 
 
 Little children, little children, the end of all 
 will come only too soon: why hasten it? The 
 Master of Life has bidden you wait His sum 
 mons. By my soul ! I do not believe that He 
 would harshly reprove you or turn away His 
 face should you, under the goad of sorrows too 
 great for endurance, come suddenly, unbidden, 
 before Him. Yet were it better to stand firm 
 like good soldiers and abide your call. 
 
 In other words, you are not to accept defeat. 
 It is not that I would brand as coward the man 
 who boldly pushes his way into the Unknown 
 the courage of that act is so appalling that men 
 have named it madness. But it is a higher 
 courage to resist the fates. 
 
 Yet whisper ! I do not find it hard to be 
 lieve that often God in His mercy shows this 
 only way, this via dolorosa, to some poor lost 
 soul, some victim of man s inhumanity, unable 
 to struggle longer in the coils of fate. 
 
 To me the most awfully pathetic figure in a 
 world sown with tragedy is the man or woman, 
 broken on the cruel rack of life, who makes a 
 desperate choice to find his or her way alone to 
 
THE FORBIDDEN WAY 253 
 
 God. Though you plant no cross and raise no 
 stone upon that grave, though you hide it away 
 from the sight of men, I for one shall not deem 
 it a grave of shame. I shall kneel there in spite 
 of priestly anathemas; I shall pray for this 
 poor child of earth sainted by suffering; my 
 tears shall fall on the despised grave where 
 rests, oh, rests well at last, one of the un 
 counted martyrs of humanity. Yes ! I see in 
 that nameless grave huddled away in the pot 
 ter s field a symbol of the tragedy of this life 
 whereunto we are called without our will and 
 whence we must not depart save in the process 
 of nature. And I will believe that God re 
 jects the poor defeated one lying there when 
 I, a mere human father, feel my heart turned 
 to stone against the weakest and most erring 
 of my children. 
 
XX 
 
 GLORIA MUNDI 
 
 HAVE you ever really thought upon the 
 beauty of this world which is passing 
 away before your eyes? You have 
 read the words, "The eye is not satisfied with 
 seeing nor the ear with hearing", but have you 
 ever thought that they might bear another 
 sense than the Holy Book gives them? 
 
 For my part, when I come to die I know 
 what my chief regret will be. Not for my poor 
 human sins, which have really hurt nobody save 
 myself and most of which I will have forgot 
 ten. Not because I have missed the laurel 
 which was the darling dream of my youth. 
 Not because I have always fallen short of my 
 ideal and, still worse, betrayed my own dear 
 est hopes. Not for the selfish reason that I 
 have never been able to gain that position of 
 independence and security which would enable 
 me to work with a free mind. Not for having 
 failed to score in any one particular what the 
 254 
 
GLORIA MUNDI 255 
 
 world calls a success. Not for these nor any 
 other of the vain desires that mock the human 
 heart in its last agony. 
 
 No; I shall simply be sorry that I failed to 
 enjoy so much of the beauty of this dear earth 
 and sky, or even to mark it in my hurry through 
 the days, my reckless pleasures, my stupid tasks 
 that yielded me nothing. I shall think with 
 utter bitterness of the time out of all the time 
 given me I might have passed in profitably 
 looking at the moon. Or in marking with an 
 eye faithful to every sign, the advance of the 
 bannered host of Summer unto the scattered 
 and whistling disarray of Autumn. How many 
 of those wonderful campaigns have I really 
 seen? alas! I know too well how many I 
 have numbered. 
 
 There was a rapture of flowing water that 
 always I was promising myself I should one 
 day explore to the full; and now I am to die 
 without knowing it. There were days and 
 weeks and months of the universe in all its 
 glory bidding for my admiration; yet I saw 
 nothing of it all. My baser senses solicited 
 me beyond the cosmic marvels. I lost in hours 
 of sleep, or foolish pleasure, or useless labor, 
 spectacles of beauty which the world had been 
 
256 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 storing up for millions of ages perhaps had 
 not been able to produce before my brief day. 
 I regret even the first years of life when the 
 universe seemed only a pleasant garden to play 
 in and the firmament a second roof for my fa 
 ther s house. Grown older but no wiser, I 
 planned to watch the sky from dawn to sunset 
 and, on another occasion, from sunset to dawn; 
 but my courage or patience failed me even for 
 this poor enterprise. I was a beggar at a feast 
 of incomparable riches, and something always 
 detained me from putting forth my hand; or I 
 left the table which the high gods had spread 
 and went eating husks with swine. And now I 
 am to die hungry, self-robbed of my share at 
 the banquet of immortal beauty can Christian 
 penitence find anything to equal the poignancy 
 of such a regret? . . . 
 
 Yet even as I write I am cheating myself in 
 the old bankrupt fashion, for the day outside 
 my window is like a tremulous golden fire, and 
 the world overflows with a torrent of green life 
 life that runs down from the fervid heaven 
 and suspires through the pregnant earth. It is 
 the first of June, when Nature, like a goddess 
 wild with the pangs of delivery, moves the 
 whole earth with her travail, filling every 
 
GLORIA MUNDI 257 
 
 bosom with the sweet and cruel pain of desire. 
 Now she takes account of nothing that does 
 not fecundate, conceive or produce, intent only 
 upon securing her own immortal life. And 
 though she has done this a million and a mil 
 lion ages, yet is she as keen of zest as ever; as 
 avid for the full sum of her desire as when she 
 first felt the hunger of love and life; as un 
 wearied as on the morning of Creation. 
 
 "Put away your foolish task," she seems to 
 say. "Yet a few days and it and you will both 
 be ended and forgotten. Come out of doors 
 and live, while the chance is left you. Come 
 and learn the secret of the vital sap that is no 
 less a marvel in the tiniest plant than in the 
 race of man. If you can not learn that, I will 
 teach you something else of value the better 
 that you ask me naught. Leave your silly 
 books and come into the great green out-of- 
 doors, swept clean by the elemental airs. Here 
 shall you find the answer to your foolish ques 
 tion, What do we live for? Life . . . life 
 . life!" 
 
XXI 
 
 THE SPRING 
 
 IT IS the Spring again. 
 Not merely by the calendar, dear chil 
 dren of mine own age, but also, I would 
 hope, by your hearts : to that Spring let us say 
 our word of welcome. 
 
 I am writing on an early day in March. It 
 is still Winter, so far as snow and blow, mere 
 scenic illusion, goes: but a certain voiceless 
 promise in the air unclothes the landscape of 
 its remaining rigors and makes mock at the 
 weather man s predictions. With the Spring at 
 our doors we shall laugh to scorn the utmost 
 rage of Boreas. Let him do his worst he 
 must go, and quickly too! 
 
 Yet I was not mindful of the Spring (for 
 my thoughts were on a less cheerful business) 
 until coming home t other evening I noticed the 
 lengthening of our brief twilight, as if the day 
 had been pulled out one stop; and standing to 
 look at the sky, with its unwonted clear space 
 258 
 
THE SPRING 259 
 
 of radiance, there came a rush of vernal airs 
 about my forehead, and I felt the fulness of the 
 Spring within my heart. 
 
 Oh, may the Spring ever so come to me ! . . . 
 
 Now though a man may not be so learned 
 as Solomon in what some other inspired writer 
 has called the "signs of Spring", though he 
 be indeed but a humble suburbanite and un- 
 blest amphibian, neither of city nor country, 
 he may feel that the sun gins to be hot on the 
 back along about noon. May see that the snow, 
 melting off, leaves long pools in the road and 
 common which give a cheerful brightness under 
 the Spring sun. May note that the cock crows 
 oftener and with a more resonant pipe than in 
 the gray Winter dawns; that the sap is rising 
 in the willow and maple, and the pioneer robin 
 shows his red breast among the sparrows 
 brown. May mark within himself a stirring of 
 sensations and desires long dormant as though 
 the old Adam had turned in his sleep. May 
 be conscious of that indefinable sense of expec 
 tancy brooding over all things betwixt earth 
 and heaven, which heralds the rebirth of the 
 year. 
 
 The Spring in truth has a tale of its own, 
 and not the same tale for every man like love 
 
2 6o AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 itself, ever the same, yet ever different. But 
 of all its messages and portents I chiefly prize 
 that strange quickening of the pulse, that 
 fleeting, unaccountable rapture of the heart, 
 that feeling as though one were at times an 
 aeolian harp played upon by mysterious airs, 
 a reed through which all things blow to music, 
 until you actually have to stop now and again 
 when walking out-of-doors, the ravishment and 
 delight of it being more than you can bear. 
 
 If you do not so feel the Spring, there is, I 
 fear, no Spring for you. 
 
 No season discourseth so wisely and witch- 
 ingly to the heart; none hath so much of that 
 poignant, unutterable poetry for which all the 
 poets have tuned their harps in vain. Most 
 ancient of deceivers, her cuckoo note is aye 
 potent to befool the world not a wound, not 
 a pang, not a sorrow is remembered in the heal 
 ing smile of Spring. 
 
 The truth is, we are never so much in love 
 with life as in the Spring. It involves the 
 whole of life a man counts his Springs, not 
 his Winters or Summers. It is Nature s renew 
 al and confirmation of her old promise to us, 
 which each interprets in a jealous way he would 
 not dare confess to his neighbor. How she 
 
THE SPRING 261 
 
 cheats us, and how we love the cheat! For let 
 us but admit her subtle witchery a moment, and 
 then (as sweet William hath it) our 
 
 "state, 
 
 Like to the lark at break of day arising 
 From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven s 
 gate!" 
 
 Bankrupt in hope indeed is he to whom the 
 Spring doth not fetch a new bravery of spirit, 
 urging him to try another and a gayer hazard 
 of fortune. Sick of a truth is he whose feeble 
 lungs crow not with a specious health in these 
 enchanted airs. Dim is the eye that fails to 
 mark the cheerful lengthening of the days. 
 Cold and dead the heart in which the Spring 
 awakes not a dream of love. 
 
 As a man turns into middle life (sorely 
 against his will) I think he is apt, on looking 
 back, to regret chiefly the Springs he has left 
 behind. If there were to be a seasonal restitu 
 tion, I can promise for one man at least, that 
 he would prefer certain Springs to a more than 
 equal count of Summers. Early Springs I 
 mean, of course; the wonder and romance of 
 which pursue us as with a vain regret during 
 all our after-life, so that we seem to be con- 
 
262 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 stantly seeking the clew to some beautiful and 
 marvellous story but half revealed to us in a 
 dream. 
 
 For, in truth, the enchantment of those 
 Springs, the loveliness and mystery and desire 
 of them, deepen the more the farther we go 
 back into our youth, until they seem but a con 
 fused yet delightful blowing of merry winds 
 and a mere hide-and-seek of frolic sunshine; 
 beyond which Garden of Faery it is forbidden 
 to pass. 
 
 Why a man should be more concerned to 
 remember and treasure up his early Springs 
 than his early Summers, this old child con 
 fesses himself unable to say. 
 
 But so he feels, without knowing the reason; 
 and now more than ever, since the Spring hath 
 again laid her hand upon him. 
 
XXII 
 
 THE FIRST LOVE 
 
 In dreams she grows not older 
 The lands of dream among, 
 
 Though all the world wax colder, 
 Though all the songs be sung; 
 
 In dreams doth he behold her 
 Still fair and kind and young. 
 
 ANDREW LANG 
 
 A MAN never forgets his first love, how 
 ever early in life it may have come to 
 him; through all the ensuing years he 
 bears this precious blue flower of the heart. 
 Even amid the storms of later passion, or the 
 tranquil joys of an assured love, it keeps its 
 unseen, mysterious, marvellous life. However 
 the heart may burn, it still has dew enough for 
 this unfading blossom; however happy and 
 content it may be in another love, yet has it a 
 secret longing which only this can appease. 
 Aye, though the heart itself be as a temple 
 263 
 
264 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 consecrated to another woman, where Love as 
 a priest offers perpetual sacrifice, yet shall you 
 find, deep hidden within its shrine of shrines, a 
 tiny white pyx holding the sacred Host, the 
 imperishable dream of the first passion. . . . 
 Is it not astonishing how early we begin to 
 love, as if Nature had no other use for us? 
 I can scarcely remember a time, however dis 
 tant in my childhood, when I was not in love 
 with somebody. Ah, do not think those ear 
 liest troubles of the heart are to be smiled at 
 as children s play. Innocent though they were, 
 what exquisite sweet pain they caused us ! 
 What cruel unhappiness, since to be young and 
 unhappy seems a special malignancy of fate ! 
 What ineffable longings, that our childish 
 minds vainly sought to understand! What 
 torments of jealousy, which the storms of ma 
 ture passion have been impotent to efface ! 
 
 Mamie ! The name will never lose its magic 
 for me, and to the end it will continue to be 
 whispered from my dreams. And to think I 
 have now a daughter older than she was when 
 I first saw and loved her. O time the inexor 
 able! . . . 
 
 She was twelve and I was sixteen when we 
 
THE FIRST LOVE 265 
 
 tasted together the poignant sweets of young 
 passion, the delicious fruit of that one forbid 
 den tree in the earthly Eden which to eat and 
 enjoy, humanity will ever gladly face exile and 
 death. 
 
 Yet Mamie was only a little girl just entering 
 her teens, though developed like a child ma 
 donna, and, as I was to know, with feelings 
 beyond her years. I have never seen anything 
 like the proud beauty of her face with its glori 
 ous hazel eyes, rich brown and red cheek like 
 a ripe fruit, and scarlet sensitive mouth, all 
 framed in a setting of dark auburn hair. 
 
 I pause to smile a little at this fervid de 
 scription, but you will understand that I am 
 trying to look into the Boy s heart and to write 
 what I find there. That this Fairy Princess of 
 love was only a little household drudge, kept 
 from school and slaving all day for her large 
 German mother married the second time to a 
 small German tailor, who had by this said 
 mother a younger daughter of his own, for 
 whom he evinced an unpleasing preference, 
 these things may hold well enough together in 
 a world of hard facts, but the Boy saw them 
 through the lens of his romantic imagination. 
 And so complete was the illusion that after 
 
266 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 more than twenty-five years the Man cannot 
 easily shake it off. 
 
 The very beginning of it I can t remember 
 perhaps we never do recall those first obscure 
 intimations of a passion. I have a delicious 
 but confused memory of long evening walks 
 with her and the little sister she, as I recol 
 lect with an old pang, was nearly always with 
 us. It was summer and the place was an old 
 New England town with a narrow river 
 spanned by quaint bridges flowing through the 
 midst of it. I have known love since, ah me ! 
 and real passion, the kind that consumes a 
 man s life as flame licks up oil; but never again 
 have I known anything to compare with that 
 young dream. 
 
 Crossing one of these bridges on a certain 
 evening sacred to the angels of Memory and 
 Joy, the little sister stopped behind not more 
 than a minute to tie her shoe; and we had our 
 first kiss! (The Man trembles at the remem 
 brance.) I did not ask for it I feared her, 
 that is, loved her too much; and she knew no 
 more of coquetry than a babe. So far as I can 
 be sure, the impulse was at once mutual, 
 natural and irresistible. O clinging dewy 
 mouth ! O young heart fluttering wildly 
 
THE FIRST LOVE 267 
 
 against mine ! when have I ever drunk at so 
 pure a fount of joy 1 . . . 
 
 After that our evening walks were mostly 
 made up of kisses, for the little sister (she 
 was nine) had to be let into the secret, and as 
 I recall with some surprise, she never betrayed 
 us. This was the more to her credit, seeing 
 that she was only a half-sister and the favorite 
 child. But not. even a little girl of nine can 
 bear to see another getting all the kisses, and so 
 she would be vexed sometimes and cry pet 
 tishly, u Oh kiss, kiss ! why don t you get 
 married?" Then I would appease her with 
 candy or a promise of something nice, and 
 we would enjoy our subsequent kisses all the 
 more for the little interruption. O far years, 
 wafting to me a faint scent of lilac! O youth 
 that is no more! . . . 
 
 This lasted a whole summer, the only en 
 tire season, the Man freely admits, that he ever 
 passed in Paradise. Could he now go back 
 through the crowding years, I am very sure 
 that he would make a bee-line for that old New 
 England town, and with a heart thumping in 
 his throat, look for a beloved little figure on 
 one of the quaint bridges in the summer 
 gloaming. 
 
268 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Here the Boy tugs at my sleeve and asks me 
 not to tell the prosaic occasion of those twi 
 light walks with Mamie and little sister; the 
 same being that the little tailor sent them every 
 night but Sunday (ah, those heart-hungry Sun 
 day nights!) for a pint of beer, and often 
 chided them for bringing it home flat. He, the 
 Boy, is quite sullen when I try to make him 
 understand that this homely detail but adds to 
 the pathos of his romance. Stubborn Boy in 
 deed . . . and the Man not so much better! 
 
 I had to leave the little town at the end of 
 that summer of love, and so suddenly that 
 there was no chance to bid her good-bye. Once 
 again, and only once, I saw her afterward, 
 when about two years later I visited the place. 
 On our dear bridge, too, and with little sister 
 grown formidably larger and more knowing. 
 She came defiantly between us at once, and I 
 saw with a sinking heart that we dared not re 
 new the old love-making. Mamie was taller, 
 paler and, as I thought, I mean the Boy, 
 lovely as an angel. I scarcely remember a word 
 that she said to me the constraint of the sis 
 ter s presence checked us both. I think she was 
 chilled too by the fact that my visit was to 
 be only for a few days; and she doubtless real- 
 
THE FIRST LOVE 269 
 
 ized the truth, that I was passing out of her 
 life. Never have I been more wretched than 
 during that last walk with Mamie. 
 
 On leaving her I mustered up my courage 
 and ignoring little sister, whose eyes were 
 bright with malice, offered to kiss her. She 
 turned her cheek toward me, saying calmly: 
 "I am going to be confirmed on Sunday". 
 
 That cold kiss is my last memory of Mamie, 
 of the warm loving child-woman whose mere 
 name, seen or heard, causes my heart to thrill 
 as when a boy. I never saw her again. . . . 
 
 Where is she now? God knows: yet in no 
 worse place, I trust, than that consoling heaven 
 of our dreams where the precious things of 
 the heart that we have lost in our journey 
 through life are restored to us; and most dear 
 and precious of all, our first love. 
 
XXIII 
 
 SEEING THE OLD TOWN 
 
 I VE been back seeing the old town. The 
 old town where I served the first years of 
 my hard apprenticeship to life alas! not 
 yet completed. The old town where, as a boy, 
 I dreamed those bright early dreams whose 
 fading into gray futility makes the dull burden 
 of every man s regret. 
 
 It may be that my dreams were more varied 
 and fantastic than those of the average 
 younker, for I was the fool o fancy, with a 
 poet s wild heart in my breast. God knows 
 what I promised myself in that long-vanished 
 time of youth which yet was instantly vivified 
 and present to me as I trod the streets of the 
 old town. I felt like one about to see a ghost 
 the ghost of my young self; and I shrank 
 consciously from meeting it, with this bitter 
 sweet pang of disillusion at my heart. I could 
 not more sensibly have feared a living presence. 
 
 Alas, what one of us all is worthy, after the 
 270 
 
SEEING THE OLD TOWN 271 
 
 heavy account of years, to confront the ghost 
 of his candid youth? what one but must bow 
 the head before that pitying yet reproachful 
 Memory? 
 
 This feeling took such strong hold upon 
 me that soon I hastened away from the too fa 
 miliar squares and corners, so poignantly rem 
 iniscent of that other Me, and went to the 
 hotel facing Main Street. But even here, 
 seated at a window and elbowed by a group of 
 story-swapping drummers, I could not free my 
 self from the spell of old memories. Youth 
 with its hundred voices cried to me; the past 
 and the present became at once strangely con 
 fused, yet separable; and I was set to the v pain 
 ful task of tracing and identifying my younger 
 self in the crowd of passers-by. 
 
 And I did find that boy again oh yes! I 
 did find him in spite of the lapse of many 
 changing years and all that Time had wrought 
 within and without me since he and I were one. 
 I found him, though he was long shy and hesi 
 tated to come out of the shadows; holding back 
 timidly and looking on me with tender yet 
 doubtful eyes ah God ! I knew whence the 
 doubt. But at last he came fully, careless of 
 the roaring drummers or knowing himself to 
 
272 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 be unseen; and I held his hand in mine, while 
 a sweet sorrow beat against my heart in the 
 thought of what might have been and now 
 could never be. And after the kind relief of 
 tears, we talked in whispers a long time there 
 by the window, no one noticing us; and ere he 
 went back into the shadow he touched my fore 
 head lightly with his lips, leaving me as one 
 whom God has assoiled. . . . 
 
 The old town was but little changed, only it 
 seemed smaller, like all places we have known 
 in our youth and been long absent from. The 
 Main street, where the working boys and girls 
 flirt and promenade in an endless chain, still 
 slouched the whole length of the town, with the 
 railroad between it and the river; no difference, 
 except that it was better paved than in my time, 
 and the clanging trolleys ran instead of the 
 ancient bob-tailed horse cars. There were a 
 few new shops or strange names over the old 
 ones no other changes of consequence. The 
 same old town ! the boy of twenty years ago 
 would not have been phased in the least. 
 
 But I was, and the fact was due to the 
 changes which Time had written upon so many 
 faces I had known; fair young girls turned into 
 full-blown matrons, vaunting their offspring 
 
SEEING THE OLD TOWN 273 
 
 with no lack of words, or withered old maids 
 looking askance and shrinking from recogni 
 tion; striplings who had shot up into solid man 
 hood, and whom you were puzzled to place; 
 broken old men whom you recalled in their 
 vigorous prime; all the varied human derelicts 
 of the storm and stress of twenty years. Oh, it 
 makes a man bethink himself to watch the pro 
 cession go by in the old town. 
 
 Certainly, if you wish to get a true line on 
 yourself, go back to the old town. Nothing 
 else will do the trick. Your glass is a liar 
 leagued with your vanity. Your wife a loving 
 flatterer who says the thing that is not. Your 
 children will never tell you how old you are 
 beginning to look. Your daily intimates and 
 coevals are concerned to keep up the same illu 
 sion for themselves. You deceive yourself, 
 know it, and are happy in the deception. There 
 is only one way for you to learn the "bitter, 
 wholesome truth", or, in other words, to get a 
 fair look at the clock go back to the old 
 town! 
 
 There is some humor, too, in going back, as 
 I find from my visits at an interval of five or 
 six years. Always I am most heartily and 
 noisily greeted by men who have no use for me 
 
274 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 except to "knock" me, whom the sight or sound 
 of my name exasperates, to whom my tiny bit 
 of success is poison, and who struggle on 
 bravely with the hope of seeing me finally land 
 where I deserve to be and am, as they fervently 
 believe, irretrievably headed. We do each 
 other good, for if I were to die, these men 
 would lose one of the sweetest motives of their 
 existence ; and I, knowing this, am eager to live 
 on and disappoint them. 
 
 Last time I went back I saw one of these 
 friendly fellows at a distance of a block, and 
 he kept his glad hand out at the risk of paraly 
 sis, until we came together. Then how he 
 laughed with pleasure, and my goodness, what 
 a grip he gave me! I had to laugh with him 
 and return his grip, so far as my feeble strength 
 would allow. In an acquaintance of over 
 twenty years this fellow had never offered me 
 the slightest proof of his friendship, save, as 
 I have said, to "knock" me; and now a dear 
 friend of mine hung modestly back while he 
 crushed me in his iron embrace. When I was 
 going away at the end of my visit, this terrible 
 enemy came to the nine o clock train to see me 
 off and spoiled the leave-taking of my real 
 friends. There is irony of the same brand 
 
SEEING THE OLD TOWN 275 
 
 elsewhere, but you will not see it to such naked 
 advantage as in the old town. . . . 
 
 The saddest experience one can have in re 
 visiting the old town is to hear suddenly of the 
 death of some friend of one s youth, who 
 though separated from one by long years of 
 absence, must ever share in the romance of that 
 enchanted period. I was so to learn of the loss 
 of a friend who had been very dear to me in the 
 old days. Together we had trudged the Main 
 Street of the old town, by night and by day, 
 making plans for the future, few of which were 
 realized either for him or for me. 
 
 The friendships of youth are sacred. Ma 
 ture life has nothing to offer in their place. 
 Men agree to like each other for social or busi 
 ness reasons; often, paradoxically, because they 
 fear each other. The heart is not touched in 
 this hollow alliance it is a pact of interest and 
 selfishness. Youth and trust, age and cynicism 
 thus are they paired. 
 
 I know well that one or two young friend 
 ships or frank elections of the heart have 
 yielded me much of the pain and thrill and 
 rapture of that sentiment between the sexes 
 which we call love. I know that I was several 
 years older ere the voice of a girl had leave to 
 
276 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 thrill me like the tone of this dear lost friend; 
 that I suffered as keenly during an occasional 
 boyish miff with him as in my first genuine love 
 quarrels; that I would have risked life and limb 
 to please him, and could conceive of nothing 
 sweeter than his praise; that I can not think 
 of him even now without a pain at the heart 
 which I have not the skill to analyze. And 
 though I saw little of him for many years, and 
 there was no attempt to follow up our ancient 
 friendship our paths lying wide apart in every 
 sense and though he died a man of middle 
 age, I can but think of him taking no note at 
 all of the years that lie between as a bright- 
 haired, laughing youth; and so mourn him with 
 a sorrow of the heart which proves a silent 
 witness there during all the years to the truth 
 of our early affection. 
 
 There is something divine, though we but 
 dimly glimpse it, in the unavowed, almost un 
 conscious persistence of these sacred ties of our 
 youth, these precious legacies from the days 
 that are no more, whose light shines with a 
 white lustre that belongs to them alone. 
 
 Sleep well, my friend! . . . 
 
 I was not sorry to have seen the old town 
 again, though it gave me but a sad pleasure at 
 
SEEING THE OLD TOWN 277 
 
 best, and I was glad when my short leave was 
 up. And yet that singular thrill of walking 
 where once you knew and were known of every 
 body, and where still, because of some slight 
 rumors from the great outlying world, a flatter 
 ing village curiosity attends you, is worth going 
 a long journey to feel. 
 
 To say nothing of your joyous enemy who 
 hails you with stentorian shout and glad hand 
 extended, on your arrival, and likewise dis 
 misses you on your departure with curses not 
 loud but deep. And the many things you see 
 and hear and feel which, without compliment, 
 certify you to yourself as you really are ! 
 
XXIV 
 
 PULVIS ET UMBRA 
 
 NO sadder message comes to a writer in 
 the course of a year than the news of 
 some friendly though unknown read 
 er s death. Often you learn it only through 
 the return of the magazine, with the single 
 word "Deceased" written across the wrapper. 
 It is a word to give one pause, however en 
 grossing the present occupation. Here was a 
 man or woman who, though personally un 
 known to you, was yet, it may be, in spiritual 
 touch with you perhaps the best friendship 
 of all. For him or her you wrote your 
 thoughts since all writing is to an unseen but 
 not unfamiliar audience; for him or her you 
 told the story of your own mind and heart, sure 
 of a kindly understanding and sympathy with 
 out this assurance, believe me, there would be 
 little enough writing in the world. Every 
 writer s message is conditioned I would al 
 most say dictated by this invisible but closely 
 judging auditory. You get to know what your 
 278 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 279 
 
 readers expect, and this in the main you try to 
 give them, though often failing the mark. So 
 the act of writing is a kind of tacit covenant 
 and cooperation between the writer and his 
 public. Indeed, it is not I but you who hold 
 the pen; or rather it is I who hold it but you 
 who speak through it and through me. 
 
 This relation being understood, it is but 
 natural that a writer should feel a sense of 
 grief and loss on hearing of the death of some 
 one who held him to this communion of 
 thought and spirit. I am not sure that this 
 grief would be more genuine had he personally 
 known the lost one our finest friendships, like 
 the old classic divinities, veil themselves in a 
 cloud. We wear ourselves out trying to main 
 tain the common friendships of the house and 
 street, and it is like matching faces with Pro 
 teus: in the end we become indifferent or 
 wise. 
 
 But here was one whom you never saw who 
 lived half the length of the continent from you, 
 or perhaps in the next town no matter, you 
 two had never met in the body. Your word 
 did, however, come to him and called forth a 
 genial response; he let you know that so far as 
 you went he set foot with you. Thencefor- 
 
280 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 ward, you marched the more boldly, getting 
 grace and courage and authority from this 
 one s silent friendship and approval. You fig 
 ured him as one who stood afar off too far 
 for you to see his face and waved you a 
 cheery salute; your soul hailed a fellow pil 
 grim. Now comes the word that he can go no 
 further with you rather, indeed, that he has 
 outstripped your laggard pace and gone for 
 ward on the great Journey. You learn of his 
 departure in the chance way I have mentioned 
 not being a friend in the conventional sense, 
 the family do not think to send you any mes 
 sage or mourning card. You have but to feel 
 that you are poorer by a friendship of the soul 
 than you were yesterday; that you are going 
 on, in a sense, alone and unsupported, for this 
 friend was a host; that you are not to look ever 
 again for his written word of praise, which 
 brought such gladness to your heart, or his deli 
 cate counsel that often helped you to a clearer 
 vision of things. The silent compact is dis 
 solved. . . . 
 
 Life is a blessing, and death is no less. 
 That which we call the common lot is the 
 rarest lot. Love and loss and grief are for all. 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 281 
 
 Of two men, one who loves and one who has 
 loved and lost, the second is the richer: God 
 has given him the better part he holds both 
 of earth and Heaven. 
 
 The love that has known no loss is wholly 
 selfish and human. Death alone sanctifies. 
 
 Who has not lain down at night saying unto 
 himself, "Now is the solemn hour when my 
 own shall come back to me", has not sounded 
 the shoreless sea of love. 
 
 I believe in life and I believe not less pro 
 foundly in death. 
 
 I believe in a resurrection and a restoration 
 we can not lose our own. 
 
 No man has ever yet found tongue to tell 
 the things that death has taught him. No man 
 dare reveal them fully tis a covenant with 
 Silence. 
 
 A power that strikes us to our knees with 
 infinite sorrow and a yearning that would 
 reach beyond the grave, must be a Power 
 Benign. 
 
 Life divides and estranges: Death reunites 
 and reconciles: Blessed be Death! 
 
 "Your friend is dead!" they told me, but I 
 did not believe nor understand. 
 
282 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 Then they led me to a darkened room, 
 hushed and solemn amid the roar of New 
 York, where I saw him lying in a strange yet 
 beautiful serenity. 
 
 No disfigurement of his manly comeliness; 
 no trace of a struggle that had convulsed the 
 watchers with pain only less than his. 
 
 Roses on his manly breast roses rich and 
 lush as the young life that had sunk into a sleep 
 so sudden, so unlocked for. 
 
 Nothing to shock, nothing to appal in this 
 wordless greeting to the friends of his heart. 
 As ever in life, his personality took and held 
 us in its strong toil of grace yes, more than 
 ever held us now closely his own. 
 
 Could this indeed be death? 
 
 Ah, many a time had I hastened with joyous 
 anticipation to meet him, but never had we kept 
 a tryst like this. 
 
 I clasped that hand whose touch so often 
 had thrilled me with its kindness oh, hand so 
 strong and gentle of my best-loved friend! 
 It was not cold as I feared it would be, and 
 surely a pulse answered to mine he knew, oh, 
 yes ! he knew that I was there. 
 
 I kissed his calm forehead and felt no chill 
 of death no terror at the heart. He seemed 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 283 
 
 but to lie in a breathless sleep that yet held a 
 profound consciousness of our presence. 
 
 Still, they said he was dead, he so tranquil, 
 almost smiling and inscrutably attentive ! and 
 the grief of women challenged my own tears to 
 flow. 
 
 Yet, with my emotions tense as a bow drawn 
 to the head, I could not weep; so was I held by 
 this wonder and majesty they called death. 
 And it seemed that he did not ask my tears in 
 the ineffable peace of our last meeting, no, 
 not my tears. But there was a gathering up of 
 the heart which I had never known before, a 
 bringing together by Memory, the faithful 
 warder, of all that had made or ministered to 
 our friendship, kind looks and tones, trifles 
 light as air mingled with graver matters, a 
 country walk, a sea voyage, books that we had 
 read together, snatches of talk, mutual pleas 
 ures, mutual interests, a hundred proofs of 
 brotherly affection and sympathy, so Memory 
 ran searching the years till the sum of my love 
 and my loss lay before me. 
 
 Did he know? did he feel? Scarcely I 
 dared to ask myself when the Silence breathed 
 Yes! . . . 
 
 Here at my elbow is the telephone into which 
 
284 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 I could summon his pleasant voice at will. It 
 was but now we were talking and making happy 
 plans together I had no plans without him. 
 
 Then there was a blank, and a strange voice, 
 vibrant with pain, called me up and said. . . . 
 
 Oh, God! it can not be true! He a giant 
 in his youth and strength; he with his vast en 
 joyment of life, every nerve and muscle of him 
 trained to the fullest energy; he struck down, 
 without a note of warning, in the vigor of his 
 triumphant manhood, while the old, the sickly 
 and the imperfect live on? No, no this were 
 not death, but sacrifice. 
 
 Why, it was but yesterday I felt the vital 
 grasp of his hand; listened to his brave talk, so 
 genial a reflex of his mind and spirit; basked 
 in the brightness of his frank smile, debtor 
 as ever I was to his flowing kindness; drank 
 the cordial of his living presence, and took no 
 thought of fate. 
 
 And now they tell me he is dead that from 
 our account of life, this long sum of days and 
 hours so dreary without him, he is gone for 
 ever ! Over and over must I say this, or hear 
 the dull refrain from others; yet the truth will 
 not press home. 
 
 For, in spite of the dread certainty, I am not 
 
PULVIS ET UMBRA 285 
 
 always without hope of seeing him again in the 
 pleasant ways of life where often we met to 
 gether; where never we parted but with a joy 
 ous promise soon to meet again. 
 
 This hope would be stronger, I now feel, had 
 I not looked upon him in that strange peaceful- 
 ness that was yet so compelling; and sometimes 
 I wish they had not led me there. 
 
 So hard is it to break with the dear habit of 
 life so reluctant the heart to believe that the 
 silver cord has been loosed which bound it to 
 another. 
 
 Oh, my lost friend ! . . . 
 
 The watchers told me that they had never 
 seen so brave a struggle for life. Time and 
 again he grappled with the Destroyer, like the 
 strong athlete he was yes, and often it seemed 
 that his dauntless heart would prevail. But 
 alas! the fates willed otherwise. 
 
 Then at last, when hope was gone, as he 
 read in the tearful eyes of those about him, he 
 threw up his right hand with a lamentable ges 
 ture, saying, "That s all!" 
 
 Not all, brave and true heart, for love can 
 not lose its own, and thy defeat was still a vic 
 tory. Thou livest now more than ever in the 
 memory of those who gave thee love for love, 
 
286 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 yet ever lacked of thy abounding measure; to 
 them shalt thou ever appear as when thou didst 
 fall asleep in the glory of thy youth and 
 strength; age can not lay its cold hand upon 
 thee, and thy beloved, dying old mayhap, shall 
 again find thee young. 
 
 In that sweet hope, dear Friend of my heart, 
 and until then farewell, farewell ! 
 
XXV 
 
 SHADOWS 
 
 WE are shadows all and shadows we 
 pursue. This business of life which 
 we make-believe to take so earnestly, 
 what is it but a moth-chase or the play of 
 grotesques in a child s magic lantern? A sud 
 den helter-skelter of light and shade, a comic 
 jumble of figures thrown for a moment on the 
 screen, and then, darkness! 
 
 Children of the shadow, to that Shadow we 
 return at last; but the very essence of our life 
 is fluid, evanishing always. The minute, the 
 day, the hour, the year, who can lay hands on 
 them? and yet in our humorous fashion we 
 speak of these as fixed and stable things, sub 
 ject to our control. Meantime and all time, 
 dream delivers us unto dream, while life lends 
 to its most tangible aspects something shadowy 
 and spectral, as the vapors clothe the horizon 
 with mystery. The things we call realities, in 
 our vain phrase, that enter most deeply into the 
 287 
 
288 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 warp of our lives, these are also dream-stuff, 
 kindred of the Shadow. Our consciousness, 
 from which we dare to apprehend immortality, 
 can only look backward into the realm of 
 dream and shadow, or forward into the realm 
 of shadow and dream. I am at this moment 
 more stricken at the heart with the sorrow of 
 a song that my mother crooned to me, a child, 
 in the firelight many years ago, than with all 
 the griefs I have since known. Shadows, all 
 shadows ! With my house full of romping, 
 laughing children, there falls now upon my 
 heart the tiny shadow of a lost babe and I 
 beat helpless hands against the iron mystery 
 of death. . . . 
 
 But the living, too, are shadows, not less 
 pitiable than they whom death has taken from 
 our sight. Nay, it is more sad to be the shadow 
 of a shadow than to clasp the final darkness. 
 
 Tell me, O dear love, where now is the face 
 that once showed me all the heaven I cared to 
 know, the form that made the rapture of my 
 youth, the spell which filled my breast with de 
 licious pain, the lips whose touch so coy, so 
 rarely gained, was honey and myrrh and wine ? 
 Oh, say not that she, too, is of the Shadow! 
 
 Nay, she is here at thy side and has never 
 
SHADOWS 289 
 
 left thee, but is in all things the same look 
 again ! Alas ! this is not the face that charmed 
 my youth, this is not the form that filled my 
 dreams and her eyes were clear as the well- 
 springs of Paradise. But oh, for pity of it, let 
 not my poor love know that her dear enrap 
 turing self, with our precious dream in which 
 we drew down heaven to earth, is gone forever 
 into the Shadow. 
 
 We are shadows all, living ghosts, so slight 
 of memory and consciousness that we seem to 
 die many deaths ere the final one. This illu 
 sion we name life is intermittent hardly can 
 we recall what happened day before yesterday. 
 Even the great events of life (as we phrase 
 them) do but feebly stamp our weak conscious 
 ness. By a fiction which everyone knows to 
 be false, we make a pretence of feeling much 
 and deeply. Tis a handsome compliment to 
 our common nature, but the truth is we rarely 
 feel our substance is too thin and ghost-like. 
 
 As shadows we fly by each other and are 
 never really in contact. This is the profound de 
 ception of love, the pathos of the human trag 
 edy. The forms we would clasp make them 
 selves thin air; we strain at a vacuum and a 
 shade aye, in the most sacred embraces of love 
 
290 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 we hold nothing I Less hard is it to scale the 
 walls of heaven than to compass our desire. 
 But now at last we are to be satisfied, to have 
 our fill of this dear presence which spells for 
 us the yearning and mystery of love: alas! in 
 the very rapture of possession we feel the eter 
 nal cheat. 
 
 Yet while we lament ever that we can not lay 
 hands on those we love, shadows that we are, 
 no more sure are we of ourselves. This 
 shadow of me eludes even myself as I am 
 eluded by the shadows of others in the great 
 phantasmal show around me. I know this 
 shadow of me, volatile, uncertain, ever escap 
 ing from under the hand, and if I were not so 
 busy chasing my own shadow the evanescent 
 Me I should have more leisure for hunting 
 other moths and shadows. The old Greeks 
 figured this change and fugacity in the mythic 
 Proteus ; but they missed the deeper sense of it. 
 
 There was a shadow of me last year that I 
 had some cause of quarrel with and we parted 
 unkindly. Where is it? gone forever. Wiser 
 now, I would gladly make peace with that 
 shadow it meant honestly, I must confess, 
 though often it sinned and blundered but 
 never more will it walk the earth. Other 
 
SHADOWS 291 
 
 shadows of me have likewise escaped, leaving 
 similar accounts unsettled (they never do put 
 their affairs in order) not to be settled now, 
 I dare say, until the Great Audit. 
 
 I would not care to recall all those shadows 
 of myself, even had I the power, as I would 
 not wish to live my life over again without 
 leave to change it (he is a fool or a liar who 
 says otherwise). But I may confess a weakness 
 for One that vanished long ago, leaving me too 
 soon: a shadow of youthful hope and high pur 
 pose that could do much to refresh this jaded 
 heart, dared I but look upon it. Oh, kind 
 Master of the Show, grant me once more to 
 see that shadow on the screen! Unworthy as 
 I am, let me look on it again and strive to 
 gather new hope from its imperishable store. 
 I know it dreamed of a holier love than I have 
 realized; of nobler aims than I have had 
 strength to reach; of crowns and triumphs that 
 I shall never claim. It believed only in good 
 (God knows ! ) and since it left me, without any 
 cause that I can remember, I have known much 
 evil. Yet it is still the essential Me, soul of 
 my soul, and so must it be through the eterni 
 ties. I can not be separated from that Bright 
 ness, that Innocency, that Hopefulness which 
 
292 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 once I was call it back for but an instant to 
 give peace to my soul ! 
 
 Vain appeal! A shadow calling unto the 
 Shadow. 
 
XXVI 
 
 THE GREAT REDEMPTION 
 
 I WAS born in fear, but that was not the 
 beginning, for in fear my mother had con 
 ceived me, and during the period before my 
 birth, often I felt her heart tremble with fear. 
 But even that was not the beginning oh, far 
 from it. I feel within me the fear of remote 
 generations, dim, shadowy, formless, vague; 
 yet having the power to dominate and oppress 
 me. Fearful inheritance, to have to struggle 
 with terrors bequeathed by the dead! In 
 dreams especially they assert their terrible 
 sway over me, filling my brain with a phan 
 tasmagoria of horror, robbing my nights of 
 peaceful rest, so that often the morning finds 
 me weak, shattered, unrefreshed, and burdened 
 with a nameless fear. 
 
 My parents worshipped the One True God, 
 
 the God of Fear, and as a child I was always 
 
 taken to church in order that my mind might 
 
 receive indelible impressions of the faith which 
 
 293 
 
294 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 held them in terror. There was beauty in the 
 church, in the many-hued windows with majes 
 tic aureoled figures, in the sacred statues with 
 gold and jewelled crowns, in the marble altar 
 with its hovering cloud of angels, and especially 
 in the slow illumination thereof, candle by 
 candle, until it became a solid blaze of light. 
 I loved to see the young acolytes in their 
 gowns, some of them as lovely as the marble 
 seraphim; to watch the silent, marshalled 
 order with which they attended an awe-inspir 
 ing figure clothed in gorgeous vestments; to 
 hear at intervals their shrill, sweet young 
 voices, rising above the deep note of the organ 
 and responding to the priest in words which I 
 understood not, but which I thought must be 
 the language of Heaven; to smell the strange 
 sweet odor of incense, and to see the communi 
 cants in white dresses leave the altar with 
 bowed heads and clasped hands, looking like a 
 company of the Shining Ones: all this could 
 not but mark a child s mind and soul with an 
 abiding remembrance. 
 
 Alas, for me it was spoiled by the terrible 
 sermons which the priest so often preached in 
 those days, on Hell and the punishment of the 
 Damned. There was one priest with a strong, 
 
THE GREAT REDEMPTION 295 
 
 rolling voice and an appearance of awful sin 
 cerity, who commonly chose this theme and 
 whose words I shall never forget. How con 
 vincingly he simulated the anger of his terrible 
 God! How movingly he depicted the pains 
 and tortures of the Infernal Place 1 "Think, 
 dear children," he would cry to us, "think but a 
 moment on the pains of Hell. Mind cannot 
 conceive it; tongue cannot utter it. If you 
 touch the tip of your finger to a red-hot coal 
 for but an instant, less than a second, what pain 
 you suffer! Less than a second, mark you! 
 Then think of this agony multiplied a thousand 
 thousand times, and continued through all 
 eternity, forever and ever! The pain never 
 to be assuaged, and the punishment never to 
 
 cease! 
 
 It seemed to me, as I heard him, that Hell 
 opened before my eyes, and I saw the very hor 
 rors he portrayed. 
 
 This priest was an honest man; he believed 
 to the full extent what he told us; he was simply 
 fulfilling a duty to his God of Fear. The cost 
 of raising such awful images before childish 
 minds, and filling childish hearts with such en 
 during terrors, was perhaps never considered 
 by him; was no part of his priestly business. I 
 
296 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 should be glad to argue the point with him, 
 could I now see him anywhere, save in my 
 dreams. . . . 
 
 But fear is not confined to what we call Reli 
 gion or to the worship of a terrible Something 
 in the sky; in one shape or another, it dogs life 
 at every turn. No man, if he would confess the 
 truth, ever lived a whole hour without fear. 
 In order to maintain fear in the world, the 
 human race has entered into a universal con 
 spiracy which is ironically dubbed, "Civiliza 
 
 tion". 
 
 Government, taking pattern from Religion, 
 is a thing of fear, with a soldier at the base and 
 a king at the top ! Fear props every throne, 
 writes every statute, and gives to every mum 
 mified injustice, the sanction of Law. 
 
 The world awaits its true Saviour him who 
 shall deliver it from fear. In our time, we 
 shall not see him, but he is coming, oh yes, 
 coming, sure as hope has lived along with fear 
 during a myriad years. 
 
 Mankind has once been redeemed, we are 
 taught, but alas! the fruits of that redemption 
 are not for this world. Here the shadow and 
 the oppression of fear have lifted but a very 
 little for some races, and for others, not at all. 
 
THE GREAT REDEMPTION 297 
 
 What a glorious hope, to bequeath to our chil 
 dren a world without fear? 
 
 It is, alas ! only too true that mankind, in 
 their present estate, cannot even imagine A 
 UNIVERSE WITHOUT TERROR, and, strange to 
 say, they would be utterly afraid to think of it. 
 But that will become easy for them on the day 
 they cast away their worship of the OLD GOD 
 OF FEAR ! 
 
XXVII 
 
 SURSUM CORDA 
 
 THERE is a brief Latin saying which 
 holds in two words, the best philoso 
 phy of the human race. It is, Sursum 
 corda lift up your hearts ! 
 
 Why despair of this world? All the joy you 
 have ever known has been here. It is true 
 there may be better beyond, but as Thoreau 
 said, "One world at a time!" 
 
 And now let us reason a little. Are you sure 
 you have given the world a fair trial or 
 rather have you let it give you a fair trial? 
 Softly now; the first words will not do to an 
 swer this question remember it is not I who 
 interrogate, but your fate. 
 
 Can you expect anything but failure when 
 you lie down and accept defeat in advance? 
 Anything but sorrow when you set your house 
 for mourning? Anything but rejection when 
 you carry dismay in your face, telling all the 
 
 world of your hope forlorn? 
 298 
 
SURSUM CORDA 299 
 
 I went to my friend asking cheerily and con 
 fidently for a thing that seemed hopeless: 
 smiling and without a second thought, he gave 
 me what I asked. Again I went to my friend 
 asking humbly and with little heart of grace 
 for a thing that I yet knew was hopeful: 
 frowning he denied my prayer. With what 
 brow thou askest shalt thou be answered. 
 
 Lift up your hearts! 
 
 A word in your ear: Have you ever had a 
 trouble or a sorrow that would for a moment 
 weigh Vith the sure knowledge that you were 
 to die next week, next month, next year? Be 
 honest now ! . . . 
 
 A little while ago I was very ill, and it 
 seemed to me that if only I could get up from 
 my bed, nothing ever would trouble me again. 
 Well, in time I was able to get up, and then 
 the old worries came sneaking back, one after 
 another. Even as I write, they are grinning 
 and mowing at my elbow, telling me that my 
 work is futile. I know I am happy and well 
 now, but they are always trying to persuade 
 me to the contrary. I know that my hope was 
 never so reasoned and strong, the future never 
 so gravely alluring; but they will have it that 
 I am an utter bankrupt in my hopes and the 
 
300 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 way onward closed to me. I know my friends 
 my real friends were never more true and 
 fond and faithful than they are to-day they 
 whisper darkly of broken faith, evil suspicion, 
 and the treason of the soul. 
 
 Out upon the liars ! It is I that am in fault 
 to give them a moment s hearing. The broken 
 faith, the treason, the distrust if any such 
 there be are mine alone; for in my own breast 
 were these serpents hatched, and the poison I 
 drink is of my own brewing. 
 
 Lift up your hearts! 
 
 Hast thou no cause to be happy? look well 
 now. Thou wast sick and thou art now whole. 
 Weary, thou didst lay down a beloved task, not 
 hoping ever to take it up again; yet see ! it is in 
 thy hands. Is not the wife of thy youth ever 
 with thee, still fair and kind and blooming? 
 Thou dreamest a haggard dream of poverty, 
 while thy house is filled with the divine riches 
 of love and ringing with the joyous mirth of 
 thy children. The musicians of hope pipe to 
 thee and thou wilt not dance; victory smiles 
 on thee anear, and thou wilt think only of 
 defeat. Look ! it is but a little way and thou 
 droopest with the long wished-for haven in 
 sight. . . . 
 
SURSUM CORDA 301 
 
 Lift up your hearts! 
 
 Yesterday the asolian harp was silent all day 
 in the window, not a fugitive air wooing it to 
 music. To-day it is wild with melody from 
 every wind of the world. So shall the brave 
 music of thy hopes be renewed. 
 
 Have no care of the silent, barren yester 
 days they are only good to carry away all 
 your mistakes, all your maimed purposes, all 
 your vain brooding, all your weak irresolution, 
 all your cowardice. Concentrate on To-DAY 
 and your soul shall be strong to meet To-mor 
 row. Hope, Courage, Energy and You! 
 against whatever odds. . . . 
 
 Lift up your hearts! 
 
XXVIII 
 
 HOPE 
 
 HAST ever been in Hell, dear child of 
 God? Hast fallen down down 
 down to those rayless depths where 
 thou couldst no longer feel the supporting hand 
 of God, and where thou didst seem to taste the 
 agony of the last abandonment? Hast known 
 that ultimate remorse wherein the soul ex 
 ecutes judgment on herself true image it may 
 be of the Last Judgment that night of the 
 spirit whence hope and blessedness seem to 
 have utterly departed? Hast known all this, 
 dear child of God, not once but many times? 
 nay, livest thou in a constant dread expec 
 tation of knowing this again and again, so long 
 as thy soul liveth? Then, be of good hope, for 
 thou art indeed a Child of God 1 
 
 There may be many ways of winning Heaven, 
 
 dear heart, but this is of the surest to know 
 
 and feel Hell in this world. And the more 
 
 terribly thou comest to realize in thy spirit the 
 
 302 
 
HOPE 303 
 
 horror and desolation of Hell even in this mor 
 tal sojourn, the better approved is thine heir- 
 ship in the Kingdom. For when thy feet take 
 hold on Hell, then of a truth thy hope is high 
 as Heaven! 
 
 This too, forget not, is the trial and test of 
 all fine souls saints of God, martyrs of 
 humanity, the great mystics and dreamers, the 
 chosen of our race, whose names partake of 
 the eternal life and glory of the stars. 
 Wouldst thou be of a better company? All 
 these great victorious souls had known Hell 
 to its uttermost depths, had tasted its most 
 bitter anguish, had suffered its most fearful 
 agonies, had drunk the cup of its awful de 
 spair, and had cried out under the burthen of 
 doom, like Him on the Cross, that their God 
 had forsaken them. Yet all were sons of God 
 and proved their title by conquering Hell in 
 this world. 
 
 Even as they fought the good fight and pre 
 vailed, so shalt thou, brave heart. Be glad 
 and rejoice that thou art called upon to endure 
 the same great trial, as being worthy of their 
 fellowship. Thy deep-dwelling sorrows, thine 
 agonies of spirit, nay, thy wrestling with 
 Powers of Darkness and all the supra-mortal 
 
3 o 4 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 venture of thy soul which thou deemest laid 
 upon thee as a curse, do but seal and stamp 
 thee God s darling. For none can reach the 
 heights who has not known the depths, and 
 though the Kingdom of Heaven be not of this 
 world, most surely is the Kingdom of 
 Hell. . . . 
 
 Courage, dear child of God! 
 
XXIX 
 
 IDEAL 
 
 YES, dear, do you go on sending me those 
 sweet messages full of praise, and 
 hope, and inspiration, holding always 
 before me the Ideal, keeping me to the plane 
 of my better self. I may not feel that I de 
 serve a tenth part of your faith in me no 
 matter, some day I shall be worthy of your 
 praise. And even though I should never reach 
 the summit of your appreciation, still the glory 
 will be yours of having urged me to the en 
 deavor. You are the height and I am the 
 depth; you are the star shining in the Infinite 
 and I the poor vainly aspiring worm on the 
 earth below : yet in some fortunate hour I may 
 be lifted to you. 
 
 For we do not make the supreme effort of 
 our souls for the many, but for the few, nay, 
 oftenest of all, for the One ! When I am at 
 my best, you know well that I am w r riting for 
 you alone; when I am at my worst, it is because 
 305 
 
306 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 I can not rise to the thought of you. Even 
 so my soul is often silent for days, giving me 
 no message from the Infinite, no hint of its 
 kinship to the stars, no whisper of the life it 
 led before this life and the life it shall lead 
 after this. I sometimes think you are my soul! 
 But help me help me always, no matter 
 how often and how far I may fall below your 
 hope of me. Still reach me your kind hand 
 which has power to save me from the last gulf; 
 still say those words of grace and cheer for 
 which I hunger the more, the more that I feel 
 my unworthiness. I will read them over and 
 over until I make myself believe that I really 
 deserve them. Some day, be sure, I will utterly 
 free myself from my baser self and live only 
 for you. I will be your Sir Galahad, and my 
 strength of soul shall be as the strength of ten. 
 I will dedicate every thought to you and I will 
 write for you alone then must I at last be 
 worthy of your praise in which the few or the 
 many will have no part. I will no longer give 
 out my truth to hire, or shame the Divinity in 
 my breast, or care only to move the laughter 
 of the crowd. I will write a book only for you, 
 and you shall be here, as now, looking over my 
 shoulder as I write, and giving me fresh inspi- 
 
IDEAL 307 
 
 ration whenever my thought fails. Neither 
 the few nor the many shall see this book it 
 will be for you and me alone. We shall love 
 it greatly for having written it together and 
 because it will be forever sacred to us two. I 
 have already thought of a title for this book 
 we shall call it the "Story of a Man who 
 Lost but afterward Found his Soul". 
 
 Turn now your dear face to the light for 
 my lamp wanes and I have sat far into the 
 night that I may see the look of praise upon 
 it that has cheered so many a task of mine; 
 that I may renew my worn spirit in the eternal 
 peace of those calm eyes. 
 
 Tell me, oh, tell me the truth, I beseech 
 you, are you my soul! 
 
XXX 
 
 LITTLE MOTHER 
 
 IN almost every large family there is one 
 devoted girl who stands ready to take the 
 mother s place and to whom the younger 
 ones turn with a sure trust and affection. Of 
 all the household virtues the sacred incom 
 municable things of hearth and home I know 
 of nothing quite so beautiful as this. 
 
 All deep and genuine love is of the essence 
 of sacrifice. Who has not suffered the martyr 
 dom of the heart has never known love. But 
 how touching is this abnegation, this heroism 
 that springs from we know not what depths of 
 human nature, when seen in one whose eyes 
 still look at you with the candid innocence of 
 childhood! Oh, men and women, tell me not 
 that Heaven itself can show a lovelier 
 thing. . . . 
 
 And musing on it, there rises before me a 
 little face and figure, most dear from all the 
 
 woven ties of race and blood and memory; a 
 
 308 
 
LITTLE MOTHER 309 
 
 little face that you might deem plain enough, 
 but which is beautiful to me with its quiet brow 
 and steady, thoughtful eyes still misted with 
 the hopes and dreams of youth. 
 
 She puts a small hand in mine and leads me 
 back over the years years of which, God 
 knows, I took but little heed in their passage. 
 And I see her always the same yet always 
 younger, hushing to sleep other little faces 
 strangely like hers, mothering one tot after an 
 other, lavishing upon them the artless love and 
 praise she should have given her dolls alas, 
 these were the only dolls she ever really knew; 
 coaxing them over the first pitfalls of infancy, 
 caring for them with a pitiably premature wis 
 dom aye, and sometimes bravely battling for 
 them with the urchins of the street, forgetting 
 her tears until the peril was past. 
 
 I see resting his pale cheek on her young 
 breast a child nursing a child! one that too 
 soon grew weary and left us. But her arms 
 are empty only a moment, for even as I look, 
 another babe is there. And I wonder, with a 
 painful sense of ingratitude, that I should 
 never have reckoned this treasure at its worth; 
 that I should have been blind to so much that 
 was beyond price in the little humble world 
 
310 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 about me; that there was a heavy debt against 
 me on behalf of this child which I could never 
 repay. 
 
 Something of this I try to say to her in 
 stumbling words, nor caring to keep back the 
 tears. But she hushes me with a touch on the 
 cheek and an intensity of the quiet look habit 
 ual with her. And now she leads me back 
 through the long nursery of years; past little 
 beds where rosy health slumbered, clasping its 
 toys, or pale sickness lay feverishly awake; 
 past all the scenes wherein her brave young 
 heart was schooled and she became a woman 
 whilst yet a child; past the lightly regretted 
 dolls and her childish air-castles always 
 tumbled topsy-turvy by those tiny baby hands 
 back into the present where, almost a young 
 woman now, she smiles joyously at me, holding 
 up the youngest in her arms ! . . . 
 
 Oh little mother, blessed be you and all your 
 sisters the wide earth over that worthily bear 
 the name! Your tears are reckoned in 
 Heaven, where the Innocents sing ever your 
 praise; and when you die, having known only 
 the maternity of the heart, God calls you unto 
 Him, very near the Throne ! 
 
XXXI 
 
 LOVE 
 
 LOVE is for the loving. 
 There is but one well in the world 
 that grows ever the richer and 
 sweeter and more plenteous by giving. 
 
 That well is the human heart and its living 
 waters are those of love. 
 
 Yet herein is the wonder of it, that the man 
 who thinks he hath need of it but seldom shall 
 not at his desire get more than a scanty 
 draught, and the sweet water shall turn bitter 
 in his mouth. 
 
 Ye have heard it said, to him that hath shall 
 be given: this is the meaning thereof. 
 
 Spend yourself in loving that you may be 
 often athirst for the life-giving water. But 
 count not to drink unto refreshing unless you 
 come weary and blessed from the service of 
 love. Then, ah then, the sweetness of the 
 draught! . . . 
 
 WE are constantly seeking our own in dark- 
 3" 
 
312 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 ness and in light, awake or adream; reaching 
 out our longing arms toward the Infinite; send 
 ing forth our filaments of thought; summoning 
 the One who shall know and feel, with a pas 
 sion of desire; praying for that rare response 
 which crowns the chief expectancy of life. Not 
 always do our arms fall empty; not always do 
 our thoughts return to mock our vain quest; 
 not always are our prayers unanswered and 
 our hearts left void and cold. 
 
 I hold this to be of the true divinity of life, 
 this kinship of the spirit which will leave no 
 man or woman at rest, but ever insists upon 
 working out its exigent yet benign destiny; 
 forming those sweet and consoling relations 
 which are our best joy here and may be our 
 eternal satisfaction. 
 
 For the expectancy of love and sympathy 
 that is to say, understanding is one that never 
 dies in the human heart. I may be sad, or dull, 
 or cold, or out of touch with reality; I may 
 persuade myself that there is no longer any 
 pith in my mystery; that the years have left me 
 bankrupt in the essential stuff of life; that 
 there is no remaining use for me under the sun. 
 But let my heart be apprised, in the faintest 
 whisper, of the advent or imminence of a new 
 
LOVE 313 
 
 friend, and lo ! the world is fresh-made, the 
 heavens constellated with hope and joy and 
 wonder as on the first day. 
 
 Life is truly measured only by such love or 
 expectancy; when that fails it is the same story 
 for king and beggar. 
 
 Love is the summoner, love is the seeker, 
 love the expectancy, and love the fulfilment. 
 Blessed be Love ! 
 
 I SPOKE some harsh words to my dear love, 
 thinking myself in the right and forgetting the 
 Law of Kindness. Then as I was turning away 
 in anger, the sight of her pale face, with its 
 mute reproach, smote me to the heart. I took 
 her in my arms and we wept the most precious 
 tears together. O divine moment, in that sa 
 cred hush, with her heart beating against mine, 
 I seemed to be conscious of angels listening. 
 
 THOSE who are not in spiritual accord and 
 understanding with us that is to say, who do 
 not truly love us are as if they were not pres 
 ent in our lives, save for the unhappiness of an 
 enforced relation with them. Twenty years 
 breathing the same air, living in the same 
 house, even going through the physical forms 
 
314 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 of the closest union, will not change the con 
 dition. At the end of that long period we are, 
 by the Law of Spirit, as hopelessly separate, as 
 mutually repellent as ever. 
 
 LOVE is akin to hate how trite that is and 
 how true ! I sometimes wonder is either 
 quality to be found unmixed with the other? 
 Can we have love without hate or hate without 
 love? The only glimpse of hatred I have ever 
 had that quite appalled me was from one who 
 loved me very much. Ah, happy they who 
 neither love nor hate ! 
 
 IN love we must bleed and the wounds we 
 receive are very cruel. Still it seems we can 
 never have enough of them, for love has power 
 to heal the wounds which it inflicts and so we 
 go on loving and bleeding to the end. 
 
 THERE is one thing of which I have never 
 had my fill and for which my soul hungers al 
 ways love ! And always I am promising my 
 self that one day I shall be satisfied. 
 
 WHEN I was younger there was nothing for 
 me but a woman between the heavens and the 
 earth. Now I perceive there are a few other 
 things. Yet am I not old, as age is counted. 
 
LOVE 315 
 
 THE only man who has a right to despair of 
 the world is he who neither loves nor is loved. 
 
 THERE is but one thing more interesting 
 than a woman s love her hate. 
 
 I HATE the woman who is not a mystery to 
 herself as well as to me. 
 
 LOVE is a combat and friendship a duel. 
 Strife is the law of existence. 
 
 LOVE is the primum mobile the great mo 
 tive which produces the miracles of genius and 
 all that we recognize as the work of higher 
 powers. Happy the artist whom it blesses and 
 fructifies to the end! 
 
 I SHOULD never be weary of learning of 
 women. I have long since tired learning of 
 men. 
 
 LOOK back now over the long way and see 
 if it be not love that has led you so far! 
 
 LOVE is the one dream that does not forsake 
 us as we descend into the Valley, but is potent 
 to bring joy or misery to the last. 
 
 To find the One who could love and feel and 
 understand this is the dream of many who yet 
 remain faithful to their bonds. 
 
316 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 WHAT is more terrible than the face of one 
 who once loved and now hates you, seen in a 
 dream ! 
 
 How great the artist who should know 
 woman to the soul, without giving up his free 
 dom to her! 
 
 THIS earth, what is it but a vast cemetery, 
 with the Rose of love and the Immortelle of 
 remembrance ! 
 
XXXII 
 
 EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 
 
 THE wise gods, when they contrived 
 this tragic comedy of life which we 
 have been such a weary time a-play- 
 ing, mixed up a little humor with the serious 
 business. He alone plays his part well who 
 finds the jest the lath for the sword, the mask 
 of Harlequin for the frozen face of Medusa. 
 Those who have best solved the exquisite 
 humor of the gods are called great by the gen 
 eral voice of mankind, and some dozen of them 
 have lived since the world, or the play, began. 
 Unlike these supremely gifted players, the vast 
 majority of men get only the merest inkling 
 of the gods merry intent, but it suffices to save 
 their lives from utter misery. Some devote 
 themselves to solving the riddle with terrible 
 seriousness, and the laughing god underneath 
 always escapes them, leaving them empty- 
 handed and ever the more tragically serious. 
 These and they are no small number die in 
 317 
 
3 i8 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 madhouses or religion, or write books which 
 increase the sorrow of the world: whatever 
 their fate, life remains for them a tragedy to 
 the end. 
 
 THERE came a Soul before the Judgment 
 seat. And God said: Need there is none that 
 We judge this man, for he hath given all his 
 days to Evil; from his childhood he hath turned 
 his back upon the City of Peace and none hath 
 ever cleaved more to the sweetness of sin. Let 
 him pronounce his own judgment and avow 
 that he hath deserved the Evil Place. 
 
 Then the Soul cried out: It is true I have 
 merited Hell by my iniquity, but this is not Thy 
 justice. 
 
 And God said: What more canst thou ask, 
 seeing that thou hast wrought judgment against 
 thyself? 
 
 Then the Soul made answer : Send me to 
 Heaven for the good I would have done 1 
 
 LIFE is never simple to the divining spirit 
 every moment of the common day is charged 
 with mystery and revelation. 
 
 ALL the great humorists are sad, Cer 
 vantes, Moliere, Swift, Sterne, Heine, Richter, 
 
EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 319 
 
 Balzac, Dickens, for sadness is the penalty 
 which Nature has annexed to that deep-search 
 ing knowledge of life we call humor. Hence 
 is the tragedy of literature : if the man did not 
 weep sometimes, we would cease to laugh at 
 his jests; in the end he weeps too much, and 
 then we talk of the failure of his art! 
 
 I KNOW not why I sit under this lamp and 
 write these lines doubtless it has all been writ 
 ten before times out of mind. Could it be pos 
 sible that I should have a single thought that 
 never was vouchsafed to another? Or a single 
 expression that has not at some time been 
 turned by another pen? No, and again, No. 
 What then is to do? Why nothing but to 
 write, and to keep on writing! 
 
 IT seems to be a fixed belief and an incurable 
 superstition of the mediocre mind that great 
 mental power is always accompanied by some 
 moral handicap or abnormality. Hence the ob 
 scene legends spawned of the vulgar imagina 
 tion, which are attached to so many famous 
 and illustrious names. It is the toad s answer 
 to the swan the eternal penalty which medi 
 ocrity exacts of genius. 
 
 Few of a truth are the great artists and 
 
320 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 poets who have escaped this penalty; nay, we 
 are loth to grant them the highest merit should 
 they lack the stigma of slander. Glory and 
 Golgotha refuse to be separated! 
 
 POSTERITY is the hectic dream of the weak 
 it does not break the calm slumber of the 
 strong. The man who works with his whole 
 soul in the present, who possesses and is pos 
 sessed by the time that has been allotted him 
 out of all eternity, that man may miss the 
 prize as well as another. But he is headed the 
 right way to capture the award of posterity. 
 
 SHAKESPEARE erred in assigning only seven 
 ages to man there are at least seventy. Often 
 we live through several in a single day it all 
 depends upon the kind of experience. 
 
 WHY do we write for the world the things 
 we would not say to the individual? Why do 
 we send on every wandering wind the secrets 
 we would not whisper in the ear of our chosen 
 friend? 
 
 REMEMBER that the true struggle of life is 
 not to achieve what the world calls success, but 
 to hold that Essential Self inviolate which was 
 given you to mark your identity from all other 
 
EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 321 
 
 souls. Against this precious possession this 
 Veriest You all winds blow, all storms rage, 
 all malign powers contend. As you hold to 
 this or suffer it to be marred or taken from you, 
 so shall be your victory or defeat. 
 
 O MEMORY! thou leadest me back over the 
 years and showest me many a place where once 
 I would have lingered forever, but now thou 
 canst not show me one of all where I would 
 tarry again; my Soul knoweth that not a single 
 step can be retraced, and that she is of the 
 Infinite to be. 
 
 THE mystery of the Hereafter is very great 
 indeed, but we may take courage in reflecting 
 that with each day we leave some of it behind 
 us. 
 
 MEN are always talking about truth, but 
 there is really so little of it in common use that 
 it might be classed with radium. Perhaps we 
 should not know it if we saw it, for our experi 
 ence deals almost wholly with substitutes. 
 
 IN making up the character of God, the old 
 theologians failed to mention that He is of an 
 infinite cheerfulness. The omission has cost 
 the world much tribulation. 
 
322 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 To preserve the freedom of your mind and 
 the whiteness of your soul that is to lead the 
 life ideal. 
 
 BEGINNING as children, we walk away from 
 God, and as old men we strive to totter back 
 again. 
 
 GRIEVE not that you desire always and 
 vainly life without desire is very near unto 
 death. 
 
 NATURE has no sorrows perhaps that is 
 why she is immortal. 
 
 NOT a single religion in the world credits 
 God with a sense of humor. Perhaps this only 
 proves how great a humorist he is 1 
 
 AMONG persons whose lives touch at every 
 point, there is often no communion of the soul 
 for months and years. Were we to live only 
 by the active life of the soul, our term would 
 be as brief as that of the ephemera. 
 
 MEN are damned not for what they believe 
 but for what they make-believe. 
 
 I AM not the man I was ten years ago. I 
 should not know the boy I was were I to meet 
 
EPIGRAMS AND APHORISMS 323 
 
 him in the street. Time is ever stealing our 
 outworn wardrobes of the flesh and spirit. 
 
 THE strongest writer smiles at the praise of 
 his strength he alone knows how weak he 
 can be. 
 
 THE very meanest man I know believes for 
 sure that God is made in his particular image 
 and likeness. 
 
XXXIII 
 
 SCRIP FOR YOUR PILGRIMAGE 
 
 CULTIVATE joy in your life and in 
 your work. For indeed when you 
 think of it, over-seriousness is the bane 
 of art as of life. Nothing in art was ever 
 done well that was not a joy in its conception. 
 Travail the artist must, but in gladness. So of 
 the perfect lyrist, we read that his song is a 
 rapture poured forth from a heart that can 
 never grow old. 
 
 ALEXANDRE DUMAS, the greatest master of 
 narrative fiction that has ever lived, toiled all 
 day and every day, laughing like Gargantua at 
 the birth of his son; and sometimes weeping, 
 too, over his own pathos. Ah, what would not 
 one have given for the privilege of climbing 
 the stairs stealthily to watch the merry giant 
 at his task! Do you wonder that this rejoic 
 ing faculty furnished for many years the chief 
 entertainment of Europe? I should not care 
 324 
 
SCRIP FOR YOUR PILGRIMAGE 325 
 
 much for a writer incapable of being moved as 
 Dumas was moved. 
 
 HAPPY the man who is wise enough to say, 
 "Nay, Nay," and sidestep the Sphinx. 
 
 WHEN I come to die, I know my keenest 
 regret will be that I suffered myself to be an 
 noyed by a lot of small people and picayune 
 worries, wasting God s good time with both. 
 
 MANY a man pretending to swallow the ass 
 of Balaam of Beor has his way through life 
 made easy for him. When will Stupidity cease 
 to lay cushions for the feet of Hypocrisy? 
 
 THE wounds of self bleed always and will 
 not be forgiven. 
 
 I NEED not write to my dear friend, for my 
 heart talks to him every day over the miles. 
 In this way, too, I tell him only the things I 
 wish to tell him, and so have nothing to change 
 or recall after the letter is sealed and sent. I 
 was not always so wise. 
 
 THE better is enemy of the good, said Will 
 iam Morris. Do your stint to-day and let it 
 go for what it is worth. All days are ranked 
 equal in God s fair time. You can not steal 
 
326 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 from to-day to give unto to-morrow, nor play 
 at loaded dice with the Fates. 
 
 To move forward constantly in a straight 
 line, without capitulation or compromise, has 
 never been granted to any man born of woman. 
 The white flags of truce flutter from every 
 citadel. 
 
 IF your friend were to show you his whole 
 mind, you could not breathe the same air with 
 him. Never forget that the closest friendship 
 is only a truce. 
 
 SHOW your strength to the world, but be 
 ware how you betray your weakness, even to 
 your dearest friend. 
 
 YOUR purpose your purpose ! never for 
 get that. I read an immense novel of Balzac s 
 lately, and the one thing that has remained 
 with me from it is this: "Can you go to sleep 
 every night with one fixed purpose in mind and 
 strengthen in it from day to day?" That is 
 the question which every man must put to him 
 self, and as he shall answer it, so shall be his 
 success or failure. 
 
 THE Talmud says: "There are three whose 
 life is no life, the Sympathetic man, the Iras- 
 
SCRIP FOR YOUR PILGRIMAGE 327 
 
 cible, and the Melancholy". What chance for 
 the unfortunate who is all three in one? 
 
 THE most obscure genius has consolations 
 that outweigh the blazon of triumphant 
 mediocrity. 
 
 IF it were not for this haunting distrust of 
 v self, this recurrent sinking of the heart, how 
 easy the task would be ! 
 
 CHOOSE with fear and trembling the hand 
 from which you shall accept benefits. 
 
 A MAN may boast that he can judge himself 
 as harshly as another, but he makes no mistake 
 in passing sentence. 
 
 I AM thankful for your praise and I bow the 
 neck to your censure; but I have that within 
 which cheers more than the one and chastens 
 more than the other. 
 
 THERE is hardly anything in the world you 
 may not have if you can only make people be 
 lieve that you accept them at their own valua 
 tion. 
 
 Do not fear the man who is quick to show 
 his anger: the deadliest antipathies I have 
 
328 AN ATTIC DREAMER 
 
 ever known were hidden in a smiling eye and a 
 cordial hand-clasp. 
 
 THE conspiracy of authority, the conspiracy 
 of wealth, the conspiracy of superstition and 
 ignorance, these are the forces that rule the 
 world. 
 
 SANE persons will not expect to find absolute 
 perfection in Heaven there as here the charm 
 of a little discontent, the satisfaction of turn 
 ing up a small grievance, will not be denied us. 
 
 THE vice of the Pharisee is in believing that 
 he is not like unto other men. The virtue of a 
 man who knows himself a sinner is in believing 
 that other men are not like unto himself. 
 
 THAT which was lately power is now impo 
 tence, but wait! it will soon be power again. 
 
 IT is something to have lived for the things 
 of the mind, even though we have missed what 
 the world calls wealth or success those at 
 least shall not be taken from us. 
 
 REVISE and revise and revise the best 
 thought will still come after the printer has 
 snatched away the copy. 
 
SCRIP FOR YOUR PILGRIMAGE 329 
 
 BALZAC laid the world under the greatest 
 obligation of any modern man of letters, and 
 was driven into an untimely grave by the 
 spectre of debt. The highest service is always 
 martyrdom. 
 
 A LEARNED young German philosopher, Dr. 
 Otto Weininger, pronounced the most acute 
 mind since Kant, not long ago solved the great 
 problem of sex and then killed himself. What 
 else was there for him to do? 
 
 EVERY little while it is announced that some 
 scientist has pinned down the secret of life, but 
 always the learned man has fooled himself. 
 God will not be put into a chemical formula. 
 
 THOU art eager to be in company and de- 
 lightest in the conversation of thy friends, yet 
 thou hast a better friend than any of these who 
 constantly solicit thee and whom thou wilt sel 
 dom hear thy soul! 
 
XXXIV 
 
 SONG OF THE RAIN 
 
 LONG time I lay in my bed listening to 
 the rain. 
 
 In the hushed quiet of night, in the 
 solemn darkness, my heart ceased its beatings 
 to listen. There was naught in the world but 
 my heart and the rain. 
 
 My soul awoke at the song of the rain, 
 drenching through the trees, pattering on the 
 roof, filling my chamber with coolness and the 
 sense of a mystic presence. My soul awoke 
 and deemed that it was the pause before the 
 End. 
 
 Long I lay still in the darkness, hearing the 
 song of the rain; feeling upon me and through 
 out me the balm and blessing of the rain; tell 
 ing myself that if this were the End, it could 
 not better be. My soul was all attention, eager 
 to catch the word of its fate, my heart ceased 
 its throbbing to listen there was naught in the 
 world but the rain and my heart. 
 330 
 
SONG OF THE RAIN 331 
 
 What was the burden of the song of the 
 rain that I heard as I lay still in my bed, wrapt 
 in the solemn darkness, feeling as I shall feel 
 in the pause before the End? What was the 
 burden of the song of the rain which my soul 
 awoke to hear and for which my heart stopped 
 its beating? 
 
 Peace was the burden of the song of the rain 
 that I heard in the deep of night when my soul 
 thrilled like a wind-harp in the breath of God. 
 Peace was the burden of the song of the rain. 
 
 Now have I put away all strife and anger 
 and unrest since there came this wondrous mes 
 sage of the rain, the night and the silence. 
 Now do I bear a quiet heart since my soul 
 trembled like a wind-harp in the breath of God. 
 
 Peace for all the days that yet are mine 
 when often I shall lie awake in the night 
 silence, listening to the song of the rain. 
 
 Peace forevermore when my soul shall be 
 drawn into the breath of God and my body 
 mingled at last with the balm and blessing of 
 the rain. 
 
 Peace forevermore ! 
 
L ENfOI 
 
 NOTHING is easier than to win the 
 favors of Our Lady of Art. You 
 have only to serve her with all your 
 heart, and all your soul, and, especially, all 
 your time she is a jealous mistress, as hath 
 been said, and slow to forgive the neglect of 
 a day or even an hour. You must forego many 
 things that make for what the world calls for 
 tune and success. You shall woo the shadow 
 for your portion and leave to others the sub 
 stance. And ever you shall toil with unwearied 
 labor, while Age steals upon you and the gay 
 procession of Youth passes by in mockery. The 
 whitening hair, the flagging pulse, the stiffen 
 ing limb, the broken slumber, the lamentable 
 awakening these things shall not trouble your 
 perfect faith, for they are dear to Our Lady. 
 It is not enough that you be patient you must 
 become patience itself, though each returning 
 sun bring you the same tale of futility and dis 
 appointment. This shall sustain you, that 
 332 
 
L ENVOI 333 
 
 though Our Lady give no sign not a flutter 
 of the eyelids, not the hint of a smile at the 
 corners of the mouth still she sees and ap 
 praises your devotion. More than this you 
 shall not ask if you be of the true elect. Yes, 
 one thing more . . . just before you die she 
 may give you her hand to kiss ! 
 
 And this is all? No: some years after you 
 are silent, with your hope and your despair, a 
 little honor may be paid the dead man that was 
 ever denied the living; and a few people may 
 carelessly turn the pages of the Book for which 
 in very truth you lived and died. 
 
 AD MAJORAM DEI GLORIAM 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 BERKELEY 
 
 
 
 Return to desk from which borrowed. 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
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 MAR 819873 
 
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U,l, imtLtT LlDKAKlU 
 
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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY