the end of a magazine story. The end is of no consequence whatever. The
beginning, I admit, may be, but the end! Come! Come! And in any case in
our magazine we print the end of each story separately, distributed
among the advertisements to break the type. But just at present we have
plenty of these on hand. You see," I continued, for there was something
in the man's manner that almost touched me, "all that is needed is that
the last words printed must have a look of finality. That's all. Now,
let me see," and I turned to the place where the story was cut, "what
are the last words: here: 'Dorothea sank into a chair. There we must
leave her!' Excellent! What better end could you want? She sank into a
chair and you leave her. Nothing more natural."
The contributor seemed about to protest. But I stopped him.
"There is one other small thing," I said. "Our coming number is to be a
Plumbers' and Motor Number. I must ask you to introduce a certain amount
of plumbing into your story." I rapidly turned over the pages. "I see,"
I said, "that your story as written is laid largely in Spain in the
summer. I shall ask you to alter this to Switzerland and make it winter
time to allow for the breaking of steam-pipes. Such things as these,
however, are mere details; we can easily arrange them."
I reached out my hand.
"And now," I said, "I must wish you a good afternoon."
The contributor seemed to pluck up courage.
"What about remuneration"--he faltered.
I waived the question gravely aside. "You will, of course, be duly paid
at our usual rate. You receive a cheque two years after publication. It
will cover all your necessary expenses, including ink, paper, string,
sealing-wax and other incidentals, in addition to which we hope to be
able to make you a compensation for your time on a reasonable basis per
hour. Good-bye."
He left, and I could hear them throwing him downstairs.
Then I sat down, while my mind was on it, and wrote the advance notice
of the story. It ran like this:
NEXT MONTH'S NUMBER OF THE MEGALOMANIA
MAGAZINE WILL CONTAIN A
THRILLING STORY, ENTITLED
"_DOROTHEA DASHAWAY, OR, THE QUICKSANDS OF SOCIETY._"
The author has lately leaped into immediate recognition as the greatest
master of the short story in the American World. His style has a brio, a
poise, a savoir faire, a je ne sais quoi, which stamps all his work with
the cachet of literary superiority. The sum paid for the story of
_Dorothea Dashaway_ is said to be the largest ever paid for a single MS.
Every page palpitates with interest, and at the conclusion of this
remarkable narrative the reader lays down the page in utter
bewilderment, to turn perhaps to the almost equally marvellous
illustration of Messrs. Spiggott and Fawcett's Home Plumbing Device
Exposition which adorns the same number of the great review.
I wrote this out, rang the bell, and was just beginning to say to the
secretary--
"My dear child,--pray pardon my forgetfulness. You must be famished for
lunch. Will you permit me----"
And then I woke up--at the wrong minute, as one always does.
_HOMER AND HUMBUG_
_AN ACADEMIC DISCUSSION_
_Homer and Humbug, an Academic Discussion_
THE following discussion is of course only of interest to scholars. But,
as the public schools returns show that in the United States there are
now over a million coloured scholars alone, the appeal is wide enough.
I do not mind confessing that for a long time past I have been very
sceptical about the classics. I was myself trained as a classical
scholar. It seemed the only thing to do with me. I acquired such a
singular facility in handling Latin and Greek that I could take a page
of either of them, distinguish which it was by merely glancing at it,
and, with the help of a dictionary and a pair of compasses, whip off a
translation of it in less than three hours.
But I never got any pleasure from it. I lied about it. At first,
perhaps, I lied through vanity. Any coloured scholar will understand the
feeling. Later on I lied through habit; later still because, after all,
the classics were all that I had and so I valued them. I have seen thus
a deceived dog value a pup with a broken leg, and a pauper child nurse a
dead doll with the sawdust out of it. So I nursed my dead Homer and my
broken Demosthenes though I knew in my heart that there was more sawdust
in the stomach of one modern author than in the whole lot of them.
Observe, I am not saying which it is that has it full of it.
So, as I say, I began to lie about the classics. I said to people who
knew no Greek that there was a sublimity, a majesty about Homer which
they could never hope to grasp. I said it was like the sound of the sea
beating against the granite cliffs of the Ionian Esophagus: or words to
that effect. As for the truth of it, I might as well have said that it
was like the sound of a rum distillery running a night shift on half
time. At any rate this is what I said about Homer, and when I spoke of
Pindar,--the dainty grace of his strophes,--and Aristophanes, the
delicious sallies of his wit, sally after sally, each sally explained
in a note calling it a sally--I managed to suffuse my face with an
animation which made it almost beautiful.
I admitted of course that Virgil in spite of his genius had a hardness
and a cold glitter which resembled rather the brilliance of a cut
diamond than the soft grace of a flower. Certainly I admitted this: the
mere admission of it would knock the breath out of anyone who was
arguing.
From such talks my friends went away sad. The conclusion was too cruel.
It had all the cold logic of a syllogism (like that almost brutal form
of argument so much admired in the Paraphernalia of Socrates). For if:--
Virgil and Homer and Pindar had all this grace, and pith and
these sallies,--
And if I read Virgil and Homer and Pindar,
And if they only read Mrs. Wharton and Mrs. Humphrey Ward
Then where were they?
So continued lying brought its own reward in the sense of superiority
and I lied more.
When I reflect that I have openly expressed regret, as a personal
matter, even in the presence of women, for the missing books of Tacitus,
and the entire loss of the Abacadabra of Polyphemus of Syracuse, I can
find no words in which to beg for pardon. In reality I was just as much
worried over the loss of the ichthyosaurus. More, indeed: I'd like to
have seen it: but if the books Tacitus lost were like those he didn't, I
wouldn't.
I believe all scholars lie like this. An ancient friend of mine, a
clergyman, tells me that in Hesiod he finds a peculiar grace that he
doesn't find elsewhere. He's a liar. That's all. Another man, in
politics and in the legislature, tells me that every night before going
to bed he reads over a page or two of Thucydides to keep his mind fresh.
Either he never goes to bed or he's a liar. Doubly so: no one could read
Greek at that frantic rate: and anyway his mind isn't fresh. How could
it be, he's in the legislature. I don't object to this man talking
freely of the classics, but he ought to keep it for the voters. My own
opinion is that before he goes to bed he takes whiskey: why call it
Thucydides?
I know there are solid arguments advanced in favour of the classics. I
often hear them from my colleagues. My friend the professor of Greek
tells me that he truly believes the classics have made him what he is.
This is a very grave statement, if well founded. Indeed I have heard the
same argument from a great many Latin and Greek scholars. They all
claim, with some heat, that Latin and Greek have practically made them
what they are. This damaging charge against the classics should not be
too readily accepted. In my opinion some of these men would have been
what they are, no matter what they were.
Be this as it may, I for my part bitterly regret the lies I have told
about my appreciation of Latin and Greek literature. I am anxious to do
what I can to set things right. I am therefore engaged on, indeed have
nearly completed, a work which will enable all readers to judge the
matter for themselves. What I have done is a translation of all the
great classics, not in the usual literal way but on a design that
brings them into harmony with modern life. I will explain what I mean in
a minute.
The translation is intended to be within reach of everybody. It is so
designed that the entire set of volumes can go on a shelf twenty-seven
feet long, or even longer. The first edition will be an _édition de
luxe_ bound in vellum, or perhaps in buckskin, and sold at five hundred
dollars. It will be limited to five hundred copies and, of course, sold
only to the feeble minded. The next edition will be the Literary
Edition, sold to artists, authors, actors and contractors. After that
will come the Boarding House Edition, bound in board and paid for in the
same way.
My plan is to so transpose the classical writers as to give, not the
literal translation word for word, but what is really the modern
equivalent. Let me give an odd sample or two to show what I mean. Take
the passage in the First Book of Homer that describes Ajax the Greek
dashing into the battle in front of Troy. Here is the way it runs (as
nearly as I remember), in the usual word for word translation of the
classroom, as done by the very best professor, his spectacles glittering
with the literary rapture of it.
"Then he too Ajax on the one hand leaped (or
possibly jumped) into the fight wearing on the
other hand, yes certainly a steel corselet (or
possibly a bronze under tunic) and on his head
of course, yes without doubt he had a helmet
with a tossing plume taken from the mane (or
perhaps extracted from the tail) of some horse
which once fed along the banks of the Scamander
(and it sees the herd and raises its head and
paws the ground) and in his hand a shield worth
a hundred oxen and on his knees too especially
in particular greaves made by some cunning
artificer (or perhaps blacksmith) and he blows
the fire and it is hot. Thus Ajax leapt (or,
better, was propelled from behind), into the
fight."
Now that's grand stuff. There is no doubt of it. There's a wonderful
movement and force to it. You can almost see it move, it goes so fast.
But the modern reader can't get it. It won't mean to him what it meant
to the early Greek. The setting, the costume, the scene has all got to
be changed in order to let the reader have a real equivalent to judge
just how good the Greek verse is. In my translation I alter it just a
little, not much but just enough to give the passage a form that
reproduces the proper literary value of the verses, without losing
anything of the majesty. It describes, I may say, the Directors of the
American Industrial Stocks rushing into the Balkan War Cloud.--
Then there came rushing to the shock of war
Mr. McNicoll of the C. P. R.
He wore suspenders and about his throat
High rose the collar of a sealskin coat.
He had on gaiters and he wore a tie,
He had his trousers buttoned good and high;
About his waist a woollen undervest
Bought from a sad-eyed farmer of the West.
(And every time he clips a sheep he sees
Some bloated plutocrat who ought to freeze),
Thus in the Stock Exchange he burst to view,
Leaped to the post, and shouted, "Ninety-two!"
There! That's Homer, the real thing! Just as it sounded to the rude
crowd of Greek peasants who sat in a ring and guffawed at the rhymes
and watched the minstrel stamp it out into "feet" as he recited it!
Or let me take another example from the so-called Catalogue of the Ships
that fills up nearly an entire book of Homer. This famous passage names
all the ships, one by one, and names the chiefs who sailed on them, and
names the particular town or hill or valley that they came from. It has
been much admired. It has that same majesty of style that has been
brought to an even loftier pitch in the New York Business Directory and
the City Telephone Book. It runs along, as I recall it, something like
this,--
"And first, indeed, oh yes, was the ship of Homistogetes the Spartan,
long and swift, having both its masts covered with cowhide and two rows of
oars. And he, Homistogetes, was born of Hermogenes and Ophthalmia and was
at home in Syncope beside the fast flowing Paresis. And after him came
the ship of Preposterus the Eurasian, son of Oasis and Hyteria," . . .
and so on endlessly.
Instead of this I substitute, with the permission of the New York
Central Railway, the official catalogue of their locomotives taken
almost word for word from the list compiled by their superintendent of
works. I admit that he wrote in hot weather. Part of it runs:--
Out in the yard and steaming in the sun
Stands locomotive engine number forty-one;
Seated beside the windows of the cab
Are Pat McGaw and Peter James McNab.
Pat comes from Troy and Peter from Cohoes,
And when they pull the throttle off she goes;
And as she vanishes there comes to view
Steam locomotive engine number forty-two.
Observe her mighty wheels, her easy roll,
With William J. Macarthy in control.
They say her engineer some time ago
Lived on a farm outside of Buffalo
Whereas his fireman, Henry Edward Foy,
Attended School in Springfield, Illinois.
Thus does the race of man decay or rot--
Some men can hold their jobs and some can not.
Please observe that if Homer had actually written that last line it
would have been quoted for a thousand years as one of the deepest
sayings ever said. Orators would have rounded out their speeches with
the majestic phrase, quoted in sonorous and unintelligible Greek verse,
"some men can hold their jobs and some can not": essayists would have
begun their most scholarly dissertations with the words,--"It has been
finely said by Homer that (in Greek) 'some men can hold their jobs'":
and the clergy in mid-pathos of a funeral sermon would have raised their
eyes aloft and echoed "Some men can not"!
This is what I should like to do. I'd like to take a large stone and
write on it in very plain writing,--
"The classics are only primitive literature. They belong in the same
class as primitive machinery and primitive music and primitive
medicine,"--and then throw it through the windows of a University and
hide behind a fence to see the professors buzz!!
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors corrected.
Page 136, "cusine" changed to "cuisine" (the royal cuisine)
Page 185, "follwing" changed to "following" (following
discussion is)