Modesty was once a virtue. Patience, diligence, thrift, humility,
charity--who pays now a tribute to them? Charity is only a sop, it
seems, that is thrown in fright to the swift wolves of revolution.
Humility is now a weakness. Diligence is despised. Thrift is the advice
of cowards. Who now cares for the lessons that experience and tested
fact once taught? Ignorance sits now in the highest seat and gives its
orders, and the clamor of the crowd is its high authority.
And what has become of modesty? A maid once was prodigal if she unmasked
her beauty to the moon. Morality? Let's all laugh together. It's a
quaint old word.
Tolerance is the last study in the school of wisdom. Lord! Lord! Tonight
let my prayer be that I may know that my own opinion is but a candle in
the wind!
A Visit to a Poet.
Not long ago I accepted the invitation of a young poet to visit him at
his lodging. As my life has fallen chiefly among merchants, lawyers and
other practical folk, I went with much curiosity.
My poet, I must confess, is not entirely famous. His verses have
appeared in several of the less known papers, and a judicious printer
has even offered to gather them into a modest sheaf. There are, however,
certain vile details of expense that hold up the project. The printer,
although he confesses their merit, feels that the poet should bear the
cost.
His verses are of the newer sort. When read aloud they sound pleasantly
in the ear, but I sometimes miss the meaning. I once pronounced an
intimate soul-study to be a jolly description of a rainy night. This was
my stupidity. I could see a soul quite plainly when it was pointed out.
It was like looking at the moon. You get what you look for--a man or a
woman or a kind of map of Asia. In poetry of this sort I need a hint or
two to start me right. But when my nose has been rubbed, so to speak,
against the anise-bag, I am a very hound upon the scent.
The street where my friend lives is just north of Greenwich Village, and
it still shows a remnant of more aristocratic days. Behind its shabby
fronts are long drawing-rooms with tarnished glass chandeliers and
frescoed ceilings and gaunt windows with inside blinds. Plaster cornices
still gather the dust of years. There are heavy stairways with black
walnut rails. Marble Lincolns still liberate the slaves in niches of the
hallway. Bronze Ladies of the Lake await their tardy lovers. Diana runs
with her hunting dogs upon the newel post. In these houses lived the
heroines of sixty years ago, who shopped for crinoline and spent their
mornings at Stewart's to match a Godey pattern. They drove of an
afternoon with gay silk parasols to the Crystal Palace on Forty-second
Street. In short, they were our despised Victorians. With our
advancement we have made the world so much better since.
I pressed an electric button. Then, as the door clicked, I sprang
against it. These patent catches throw me into a momentary panic. I feel
like one of the foolish virgins with untrimmed lamp, just about to be
caught outside--but perhaps I confuse the legend. Inside, there was a
bare hallway, with a series of stairways rising in the gloom--round and
round, like the frightful staircase of the Opium Eater. At the top of
the stairs a black disk hung over the rail--probably a head.
"Hello," I said.
"Oh, it's you. Come up!" And the poet came down to meet me, with
slippers slapping at the heels.
There was a villainous smell on the stairs. "Something burning?" I
asked.
At first the poet didn't smell it. "Oh, _that_ smell!" he said at last.
"That's the embalmer."
"The embalmer?"
We were opposite a heavy door on the second floor. He pointed his thumb
at it. "There's an embalmer's school inside."
"Dear me!" I said. "Has he any--anything to practice on?"
The poet pushed the door open a crack. It was very dark inside. It
smelled like Ptolemy in his later days. Or perhaps I detected Polonius,
found at last beneath the stairs.
"Bless me!" I asked, "What does he teach in his school?"
"Embalming, and all that sort of thing."
"It never occurred to me," I confessed, "that undertakers had to learn.
I thought it came naturally. Ducks to water, you know. They look as if
they could pick up a thing like embalming by instinct. I don't suppose
you knew old Mr. Smith."
"No."
"He wore a white carnation on business afternoons."
We rounded a turn of the black walnut stair.
"There!" exclaimed the poet. "That is the office of the _Shriek_."
I know the _Shriek_. It is one of the periodicals of the newer art that
does not descend to the popular taste. It will not compromise its
ideals. It prints pictures of men and women with hideous, distorted
bodies. It is solving sex. Once in a while the police know what it is
talking about, and then they rather stupidly keep it out of the mails
for a month or so.
Now I had intended for some time to subscribe to the _Shriek_, because I
wished to see my friend's verses as they appeared. In this way I could
learn what the newer art was doing, and could brush out of my head the
cobwebs of convention. Keats and Shelley have been thrown into the
discard. We have come a long journey from the older poets.
"I would like to subscribe," I said.