I formerly considered myself a young man of protoplasmic capabilities,
and I entertained very little enthusiasm for form until after I had
talked with some Russians. Since then I have realized that I was more
clean cut, more Latin, and a great deal older than I had supposed.
"I see that you belong to the _ancient régime_," a Frenchwoman remarked
to me in Rome.
"I? Impossible!"
"Yes," she insisted. "You are a conversationalist. You are not an
elegant, sprucely dressed abbé; you are an abbé who is cynical and
ill-natured, who likes to fancy himself a savage amid the comfortable
surroundings of the drawing-room."
The Frenchwoman's observation set me to thinking.
Can it be that I am hovering in the vicinity of Apollo's Temple without
realizing it?
Possibly my literary life has been merely a journey from the Valley of
Dionysus to the Temple of Apollo. Now somebody will tell me that art
begins only on the bottom step of the Temple of Apollo. And it is true.
But there is where I stop--on the bottom step.