[Illustration]
That cat is funny. I think she'd be a good one for the circus. When
she's hungry she bites your legs. Then she jumps at you as much as to
say: _Carramba_, give me something.
America needs the flamboyant to save her soul--said Vachel Lindsay to
the indifferent mountains.
He might have added that America tries to satisfy this need in strange
and often uncatalogued ways. America, living an exemplary
three-meals-a-day-and-bed-time life in a wall-papered home, goes now and
then _en masse_, by Gosh, to the circus to see men, women and animals
perform exquisite and impossible feats or daring. What could be more
flamboyant than the trapeze-performer hurtling through the air, the
tiger leaping through man-made hoops, or the elephant poising his mighty
bulk on his two forelegs lifted to the top of bottles? What more
flamboyant than the painted clown, timeless type of the race, laughing
that he may not weep, grinning through a thousand tragic jests while
little human beings perform their miraculous tricks around him?
Jazz, the Follies, the flapper in orange and green gown and war-paint of
rouge--impossible frenzies of color in a world that refuses to be drab.
Even the movies, devoid as they are of color in the physical sense, are
gaudy in the imaginations of the people who watch them; gaudy with
exaggerated romance, exaggerated comedy, exaggerated splendor or
grotesqueness or passion. Human souls who are not living impassioned
lives, not creating romance and splendor and grotesqueness--phases of
beauty's infinite variety--such people wistfully try to find these
things outside themselves; a futile, often a destructive quest.
The imagination will not down. If it is not a dance, a song, it becomes
an outcry, a protest. If it is not flamboyance it becomes deformity; if
it is not art, it becomes crime. Men and women cannot be content, any
more than children, with the mere facts of a humdrum life--the
imagination must adorn and exaggerate life, must give it splendor and
grotesqueness, beauty and infinite depth. And the mere acceptance of
these things from without is not enough--it is not enough to agree and
assert when the imagination demands for satisfaction creative energy.
Flamboyance expresses faith in that energy--it is a shout of delight, a
declaration of richness. It is at least the beginning of art.
All right go ahead: A TEXAS PRIZE CONTEST--The Southern Methodist
University at Dallas, Texas, recently emerged from a prize contest which
had a strange _dénouement_--
Look here young man, after this you examine those girls in the cold
weather.
Who is Warner Fabian? _Flaming Youth_ is the story of the super-flapper,
of her affairs at country clubs and cozy home-dances with all the
accompaniments of prohibition stimulants. Warner Fabian believes that
the youth of this country feeds on excitement and rushes to knowledge
"heeled" by way of petting parties and the elemental stimulus of jazz.
The barriers of convention are down. Youth makes its own standards and
innocence, according to the author, has been superseded by omniscience.
It doesn't matter that Warner Fabian is a _nom de plume_ which conceals
the identity of one of the ablest scientists of this country who has
dared to look facts in the face, facts physical, moral and emotional. He
has written the truth about youth, the youth of today as he sees it.
FLAMING YOUTH by Warner Fabian is the writing on the wall. It is the
_Quo Vadis_? of the present moment.
Those who are following in the Metropolitan Magazine the fortunes of
Pat, the most sophisticated and yet at the same time one of the most
deliciously lovely heroines of recent novels, and the fortunes of her
two sisters, may protest that Mr. Fabian's portrayal of youth in this
novel is outscotting Fitzgerald and overdancing in the Dark. We feel
however that this story of three girls and their many men is one which
may sufficiently frighten mothers and electrify fathers and hit the
younger set hard enough between the eyes to help America's youth to, at
least, a gradual return to sanity.
And so the beginning of art ends in a gradual return to sanity.
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If a man died on a stretcher he simply said: Dump it out. And ordered us
back for another load.
Intended to stop at the school but his mind waylaid him. Down the hill
came the ash-cart--on the wrong side of the street. He, up the hill,
perforce went wrong also and with great headway. Just as he was about to
pass the cart another car swung out from behind it, headed down hill at
full speed. It was too late for any of the three to stop. In three
seconds there would be death for someone. Angels would be waiting for
mother's little boy. Without the minutest loss of time, in time with the
Boston Symphony Orchestra at its best he swung far to the left, up over
the curb, between two trees, onto the sidewalk--by luck no one was
passing--and going fifty feet came back between two trees, over the curb
to the roadway and continued his empty progress, rather hot in the face,
it must be confessed. He felt happy and proud.
But he had missed his street.
Well let it go. Far away in front of him a locomotive stood
indifferently at the avenue end, emitting great clouds of smoke. It was
autumn, clear and cold.
But you Scandinavians, said the Frenchman, it is impossible to live in
this way. Why France, which is ten times as rich as your countries,
could not do it. You do not know what money is for. You throw it away
like a sickness. To drink champagne like this is madness, and it is
every night, everywhere, in Christiania, Copenhagen, everywhere.
And there she sits staring out, not at the sea, but over Long Island
Sound. Dreaming of her sons--and of the money she will make next year
by renting the better of her two little shacks.
When you have paid up the twenty shares you may, if you like, retain
them as paid up shares in which case you will receive the 5% interest,
or, if you feel that you would like to do so, you may increase your
holding to thirty shares and receive the 6%. Of course everyone is not
able to do that. Do not worry about it, we will notify you in plenty of
time when your book is balanced at the end of the six months.
Let's see. What is the number of your house? Four eighty? I'll see that
they send it right up.
You know last Sunday was my birthday. Seventy-three years old. I had a
party, a surprise party--my relatives came from all sides. But I
couldn't get her downstairs. She's afraid. We had a banister put on the
stairs, cost me nine dollars but she will not do it. She's so fat you
know, she's afraid of falling.
Re Commissions due--Amount $1.00. Dear Sir:--You will please take notice
that unless we receive payment in full of your account within FIVE DAYS
after receipt of this letter, we shall draw upon you for the amount due.
A collection agency draft notifies the banks--those great institutions
of finance--that there is serious doubt regarding the way you pay your
honest obligations. The bank will take note of it. From there the
information quietly passes to the various Mercantile Agencies, Dun's,
Bradstreet's, Martindale's. And this is ONLY ONE cog in the wheel of
ARROW SERVICE. Our reports cover the whole field of credit reporting.
Your continued indifference to our requests for payment has forced us to
consider this action. The draft, with a full history of the debt leaves
our office in five days unless your check is received in the meantime.
Let your better judgement guide you, and pay this account without any
more trouble or expense. Yours very truly--MEMBERS: Retail Credit Men's
National Association. Commercial Law League of America. Rotary
International. O Rotary International!
At this, De Soto, sick, after all the months of travel, stopped out of
breath and looked about him. Hundreds of miles he had travelled through
morass after morass, where the trees were so thick that one could
scarcely get between them, over mountain and river but never did he come
to the other side. The best he had done was to locate a river running
across his path, the greatest he had ever seen or heard of, greater than
the Nile, greater than the Euphrates, no less indeed than any. Here he
had confronted the New World in all its mighty significance and
something had penetrated his soul so that in the hour of need he had
turned to this Mighty River rather than to any other thing. Should it
come to the worst he had decided what to do. Out of the tangle around
him, out of the mess of his own past the river alone could give him
rest. Should he die his body should be given to this last resting place.
Into it Europe should pass as into a new world.
Near the shore he saw a school of small fish which seemed to look at
him, rippling the water as they moved out in unison. Raising his heavy
head De Soto gave the order to proceed. Four of the men lifted him on an
improvised stretcher and the party, headed by the Indians, started again
north along the bank.
The whole country was strange to them. But there at the edge of that
mighty river he had seen those little fish who would soon be eating him,
he, De Soto the mighty explorer--He smiled quietly to himself with a
curious satisfaction.