Chapter I: HEARD such a lovely lecture the other night (1)

on the Cosmos.

A Little Group of Advanced Women that I belong to are specializing this winter on the Cosmos.

We took it up, you know, because the other topics we were studying included it so frequently. And it's wonderful, really WONDERFUL!

Of course, an untrained mind will grapple with it in vain. One's interest must be serious and sincere. One must devote time to it.,

Otherwise one will get more harm than good out of it, you know.

It's like the Russian dances that way.

They are so primal, those dances! And all those primal things are dangerous, don't you think? Unless one has poise!

It's odd, too, that some of the most primal people have the most poise, isn't it?

The Swami Brandranath was like that. I've told you bout the Swami Brandramath, haven't I?

He wore such lovely robes! You can't buy silk like that in this country.

And he had such a PURE look in this eyes. So many of these magnetic people lack that pure look, you know.

He used to give talks to a Little Group of Serious Thinkers I belong to.

He taught us to go into the Silences -- only we never quite learned, for some of the girls would giggle. There are always people like that. The dear Swami! -- he was so patient! It was Occidental levity, he said, and we couldn't help it.

That is one of the main differences between the Orient and the Occident, you know.

How wonderful they are, the Orientals. And just think of India, with all its yogis and bazaars and mahatmas and howdahs and rajahs and things!

He was a Brahmin, the Swami was. A Brahmin and a Burman are the same thing, you know.

It's a caste, like belonging to one of our best families.

The Swami explained about the marks of caste, and so forth, to us.

And then one of the girls asked him if he was tattooed!

The idea!

FOTHERGIL FINCH, THE POET OF REVOLT

Isn't it odd how some of the most radical and advanced and virile of the leaders in the New Art and the New Thought don't look it at all?

There's Fothergil Finch, for instance. Nobody could be more virile than Fothy is in his Soul. Fothy's Inner Ego, if you get what I mean, is a Giant in Revolt all the time.

And yet to look at Fothy you wouldn't think he was a Modern Cave Man. Not that he looks like a weakling, you know. Butwell, if you get what I mean -- you'd think Fothy might write about violets instead of thunderbolts.

Dear Papa is ENTIRELY mistaken about him.

Only yesterday dear papa said to me, "Hermione, if you don't keep that damned little vers libre run away from here I'll put him to work, and he'll die of it."

But you couldn't expect Papa to appreciate Fothy. Papa is SO reactionary and conservative.

And Fothy's life is one long, grim, desperate struggle against Conventionality, and Social Injustice, and Smugness, and the Established Order, and Complacence. He is forever being a martyr to the New and True in Art and Life.

Last night he read me his latest poem -- one of his greatest, he says -- in which he tries to tell just what his Real Self is. It goes:

Look at me! Behold, I am founding a New Movement! Observe me. . . . I am in Revolt! I revolt! Now persecute me, persecute me, damn you, persecute me, curse you, persecute me! Philistine, Bourgeois, Slave, Serf, Capitalist, Respectabilities that you are, Persecute me! Bah! You ask me, do you, what am I in revolt against? Against you, fool, dolt, idiot, against you, against everything! Against Heavy, Hell and punctuation . . . against Life, Death, rhyme and rhythm . . . Persecute me, now, persecute me, curse you, persecute me! Slave that you are . . . what do Marriage, Tooth-brushes, Nail-files, the Decalogue, Handkerchiefs, Newton's Law of Gravity, Capital, Barbers, Property, Publishers, Courts, Rhyming Dictionaries, Clothes, Dollars, mean to Me?

I am a Giant, I am a Titan, I am a Hercules of Liberty, I am Prometheus, I am the Jess Willard of the New Cerebral Pugilism, I am the Mod- ern Cave Man, I am the Comrade of the Cosmic Urge, I have kicked off the Boots of Superstition, and I run wild along the Milky Way without ingrowing toenails, I am I! Curse you, what are You? You are only You! Nothing more! Ha! Bah! . . . persecute me, now persecute me!

Fothy always gets excited and trembles and chokes when he reads his own poetry, and while he was reading it Papa came into the room and disgraced himself by asking if there was any MONEY in that kind of poetry, and Fothy was so agitated that he fairly screamed when he said:

"Money . . . money . . . curse money! Money is one of the things I am in revolt against. . . .

Money is death and damnation to the free spirit!"

Papa said he was sorry to hear that; he said one of his companies needed an ad writer, and he didn't have any objection to hiring a free spirit with a punch, but he couldn't consider getting anyone to write ads that hated money, for there was a salary attached to the job.

And Fothy said: "You are trying to bribe me! Capitalism is casting its net over me! You are trying to make me a serf: trying to silence a Free Voice! But I will resist! I will not be enslaved! I will not write ads. I will not have a job.

And then Papa said he was glad to hear Fothy's sentiments. He had been afraid, he said, that Fothy had matrimonial designs about me. And the man who married HIS daughter would probably have to stand for possessing a good deal of wealth, too, for he had always intended doing something very handsome for his son-in-law. So if Fothy didn't want money, he wouldn't want me, for an enormous amount of it would go to me.

Papa, you know, thinks he can be awfully sarcastic.

So many Earth Persons pride themselves on their sarcasm, don't you think?

And Papa is an Earth Person entirely. I've got his horoscope. He isn't AT ALL spiritual.

But you can image that the whole scene was FRIGHTFULLY embarrassing to me -- I will NEVER forgive Papa!

And I haven't made up my mind AT ALL about Fothy. But what I do know is this: once I get my mind made up, I WILL NOT stand for opposition form ANY source.

One must be an Individualist, or perish!

HOW THE SWAMI HAPPENED TO HAVE SEVEN WIVES

Isn't it terrible about that elephant at the Zoo -- Oh, you know! -- it's like Gunga Din, only, of course, it isn't Gunga Din at all.

Anyhow, he's CHAINED FOR LIFE! I suppose some- one gave him tobacco for a joke and it made him cross. I've heard of those cases, haven't you?

An elephant is such a -- such a -- well, NOBLE beast, isn't he?

It's transmigration of souls makes them that way, perhaps.

Oh is it a Rajah?

Anyhow, it sits on top of an elephant.

We took up transmigration of souls one time -- our little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- and it's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!

That was when the Swami Brandranath used to talk to us. The dear Swami! Such eyes -- so pure and yet so magnetic! -- I have never seen in a human being.

The eye is the window of the soul, you know.

He's in jail now, the poor, dear Swami. But he wasn't really a bigamist at all. You see, he had seven spiritual planes. All of us do, only most of us don't know it. But he could get from one plane to another quite easily.

Of course, he couldn't remember what he'd done on one plane while he was on the next one above or below it. And that's the way he happened to have seven wives -- one for each spiritual plane.

Only the Court took a sordid view of it. It seems there was something about life insurance mixed up with it, too.

The Occidentals are so apt to miss the spiritual sweetness of the Oriental, don't you think?

We are -- all but the Leaders of Thought, and a little group, here and there -- so commonplace.

Don't you LOATHE the commonplace?

Not loathe, really, of course -- because the harmonious mind does not let itself be disturbed.

The harmonious mind realizes that dirt is only useful matter in the wrong place, as Tennyson sings so sweetly somewhere.

Tennyson has quite gone out, of course. He is so -- so, well, if you get what I mean -- so mid- Victorian, somehow.

It seems he WAS mid-Victorian all the time, but it's only recently that it's been found out on him.

Though I always will think of "come Into the Garden, Maud," as one of the world's sweetest little epics.

I'm very independent that way, in spite of the critics. After all, criticism comes down to a question of individual taste, doesn't it? That is, in the final analysis.

Independence! That is what this age needs. Nearly every night before I got to bed I say to myself: "Have I been independent today? Or have I FAILED?"

I believe in those little spiritual examinations, don't you?

It helps one to keep in tune with the Infinite, you know.

The Infinite! How much it comprises! And how little we really understand it!

We're going to take it up, the Infinite, in a serious way soon -- our Little Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know.

THE ROMANTIC OLD DAYS

It must have been terribly difficult getting around in the days before automobiles were invented, or railroads or anything like that.

Though, of course, it was wonderfully romantic, too.

The old coaching days, particularly, when everybody blew on horns as they drove from town to town, and there were highwaymen and cavaliers with swords and all those people, you know, riding by the coaches.

Don't you just DOTE on romance? I do!

But, of course, there's no place for it in our hurried modern life, and I suppose we shouldn't regret it.

But now and then I sigh over it. Like dropping a tear, you know, in a dear old chest perfumed with lavender and old roses.

I always say that one can be advanced and in the van of modern progress, and still drop a tear, you know.

Do you think that all this study of sex hygiene means the death of romance?

It's a serious thought, isn't it?

But what I always say is: "Which of these things will do the most GOOD in the world?"

Especially good to the POOR!

You know how frightfully interested I am in the poor.

I make that my test. I always say to myself: "Which will do the most good to the great masses?"

I take such a serious interest in the MASSES!

We should think twice before we take romance out of their lives and replace it with science of any kind.

For, after all, you know, they represent the Future.

We should all think of the Future.

That's what makes the Feminist Movement such a WONDERFUL thing -- it is moving right straight ahead toward the Future!

I'm thinking of being a Suffragist again. I was once, you know, but I resigned.

The sashes and banners are such a frightful shade of yellow, you know. So I quit.

Beauty, after all, is the chief thing. What, after all, do all our reforms come to, if the world is not to be made more beautiful because of them?

And I simply CANNOT wear yellow.

HERMIONE'S BOSWELL EXPLAINS

Believe me, 'tis not with elation
I dwell on Hermione's madness;
The result of my rapt contemplation
Is sadness, a terrible sadness!

I weep when I note how she drivels;
I sigh o'er her fake philanthropies;
I am pained when I see how she frivols,
Like a kitten, with serious topics.

It is grief that her mental condition
Inspires, not laughter or scorning;
If she has any use, 'til her Mission
To stand as a Horrible Warning.

I am moral, essentially moral;
I am grave, and hate everything trashy,
And that is the reason I quarrel
With intellects flighty and flashy.

I yearn for the truth, I am earnest;
I yearn to face facts without blinking,

Of all of my years, quite the yearnest
Is my yearn to be thorough in thinking.

That's why I'm severe with this darling,
Nor pardon nor whitewash nor gloss her, --
The linnet -- the parrot -- the starling!
I weep over her and expose her.

SYMBOLS AND DEW-HOPPING

Last week the Loveliest man lectured to us -- to our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- on the Ultimate Symbolism. In art and life both, you know.

It was simply wonderful -- WONDERFUL!

Art, you know, used to be full of symbolism.

But now, it seems, symbolism has dropped out of Art, and Nature has taken it up.

Odd, isn't it? But really not surprising when you come to think about it.

For, you know, Nature is always trying to keep up with advanced ideas -- evolving and evolving toward the Superman.

And the Superwoman, too.

I think it is the duty of us who are advanced thinkers to give Nature a worthy idea to evolve toward, don't you?

To set Nature a mark to come up to, you know.

For what is the use of evolution if it doesn't evolve forward instead of backward?

And the Best People, I think, should feel a sense of social responsibility and give evolution a model.

Each should be a Symbol -- that's what I always ask myself each night now: "Have I been a Symbol today? Or have I failed to be a symbol?"

Down at the beach last week I nearly drowned -- you don't mean to say you haven't heard of it? It was frightful.

I'd always heard that, when a person sinks, his whole past life passes before him in review.

But it didn't with me. What I said as I went down was: "Have I been a Symbol? Or have I failed?"

And the life guard who got me out -- he was simply the most gorgeous man! -- burned bronze, you know, and with shoulders like a Greek god! -- and with the most wonderful eyes and white teeth -- he asked me, the guard did, "What, marm?"

It was fearfully disappointing! Sometimes they are college men, you know, just life-guarding through the summer. But would any college man have said, "What, marm?"

And then he went and saved a blonde creature in the most scandalous bathing suit I ever saw.

He saved one in the most business-like way, too, as if he were a waiter, you know, passing from one table to another.

No wonder the social fabric is crumbling when quite impossible people like life guards permit themselves to become blase' over such matters!

The lower classes are very discouraging anyhow, don't you think? -- after all we do for them in the way of philanthropy and sociology and uplifting them generally, you know!

Of course, I haven't lost my interest in sociology -- not by any means. I always hold fast the thought that all the world are brothers.

I'm taking up Dew-hopping next week. It's a wonderful new nerve cure. Formerly it was quite the thing to walk barefoot in the dew at dawn.

But at this new place I've discovered they don't merely walk -- that's going out, quite. They HOP. Like frogs and toads, you know.

It brings the patients into closer kinship with the electric currents of the earth, hopping does, the doctor says. It's WONDERFUL!

He is the loveliest man -- with mystic eyes! -- the doctor is.

THE SONG OF THE SNORE

Fothergil Finch, Hermione's friend, the vers libre poet, dodges through life harried and hunted by one pursuing Fear.

"Some day," he said to me --

(It is Hermione's Boswell who is speaking in this sketch, in the first person, and not Hermione, the incomparable.) --

"Some day," Fothergil finch said to me, the other night, in a tone of intense, bitter conviction, "some day It will get me! Some day I will overtake me. The great Beat, Popularity, which pursues me! Some day It will clutch me and tear me and devour my Soul! Some day I will be a Popular Writer!"

It is my own impression that Fothergil's fears are exaggerated; but they are very real to him. He visualizes his own soul as a fugitive climbing higher and higher, running faster and faster, to escape this Beast. Perhaps Fothergil secretly hopes that the speed of his gong will induce combustion, and he will leap from the topmost hills of Art, flaming, directly into the heavens, there to burn and shine immortality, an authentic star. Well, well, we all have our little plane, our little vanities!

"Fothergil," I said, cheerily, "Popularity has not overtaken you yet. Cheer up -- perhaps it never will."

We were in Fothergil's studio in Greenwich Village, where I had gone to see how his poem on Moonlight was getting along. He strode to the window. Fothergil is not tall, and he is slightly pigeon-toed -- the fleshly toes of Fothergil symbolize the toes of his ever-fleecing soul -- but he strides. Female poets undulate. Erotic male poets saunter. Tramp poets lurch and swagger. Fothergil, being a vers libre poet, a Prophet of the Virile, a Little Brother of the Cosmic Urge, is compelled by what his verse is to stride vigorously across rooms as if they were vast desert places, in spite of what his toes are. He strode magnificently, triumphantly, to the window and flung the shade up and looked out at the amorphous mist creeping in across the roofs. The crawling fog must have suggested his great, gray Dread, for presently he turned away with a shudder and sank upon a couch and moaned.

'Ah, Heaven! Popularity! The disgrace of it -- the horror of it! Popularity! Ignominy! When it catches me -- when it happens ----"

He plucked from his pocket a small phial and held it up toward the light and gazed upon it desperately and raptly.

"I am never without this!" he said. "It is my means of escape. I will not be taken unawares! I carry it always. At night it is beneath my pillow. The day it happens -- the moment I feel myself in the grip of Popularity----"

I caught his hand; in his excitement he was raising the poison to his lips.

"What I cannot understand, Fothergil," I said, "is why a Poet of the Virile, a Reincarnation of the Cave Man -- excuse me, but that is what you are being this year, is it not ? -- should give way to Fear. Is it not more in character to meet this Beast and slay It? Is there not a certain contradiction between your profession and your practice?"

"More than a contradiction," he said eagerly. "It is more than contradictory! It is paradoxical!"

I eliminate much that followed. When Fothergil gets started on the paradox, time passes. He is never really interested in things until he has dis- covered the paradoxical quality in them. Sometimes I think that his enthusiasm over himself is due to the fact that he discovered early in life that he himself was a paradox -- and sometimes I think that discovery is the explanation of his enthusiasm for the paradox.

"What," said Fothergil, "is the most paradoxical thing in the world? The Human Snore! It seems Ugly-yet it is Beautiful! It seems a trivial function of the body -- and yet it is the Key to the Soul ----"

"The Key to the Soul?"

"Man sleeps," he said, "and his Conscious Mind is in abeyance. But his Subconscious Mind is still awake. It functions. It has its opportunity to utter itself. The Snore is the Voice of the Soul! And not only the Soul of the individual but of the Soul of the race. All the experiences of man, in his ascent from the mire to his present altitude, are retained in the Subconscious Mind-his fights, his struggles, his falls, his recoveries. And his dreams and nightmares are racial memories of these things. Snores are the language in which he expresses them. Interpret the Snore, and you have the psychic history of the ascent of man from Caliban to Shakespeare!

"And I can interpret it! I have listened to a million Snores, and learned the language of the Soul! Night after night, for years, I harked to the Human Snore -- in summer, hastening from park bench to beach and back again; in winter, haunting the missions and lodging houses. Ah, Heavens! with what devotion, with what passion of the discoverer, have I not pursued the Human Snore! I have gone miles to listen to some snore that was reported to be peculiar; I have denied my self luxuries, pleasures, and at times even food, in order to hire reluctant persons to Snore for me!

"And I have written the Epic of the Snore in vers libre. You shall hear the prelude!"

And this is Fothergil's prelude:

Snore me a song of the soul, Oh, sleeper, snore! Whistle me, wheeze me, grunkle and grunt, gurgle and snort me a Virile stave! Snore till the Cosmos shakes! On the wings of a snore I fly backward a billion years, and grasp the mastodon and I tear him limb from limb, And with his thigh hone I heat the dinosaur to death, for I am Virile! Snore! Snore! Snore! Snore, O struggling and troubled and squirming and suffering and choking and purple-faced sleeper, snore! Snore me the sound of the brutal struggle when the big bull planets bellowed and fought with one another. in the bloody dawn of time for the love of little yellow-haired moons, Snore! Snore till Chaos raps with his boot on the walls of Cosmos and kicks to the landlord!

Turn, choke, twist and struggle, sleeper, and snore me the song of life in the making, Sneeze me a universe full of star-dust, Snore me back to the days when I was a Cave Man, and with my bare hands slew the walrus, for I am Virile! Snore the death-rattle of the walrus, O struggling sleeper, snore! Snore me ----

But I was compelled to leave. There is a great deal of it, Fothergil says. If you know Fothergil you are aware that when he declaims his Virile verses he becomes excited; he swells physically; sometimes he looks quite five feet tall in his moments of expansion; all this is very bad for him. More than once the declamation of his poem, "Myself and the Cosmic Urge," has sent him shaking to the tea urn.

Before I left I was able to calm him somewhat. But with calm came reflection. And with reflection came his great, gray Dread again.

When I left,. Fothergil was looking out of the window and shuddering, as if the Monster Popularity might be hiding behind the neighboring chimneys. One hand clasped the phial caressingly.

But somehow I doubt that Fothergil will ever be compelled to drink the poison.

BALLADE OF UNDERSTANDING

"Does not the World's stupidity At times make Serious Thinkers fret?" I asked the fair Hermione; "Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and yet .

We feel we owe the World a debt!" She waved a slim, bejeweled hand, She brooded on some vague regret. . "I hope," she sighed, "you'll UNDERSTAND!"

"Is not your high Philosophy Too subtle for the Mob to get?" I asked . . . She pondered seriously; "Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and yet . . .

She trifled with an amulet Imported from some Orient land. . . . "What fish can burst the Cosmic Net? . . . I HOPE," she sighed, "you'll Understand."

"Art, Science and Psychology, Causes that rise and shine and set,

Do all these never weary thee?" -- "Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and yet . Would Thought and Life have ever met Unless" . . . She paused. Her lashes fanned Her eyes, with tears of ardor wet. . . . "I hope," she sighed, "YOU'LL Understand!"

"Princess, is Bull the One Best Bet?"- "Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and yet She mused, and then; in accents bland, "I hope," she said, "you'll UNDERSTAND!"

HERMIONE ON FASHIONS AND WAR

ISN'T war frightful, though; simply FRIGHTFUL!

What Sherman said it was, you know.

Though they say there's an economic condition back of this war, too.

We took up economics not long ago -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- and gave an entire evening to it.

It's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!

Without economics, you know, there couldn't be any Civilization.

That's a thought that should give one pause, isn't it?

Although, of course, this war may destroy civilization entirely.

If I thought it was likely to do that I would join in the Peace Demonstration at once -- or have they had it already ? -- the march for peace, you know! Anyhow, no matter what the personal sacrifice might be, I would join in. Not that I care to march in the dust. And black never did become me. But I suppose there will be some autos. And, well -- one must sacrifice.

For if Civilization dies out, what will become of us then?

Will we revert to the Primordial?

Will the Cave Man triumph?

The very idea gives me the creeps!

Because, you know, the Cave Man is all right -- and the Primitive, and all that -- as a protest against Decadence-and in a LITERARY way -- but if ALL men were Cave Men!

Well, you know, the thought is frightful; simply frightful!

You can have a feeling for just ONE Cave Man, you know, in the midst of Civilization, when a MILLION Cave Men would ----

But the idea is too terrible for words!

And in this crisis it is Woman who must save the world.

The loveliest woman -- she's quite advanced, really, and has the most charming toilettes -- told our Little Group of Serious Thinkers the other night that this is the time when Woman must rule the world.

It is the test of the New Woman.

If ANYTHING is saved from the wreck it will be because of Her.

She can write letters to the papers, you know, against war and-and all that sort of thing, you know.

And, of course, if the Germans and Russians and English do all get together and conquer Paris, I suppose they won't kill the modistes and designers.

Civilization, you know, is not so easily killed after all. The Romans were conquered, you know, but all their styles and philosophies and things were taken up by the Medes and Persians who conquered them, and have remained unchanged in those countries ever since.

But in a time like this, it's comforting to have a Cause to cling to.

No matter what happens, the advanced thinkers must cling together and make their Cause count.

And if England should conquer France, and put a king on the throne there again, no doubt there will be a great revival of fashion, as there was in the days of Napoleon I. and the Empress Eugenie.

But if all the advanced thinkers in the world could only get together in one place and THINK Peace and Harmony -- sit down in circles, you know, and send Psychic Vibrations across the ocean -- who can tell but what the war might not end ?

The triumph of mind over matter, you know.

I'm going to propose the idea to our little group and pass it on to all the other little groups.

I'd be willing to give up an entire evening to it myself.

URGES AND DOGS

We had quite a discussion the other evening -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- as to whether it was Idealism or Materialism that had gotten the Germans into this dreadful war.

Isn't Idealism just simply wonderful!

Fothy Finch said it was neither; he said it was the Racial Urge.

It's like the Cosmic Urge, you know; except it's altogether German, Fothy explained.

Every once in a while you hear of a New Urge. That's one of the things that distinguishes Modern Thought from the old philosophies, don't you think?

Although, of course, the Cosmic Urge isn't what it used to be a year or two ago.

It's become -- er -- well, VULGARIZED, if you know what I mean. EVERYBODY'S writing and talking about it now, don't you know.

I think, myself, it's going out soon. And a leader -- a real pioneer in thought, you know, would scarcely care to talk about it now without a smile.

I've just about dropped it myself. It's the same way with everything exclusive. It soon becomes common.

Really, I hadn't worn my white summer furs three weeks before I saw so many imitations that I just simply HAD to lay them aside.

Don't you think people who take up things like that, after the real leaders have dropped them, are frightfully lacking in SUBTLETY?

Oh, Subtlety! Subtlety! WHAT would modern thought be without Subtlety?

Personally, I just simply HATE the Obvious. It's so -- so -- well, so easily seen through, if you know what I mean.

Fothy Finch said to me only the other day, "Has it ever occurred to you, Hermione, that you are NOT an Obvious sort of Person?"

It is almost UNCANNY the way Fothergil Finch can read my thoughts sometimes. We are both so very psychic.

Mamma said to me last night, "You are seeing a great deal of Mr. Finch, Hermione. Do you think it is right to encourage him if you don't intend to marry him? What ARE your intentions with regard to Mr. Finch?"

I didn't answer her at all -- poor dear Mamma is SO old-fashioned!

But I thought to myself ----

Well, would it be so IMPOSSIBLE?

Of course, marriage is a serious thing. One must look at it from all points of view, if one has a Social Conscience.

He has a LOVELY way with dogs, Fothy has. They trust him instinctively -- he is just DEAR with them. I have some beauties now, you know. They are getting so they won't let anyone but Fothy bathe them.

MOODS AND POPPIES

We took up the Bhagavad Gita -- our Little Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know -- in quite a thorough way the other evening.

Isn't the Bhagavad Gita just simply WONDERFUL!

It has nothing at all to do with Bagdad, you know -- though at first glance it seems quite like it might, doesn't it?

Of course, they're both Oriental -- aren't you just simply WILD about Oriental things? But really, they're QUITE different.

The Bhagavad Gita, you know, is all about Reincarnation and Karma, and all those lovely old things.

When I start my Salon I'm going to have a Bhagavad Gita Evening -- all in costume, you know.

I find that when I dress in harmony with the Idea I RADIATE so much more effectively, if you get what I mean.

Fothergil Finch is the same way.

He writes his best vers libre things in a purple dressing-gown.

There's an amber-colored pane of glass in his studio skylight, and he has to sit and wait and wait and wait until the moonlight falls through that pane onto his paper, and then it only stays long enough so he can write a few lines, and he can't go on with the poem until he comes again.

He brought me one last night -- he wrote it to me yes, really! -- and he waited and waited for enough moonlight to do it, and caught a terrible cold in his head, poor dear Fothy.

It goes like this:

Poppies, poppies, silver poppies in the moonlight, poppies! Silver poppies, Silver poppies in the moonlight, Youth! Poppies poppies, crimson poppies in the sunset, Love! Poppies, poppies, poppies! Black poppies in the midnight, Death! Three colors of poppies! One color is silver, The second color is crimson, The third color is black, And if there were a fourth color it would be green!

Alas! Why is there never a fourth color?

Poppies, poppies, poppies, but no Green Poppy!

I asked the little crippled girl who sells poppies to
Buy bread for the drunken father who beats her,

And she said, "I, too, seek the fourth color!"

I asked the boy who drives the grocer's delivery
wagon, the old apple woman without teeth, the
morgue keeper, the plumber, the janitor, the
red-armed waffle baker in the window of a
restaurant full of marble-topped tables and
pallid-looking girls, the subway guard and the
millionaire,

And they all said, "Poppies, poppies, poppies, We have never known but three colors!" I am a Great Virile Spirit; I, with my Ego, I will give the world its Desire! I, the strong! I, the daring! I will create a Green Poppy!

That about being Virile is just like Fothy! He prides himself on being Virile, you know -- Poor dear Fothy!

He said until he saw me he had always been satisfied with silver and red and black poppies, but as soon as he knew me he felt there MUST be a Green Poppy somewhere.

It is likely a mood of my soul, you know -- the Green Poppy is!

Isn't it simply wonderful!

CONCENTRATION

Isn't it just simply terrible the way the Balkans are bombarding Venice . . . all those beautiful Doges and things, you know.

I suppose there will be nothing left, just simply nothing, of the city that Byron wrote about in in -- what was it? Oh, yes, in "Childe Harold to the Dark Tower Came."

That's one comforting thing to think of if this country ever gets into a war, isn't it? I mean that we haven't any of those lovely old things that can be bombarded, you know.

I suppose if we ever did get into war someone like Edison would invent something quick, you know, and it would be all over in a few hours.

Isn't inventive science wonderful! Just simply wonderful!

It's so -- so -- well, so DYNAMIC, if you get what I mean. Isn't it?

Don't you just DOTE on dynamic things?

Dynamic personalities, especially.

I've often thought if I had it to do over again I'd go in less for psychics and more for dynamics.

But then there are so many things that a modern thinker must keep up with, aren't there?

And it's easy enough to concentrate one's mind on one or two things, but I often find it terribly difficult to concentrate on ten or twelve different things all at the same time.

And one must if one is to keep up with the very latest in Thought and Life.

Concentration! Concentration! That is the key to it all! Nearly every night when I am alone with my own Ego I go into the Silences for a little period of Spiritual Self-Examination and I always ask myself: "Have I Concentrated today? Really Concentrated? Or have I failed?"

I call these little times my Psychic Inquisitions.

In the hurry of this crowded age one must find time to get along with one's self, must one not? Fothy Finch has written a beautiful thing about the hurry of this crowded age which I wish everyone could hang over his desk.

Well, I must be going on now. I have a committee meeting for this afternoon. I can't for the life of me remember whether it's about suffrage -- Oh, yes, I marched! -- or about some relief fund.

SOUL MATES

I'm taking up Bergson this week.

Next week I'm going to take up Etruscan vases and the Montessori system.

Oh, no, I haven't lost my interest in sociology.

Only the other night we went down in the auto and watch the bread line.

Of course, one can take up TOO MANY things.

It's the spirit in which you take up a thing that counts.

Sometimes I think the spirit in which you take a thing up counts more than the thing itself -- counts in its effect on you, you know.

Of course, the way to get the real meaning out of any thing is to put yourself in a receptive attitude.

In serious things the attitude counts for everything. One mustn't scoff.

If you look seriously and scientifically you'll' see there's a great deal more than you suspected in all this affinity and soul mate craze, for instance.

Not that I care much for the words "soul mate" and "affinity" particularly; they have been so VULGARIZED, somehow.

The Best People don't use those terms any more.

Psychic harmony is the new term.

The loveliest man explained all about it to us the other day. I belong to a Little Group of Thinkers, who take a serious interest in these things, you know.

We are trying to find out how to make our psychic powers count for the betterment of the world. I am very psychic. Some are now.

This man had the most interesting eyes and the silkiest beard, and he said his aura was pink.

If he should meet a girl, you know, with an aura just the shade of pink that his aura is, why then they would know they were in psychic harmony.

Simple, isn't it? But then all truly great ideas ARE simple, aren't they?

But if his aura was blue, and her aura was yellow, then, of course, they would quarrel. That's what makes so much domestic unhappiness.

But he said something that gave me the most frightfully insecure feeling.

He said the aura CHANGES its color as the soul progresses.

Two people may be in harmony today, and both have pink auras, and in a year hers may be green and his golden.

What desperate chances a woman takes when she marries, doesn't she?

I sometimes think life must have been a much more comfortable thing before the world got to be so terribly advanced.

But, of course, it is our duty to sacrifice personal comfort for the future of the race and the betterment of the world.

As I was looking at the bread line the thought came to me that the chief difference between this advanced age and other ages was in the fact that people today are willing to take a serious interest in such things.

People are willing to sacrifice themselves today, you know.

It is food for optimism, don't you think?

Not that I was really so uncomfortable in the auto, you know. I had on my new mink coat.

HERMIONE TAKES UP LITERATURE

We've been going in for Astrological Research lately -- our Little Group of Modern Thinkers, you know -- and we've picked our own personal stars.

Only it seems such a shame, doesn't it, that one isn't allowed to CHANGE stars? Keeping the same star all your life is rather monotonous, don't you think?

Though, of course, if one changed and got some- one else's star things might be frightfully complicated, mightn't they?

But it would make a charming little story, wouldn't it, for a girl to change stars, you know, and find that her new star belonged to some quite nice young man, and, of course, after that, their destinies would be one.

I get some of the most ORIGINAL plots for stories!

Fothergil Finch has often said to me that that is one difference between genius and talent. When you have genius, you know, things like that just come to you; but if you only have talent you must work and WORK for them.

"If I only hd your spontaneity, Hermione!" Fothergil often says.

And really, it's never been any trouble for me at all to dash off an idea, though of course they would have to be touched up by the editors a little before they could be printed.

Fothergil said the other night I should try poetry.

"Why, Fothy," I said, "if I lived a hundred years I never could make two lines rhyme with each other!"

But he said Rhyme was out of fashion anyhow, and -- would you believe it? -- while we were talking I got an idea for a poem and just dashed it off then and there -- a vers libre poem you know, and it goes:

What becomes of
People when they die?
I used to ask when I was a little child,
And now even since
I am grown up I am not sure that I know!

"Fothy," I said, "It was so easy -- that makes me afraid it isn't really good!"

"Ah," he said, "that modesty PROVES you are a genius! Heavens, what would I not give to have you spontaneity, your modesty, your spontaneity --"

But I interrupted him. Another idea had come to me -- just like that, and -- would you believe it? I dashed off another one, right then and there! It went:

I see the rain fall.
It is no effort for the rain to fall.
Why is it no effort?
Because it falls spontaneously!
O Spontaneity! Spontaneity!
Rain is genius,
Genius is rain!
Fall, fall, rain!

Fothy is going to get them printed -- he knows a lot of vers libre publishers -- if Papa will only put up the money. And one nice thing about poor dear Papa is that he always will put it up.

So that night I wrote twenty or thirty more of them, and they were ALL good -- ALL works of genius -- they ALL came to me just like the first ones!

The last one came to me just as I was going to bed. I looked out of the window and saw the moon and ran and got a pencil and wrote:

I see the moon out of the window.
I wonder what it thinks of me?
Wouldn't the moon and I both be surprised
If we found that neither of us
Though anything at all about the other?

The book's going to be vellum, you know, and that sort of thing. I'm going to have a gown just like the cover and give a fete when it comes out.

The worst thing about being literary, though, is that it makes one feel so RESPONSIBLE for the gift, if you know what I mean, doesn't it?

THE WORLD IS GETTING BETTER

DR. JAGADES CHUNDER BOSE says that plants are almost as sensitive as human beings -- they have feelings and susceptibilities, you know, and all that sort of thing.

Isn't it wonderful how the Hindus find these things out?

Soul speaking to soul, I suppose.

But I have scarcely been able to eat comfortably since I read it.

Every time I sit down to a salad it makes me feel quite like a cannibal!

And to think, I was just on the point of becoming a vegetarian, too!

I suppose to be on the safe side one should eat nothing but minerals.

But, of course, advanced thinkers will have to take the matter up seriously and discover a way out -- some day we will live on aromas and electricity, no doubt.

Don't you think the world is getting kinder? A hundred years ago, for instance, no one would have cared whether plants suffer pain or not -- people wouldn't have given it a second though, you know.

And now, though, they will have to keep on eating them until something else is invented, they will do it with a shudder and won't enjoy them near so much. The world is losing much of its cruelty and thoughtlessness. Upward! Onward! Is the slogan.

Do you like my new coat? Unborn lamb skin, you know. Isn't it lovely?

WAR AND ART

THIS war is going to have a tremendous in- fluence on Art -- vitalize it, you know, and make it REAL, and all that sort of thing. In fact, it's doing it already. We took up the war last night -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- in quite a serious way and considered it thoroughly in all its aspects and we decided that it would put more SOUL into Art.

And into life, too, you know.

Already you can see it on every hand how much serious purpose it is putting into lives that were merely trivial before. Even poor, dear Mamma -- and really, it would be hard to imagine a more trivial person than Mamma! -- is knitting socks.

She is going to send them to the Poles. She wanted to send them to the Belgians.

But I said to her, "Positively, Mamma, you are ALWAYS behind the times. Don't you know the Belgians are going out and the Poles are coming in?"

And, you know, it's been months since really Smart People have knit for the Belgians. The Poles are QUITE the thing now.

It's strange how great movements keep going on and on from mountain peak to mountain peak of usefulness like that, isn't it? -- changing their direction now and then as evolution itself does, but always progressing, progressing!

That is one wonderful thing about evolution -- it ALWAYS progresses.

When one thinks it over, one grows more and more conscious that the human race owes a great deal to Evolution, doesn't one?

WHAT could we have done without it?

It's as somebody said about something else one time -- if we hadn't had it, you know, it would have been necessary to invent it, though for the life of me, I can't remember who it was or what he said about it. Although likely it was Madame de Stael. We took her up once and it developed that she had said a most surprising number of things like that things, you know, that would be quite quotable if you could only remember them.

Isn't memory a wonderful facility, though?

I've always intended to go in for developing mine systematically and scientifically.

But I've never done it because I always forget whether I should order the book-shop people to send home a work on numismatics or a work on mnemonics. One of them is about money, you know, and the other is about memory. And once when I was shopping and thought I had it right it turned out -- the book did, when I got it home -- to be all about air and things. Pneumatics, you know! Wasn't it perfectly ridiculous?

But, of course, one learns by one's mistakes.

Have you seen dear Nijinsky?

We were discussing him last evening -- our little group, you know -- and decided that while he has more Personality than Mordkin he has less Temperament, if you get what I mean.

One of the girls said last evening, "Mordkin is more exotic, but Nijinsky is more esoteric."

And another said, "One of them shows intellect obviously mingled with spirit, but the other shows spirit occultly mingled with intellect."

Fothergil Finch said, "They are alike in their differences, but subtly differentiated in their likenesses, n'est-cd pas?"

Fothy has a simply delightful faculty of summing a thing up in a sentence like that, but it makes him very vain if you show you think so; so I put him in his place and closed the discussion with one remark:

"It is all," I said, "it is ALL a question of Interpretation."

And, quite seriously, when you come to think about it, it usually is, isn't it?

A SPIRITUAL DIALOGUE

Last night I met Hermione, And eagerly she said to me: "Thoughts from the ambient everywhere Electrify our worldly air."

"My soul," I said, "grabs off such hints As butter, whether pats or prints, Receives and holds all unaware Small strands of drifting, golden hair. But have YOU thought, O Maiden fair, O, have you thought profoundly of The psychic consciousness in crows? Or why the Malay when in love Wears rubber earrings on his toes?"

The lady shook her lovely head -- 'Twas coiffed divinely -- and she said: "Have you reflected on the part Primeval instinct plays in Art? It's simply wonderful the way Old things grow new from day to day!"

"That's true," I said, "I often ape The Ape to get my Art in shape -- And with the Simian going strong, Behold, another Rennysawng!"

"Perhaps," she said, "across the verge Of darkness, from the Cosmic Urge, The Light is speeding in bright waves, E'en now to show the way to slaves!"

"The thought," I said, "is cheerful -- but These Swamis WILL chew betel-nut!"

"Alas!" she said, "alas! too true! But oh! it's wonderful of you To sympathize and understand --" (She gestured with a jeweled hand) -- "The joy of being understood!"

"Our talk," I said, "has done me good."

WILL THE BEST PEOPLE RECEIVE THE SUPERMAN SOCIALLY?

WE'VE been taking up Metabolism lately -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- and it's wonderful; just simply WONDERFUL!

I really don't know how I got along for so many years without it -- it opens up such new vistas, doesn't it?

I can never think in the same way again about even the most trivial things since I have learned all about Protoplasm and -- and -- well, all these marvelous scientific things, you know.

Isn't Science DELIGHTFUL!

There's the Cosmos, for instance. It had always been there, you know. But nobody knew much about it until Scientists took it up in a serious way.

And now I, for one, feel that I couldn't do without it!

Although, of course, one feels one's responsibilities toward it too, and that is apt to be rather trying at times unless one has a truly earnest nature and is prepared to make sacrifices.

If the Cosmos is to be improved, what is there that can improve it except Evolution?

And unless we who are serious thinkers give Evolution a mark to reach, how can we be sure that Evolution will Evolve in the right direction?

I have worried myself half to death at times over the Superman!

You know I feel personally responsible, to a certain extent, about what he will be like when he gets here. If he isn't what he should be, you know, it will be the fault of those of us who are the leaders in thought today -- it will be because we haven't started him right, you know. Mamma -- poor dear Mamma is SO unadvanced, you know! -- has an idea that when the Superman does get here he won't be at all the sort of person that one would care to receive socially.

"Hermione," she said to me only the other day, "no Superman shall EVER come into MY house!"

She heard some of my friends, you know, talking about the Superman and Eugenics, and she has an idea that he will be horribly improper.

"I consider that the Superman would be a DANGEROUS influence in the life of a young woman," said Mamma.

"Mamma," I told her, you are FRIGHTFULLY behind the times! There isn't a doubt in the world that when the Superman does come he will be taken up by the Best People. Anarchists and Socialists go everywhere now, and dress just like other people, and ;you can hardly tell them, and it will be the same way with the Superman."

What Mamma lacks is contact. Contact with -- with -- well, she lacks Contact, if you get what I mean.

So many of the elder generation DO lack Contact, don't you think?

Although, of course, it would be very hard to have Contact and Background at the same time.

And if one must choose between Contact and Background, the choice is apt to be puzzling at times.

Although, of course, it is useless to reason too much on things like that. Intuition often succeeds where reason fails, especially if one is at all Psychic.

Well, I must go. I must hurry to my costumer's.

I'm have a special costume made, you know. We've been taking up Spiritualism again -- our little group, you know. And I'm going to give a Spirit Fete, and of course it will take a great deal of dressing and arranging and decoration.

Papa says it will be a Ghost Dance, but he is so terribly frivolous and irreverent at times.

Don't you just simply LOATHE frivolity?

THE PARASITE WOMAN MUST GO!

THE Parasite Woman must go!

Our Little Group of Serious Thinkers took up the Parasite Woman last night in quite a thorough way. One of the most interesting women you ever listened to gave us a little talk about the Parasite Woman, you know.

And we decided that the Parasite Woman has NOTHING to Contribute to the Next Generation.

Oh, these Parasite Women! It just simply makes my blood boil to her about them! I don't know when I have been so indignant!