Chapter IV: Part 4

There is, however, a flattery of manner as well as one of matter. Celestine, to whose wise counsels I am indebted for many a short cut in the making of friends, once laid down for me the following rules for dealing with women:

First, be intellectual with pretty women.

Second, be frivolous with intellectual women.

Third, be serious and _empresse_ with young girls.

Fourth, be saucy and impudent with old ladies. Call them by their first names, if necessary.

It goes without saying that such audacious methods require boldness and sureness of touch, especially in the application of the fourth rule. But even that, when attempted with spirit and assurance, has given miraculous results. In a case where a woman's age is in question, action speaks far louder than words.

Perhaps the most successful method of flattery is that of the person who makes the fewest compliments. To gain a name for brusqueness and frankness is, in a way, to attain a reputation for sincerity. Whether this is just or not, it is undoubtedly true that the occasional unlooked for praise of such a person acquires an exaggerated importance and worth. This system is similar to that of the billiard-player who goes through the first half of his game wretchedly in order to surprise his opponent with the dexterity of his shots later on. But it is an amateurish ruse, and is soon discovered and discounted at its true value. Yet in a way, too, it is justifiable, since unpleasant comments are usually accepted as candid, while pleasant ones alone are suspected.

There is a kind of conscious vanity to which flattery comes welcomely, however patent the hyperboles may appear. To such persons, and there are many, a certain amount of adulation oils the mental machine. They do not believe all that is said, but prefer, on the whole, to be surrounded by pleasant fictions rather than by unpleasant facts. They prefer harmony to honesty, and, though the oil on the troubled waters of life does not dispel the storm, it makes easier sailing. To others, especially if they be creators in any art, compliments stimulate and impel to their best endeavour. Many a man has achieved a masterpiece chiefly because a woman declared him capable of it.

The question of the object for which flattery is employed is here beside the mark. It may be used or misused; it may be true or false of itself, although, to be sure, the word flattery has attained an evil significance and has come to stand for counterfeit approval. All that has been said, however, applies to one as well as to the other. Even when praise has the least foundation in fact, it may prove beneficial to the person flattered, arousing a pride which creates the admired quality that was wholly lacking. Thus I have known a man notorious for his vulgarity stimulated to a very creditable politeness by the most undeserved and insincere compliment upon his table manners.

I have used the three testimonials of admiration as synonymous, but Celestine says that praise is a rightful fee, a compliment is a tip, and that flattery is bribery.

*Romance En Route*

How tired I am of the question, "How do you like London?" and "How do you like New York?" "Would you rather live in San Francisco or Paris?" Why, indeed, should I not like London, Kalamazoo, Patagonia, Bombay, or any other place where live men and women walk the streets, eat, drink, and are merry? How can I say whether El Dorado is better than Arcady, or a square room more convenient than an oblong one? Every living place has its own fascination, its mysteries, its characteristic delights. Ask me, rather, if I can understand London, if I can catch the point of view of the French _concierge_, if I comprehend the slang and bustle of Chicago? Like them? Show me the town I cannot like! Know them? Ah, that is different!

This is the charm of travel--to keep up the feeling of strangeness to the end, never to take things for granted or let them grow stale, to see them always as though one had never seen them before. Then, and only then, can we see things as they really are. When I become cosmopolitan, world-old, _blase_, when I think and speak in all languages, I shall fly to some deserted island to study the last, most impenetrable enigma--myself.

But meanwhile, I can purchase romance retail, at the mere cost of a railway ticket. I can close my eyes in one city, and wake next morning in its mental antipode. Romance requires only a new point of view; it is the art of getting fresh glimpses of the commonplace. One need not be transported to the days of chivalry, one need not even travel; one need only begin life anew every morning, and look out upon the world unfamiliarly as the child does. One must be born a discoverer. Thus one may keep youth, for the sport never loses colour. One game won or lost, the next has an equal interest, though we use the same counters and the same board. The combinations are always fresh.

Still, though one may find this fountain of perpetual youth in one's breakfast glass, the obvious conventional method is to go forth for the adventure, and get this famed elixir at some foreign and well-advertised spring. For this purpose tourists travel, taking part in a pilgrimage of whose meaning and proper method they are wholly ignorant. In their boxes and portmanteaus they pack, not hopes of mystery, faith in the compelling marvels of the world, nor the wonder of strange sights; but instead, fault-finding comparisons, and prejudice against all manners not their own. They do not see, in the omnibus of London, the automobile of Paris, the electric trolley of New York and the cable car of San Francisco, the pregnant evidence of several points of view on life, art and commerce, but they perceive only grotesque contrasts with their own particular means of locomotion. They do not delight in the incomprehensible hurly-burly of civilization that has produced the City Man, the Bounder, the Coster, the Hoodlum, Hooligan and Sundowner, nor do they attempt to solve the mystery or get the meat from such strange shells. Instead, they see only the clerk at the lunch-counter bolting his chops and half-pint, the incredible waistcoat of the pretentious _blagueur_, or the buttons and "moke" of the ruffling D'Artagnan of the Old Kent-road.

So the tourist travels with his eyes shut, while the true traveller has a lookout on life, keen for new sensations. To do things in Rome as the Romans do, that is his motto. He must eat spaghetti with his fingers, his rice and chopped suey with chop-sticks, or he fails of their subtle relish. He calls no Western town crude or uncivilized, but he tries to cultivate a taste for cocktails, that he may imbibe the native fire of occidental enthusiasm. In the East he is an Oriental; he changes his mind, his costume and his spectacles wherever he goes, and underneath the little peculiarities of custom and environment, he finds the essential realities of life.

To taste all this fine, crisp flavour of living--not to write about it or fit it to sociological theories, but to live it, understand it, be it--this is the art of travel, the art of romance, the art of youth. But there is no Baedeker to guide such a sentimental tourist through such experiences as these. It takes a lively glance to recognize a man disguised in a frock coat, and to find him blood brother to the Esquimau!

Well, there is a place in Utah on the Central Pacific Railroad called Monotony. The settlement consists of a station, a water-tank, and a corrugated iron bunk-house. The level horizon swings round a full circle, enclosing a flat, arid waste, bisected by an unfenced line of rails, straight as a stretched string. The population consists of a telegraph operator, a foreman, and six section hands. Yet I dare say I would like to stay there awhile, on the way, and perhaps I would taste some charm that London never gave. I am not so sure that but that before I took wing again I might not like it, in some respects, better even than Paris.

*The Edge of the World*

To find the colonial or the provincial more cultured, better educated in life and keenlier cognizant of the world's progress than the ordinary metropolitan, is a common enough paradox. Class for class, the outlander has more energy, greater sapience and a truer zest of intellect than the citizen at the capital. By the outlander is not meant, however, the mere suburban or rural inhabitant, but the dweller at the outpost of civilization, the picket on the edge of the world.

Let us grant that, in the gross, every new community must be crude--it takes time to grow ivy over the walls, to soften the primary colours into harmonious tones, to smooth off the rough edges,--but let us also grant that, at all the back doorways of empire, in far-away corners of the earth, are assembled little coteries of men and women who, by reason of their very isolation, rather than despite it, have made themselves cosmopolitan, catholic, eclectic, and stand ever ready to welcome, each in his own polite dialect and idiom, the astonished traveller who thinks he has left all that is great and good behind.

This compensation is, indeed, a natural law. If we cut back half the shoots of a shrub, the surviving sprouts will be more vigorous. The deprivation of one sense renders the others more acute. Make it hard for an ambitious lad to obtain an education, and, working alone by candle-light, he will outstrip the student with greater advantages. So it is with the colonial who realizes his poverty of artistic and intellectual resources. He must, in self-defense and to compensate for his isolation, make friends with the world at large, and his mental vision, accustomed to long ranges of sight, becomes sharp and subtile. To avoid the reproach of provincialism he studies the great centers of thought and watches eagerly for the first signs of new growths in fads, fashions, art and politics. It is for this reason that the British colonial is more British than the Englishman at home.

Plunged in the midst of the turmoil of every-day excitements, the dwellers in great cities lose much of the true and fine significance of things. A thousand enterprises are beginning, and amidst a myriad essays the headway of yesterday's novelty is lost in the struggle of today's agonists. The little, temporary, local success seems big with import, and the slower development of more serious and permanent virtues is ignored. Things are seen so closely that they are out of true proportion, and they are seen through media of personality that diffract and magnify.

But the provincial, far from this complicated aspect of intellectual life, gains greatly in perspective. Separated by great space, he is, in a way, separated by time also, and he sees what another generation will perhaps see in the history of today. For he watches not only literary London, that tiniest and most garrulous of gossiping villages, but a dozen other hives of thought as well, and from his very distance can the more easily discern the first signs of pre-eminence. His ears are not ringing with a myriad petty clamours, but he can hear, rising above the multitudinous hum, the voice of those who sing clearest. The connoisseur in art views a painting from across the hall--the lover of music does not sit too close to the orchestra--and so the intelligent looker-on at life does not come too often in familiar touch with the aspirants for fame. Living, as one might say, upon a hill, the stranger thus gets the range, volume and trend of human activities, and sees their movements, like those of armies marching below him, though they seem as ants, so far away. He can trace the direction of waves of emotion that follow round the earth like tides of the sea.

In every community, however small or remote, there are a few who delight in this comprehensive view of things, who keep up with the times, and, so far as their immediate neighbours are concerned, are ahead of the prevailing mode. As the meteorologist, studying the reports from North, South, East and West, can trace the progress of storm and wind, so these intelligent observers can predict what will be talked about next, and how soon the first murmurs will reach their shores. Their cosmic laboratory is the club library table, with its journals and periodicals from all over the world.

The first hint of a new success in literature comes from the London weeklies, and then, if the British opinion is corroborated by American favour, the New York papers take up the note of praise, and one may follow the progress of a novel's triumph across three thousand five hundred miles of continent, or see the word pass from colony to colony, over the whole empire. The Londoner sees but the bubbles at the spring--the pioneer by the Pacific watches the course of a mighty stream increasing in depth and width. Tomorrow, or in three months, the vogue will reach his own town, and he will smile to see all tongues wag of the latest literary success.

So it is with art, so it is with fashions, with the drama and with every fad and foible, from golf and Babism to the last song and catchword of the music halls. The colonial is behind the times? What does it matter! Are we not all behind the times of tomorrow? So long as we cannot travel faster than the news, it makes little difference; and it is wise, when we are in San Francisco, to do as the Franciscans do. It is as bad to be ahead of the times as to be behind, and it is best to follow the style of one's own locality, with a shrewd eye to one's purchases for the future, buying what we can see must come into popular favour.

But does your metropolitan enjoy this complexity, this living in the future? Not he! He cares nothing for the _vieux jeu_. For him, ping-pong is dead or dying--he neither knows nor cares that it still lives in the Occident, marching in glory ever towards the West, along the old trail to fame. Of the last six successful books discussed over his muffins, does he know which have been virile enough to survive transplanting to other shores--which have emigrated and become naturalized in the colonies? No! He is for the next little victory at the tea tables of the elect!

And yet, this afterglow, this subsequent invasion of new territory is what brings enduring fame. Before the city election is substantiated, the country must be heard from. The urban hears the solo voices of adulation, the worship of those near and dear to celebrity, but the great chorus that sweeps the hero up to Parnassus comes from a wider stage. The army of invasion never comes home again to be hailed as victor until it has encircled the globe. But it is the greater conquest that the dweller at the outpost sees, at first like a cloud no bigger than a man's hand, and it is his game to watch and await it. It is better so. Waste no pity upon him at the edge of the world. For the big game needs big men, and it is the boldest and most strenuous spirits who push to Ultima Thule. The anaemic and neurotic do not emigrate; the reddest blood has flowed in the veins of the pioneer ever since the first migration. He does things, rather than talks of things others have done--he knows life, even if he knows not Ibsen. Meet him in his far-away home, and he holds your interest with an unlooked-for charm; take him to the Elgin marbles and he will have and hold his own idea of art unborrowed from text-books. He knows more of your city's history than you do yourself; panic or the furor of a fashion cannot hypnotize him. The importance of a celebrated name cannot embarrass him, for he has met men unknown to fame who have lived as uncrowned kings. He has seen cities rise from the plain. He has made the wilderness to blossom like the rose; he has lived, not written epics.

And in addition to gaining all this experience that trained the pioneers of old, he has, while living at the confines of civilization, kept in touch with the world, and has tasted the exhilarating flavour of the old and new in one mouthful. For, in this century, distance is swept away and no land is really isolate. The pioneer lives like a god above distinctions of time, at once in the past, the present and the future.

*The Diary Habit*

For seven years I have kept my diary scrupulously, without missing a day, and now, at the beginning of a new twelvemonth, I am wondering whether I should maintain or renounce it. There are certain good habits, it would seem, as hard to break as bad ones, and if the practice of keeping a daily journal is a praiseworthy one, it derives no little of its virtue from sheer inertia. The half-filled book tempts one on; there is a pleasure in seeing the progress of the volume, leaf by leaf; like sentimental misers, we hoard our store of memories. We end each day with a definite statement of fact or fancy, and it grows harder and harder to abstain from the self-enforced duty. Yet it is seldom a pleasure, when one is fatigued with excitement or work, to transmit our affairs to writing. Some, it is true, love it for its own sake, or as a relief for pent-up emotions, but, in one way or another, most autobiographical journalists consider the occupation as a prudent depositor regards his frugal savings in the bank. Some time, somehow, they think, these coined memories will prove useful.

Does this time ever come, I wonder? For me it has not come yet, though I still picture a late reflective age when I shall enjoy recalling the past, and live again my old sensations. But life is more strenuous than of yore, and even at seventy or eighty, nowadays, no one need consider himself too old for a fresh, active interest in the world about him. Your old gentleman of today does not sit in his own corner of the fireplace and dote over the lost years; he reads the morning papers, and insists upon going to the theatre with his nieces on wet evenings. Have I, then, been laying up honey for a winter of discontent that shall never come?

Besides this distrust of my diaries, I am awakening after seven years to the fact that, as autobiography, the books are strangely lacking in interest. They are not convincing. I thought, as I did my clerkly task, that I should always be I, but a cursory glance at these naive pages shows that they were written by a thousand different persons, no one of whom speaks the language of the emotions as I know it today. It is true, then, my diary has convinced me, that we do become different persons every seven years. Here is written down rage, hate, delight, affection and yearning, no word of which is comprehensible to me now; they leave me quite cold. I am reading the adventures of some one else, not my own. Who was it? I have forgotten the dialect of my youth. Ah, indeed, the boy is father of the man! I will be indulgent, as a son should, to paternal indiscretions!

And yet, for the bare skeleton of my history, these volumes are useful enough. The pages which, while still wet with ink and tears I considered lyric essays, have fallen to a merely utilitarian value. I am thankful, on that account, for them, and for the fact that my bookkeeping was well systematized and indexed. As outward form goes, my diaries are models of manner. So for those still under the old-fashioned spell, who would adopt a plan of entry, let me describe them.

The especial event of each day, if the day held anything worthy of remark or remembrance, was boldly noted at the top of the page over the date. Whirring the leaves I catch many suggestive phrases: "_Dinner at Mme. Qui Vive's_" (it was there I first tasted champagne), "_Henry Irving_ in '_Macbeth_'" (but it was not the actor that made that night famous--I took Kitty Carmine home in a hansom!), "Broke my arm" (or else I would never have read Marlowe, I fear), and "Met Sally Reynard" (this was an event, it seemed at that time, worthy of being chronicled in red ink). So they go. They are the chapter headings in the book of my life.

In the lower left-hand corner of each page I noted the receipt of letters, the initials of the writers inscribed in little squares, and in the opposite right-hand corner a complementary hieroglyph kept account of every reply sent. So, by running over the pages I can note the fury of my correspondence. (What an industrious scribbler "S.R." was to be sure! I had not thought we went it quite so hard--and "K.C."--how often she appears in the lower left, and how seldom in the lower right! I was a brute, no doubt, and small wonder she married Flemingway!)

Perpendicularly, along the inner margin, I wrote the names of those to whom I had been introduced that day, and on a back page I kept a chronological list of the same. (I met Kitty, it seems, on a Friday--perhaps that accounts for our not hitting it off!) Most of these are names, and nothing more, now, and it gives my heart a leap to come across Sally in that list of nonentities. (To think that there was ever a time when I did not know her!)

Besides all this, the books are extra-illustrated in the most significant manner. There is hardly a page that does not contain some trifling memento; here, a theatre coupon pasted in, or a clipping from the programme, an engraved card or a pencilled note; there a scrap of a photograph worn out in my pocket-book, somebody's sketched profile, or, at rare intervals, a wisp of some one's hair! (This reddish curl--was it Kitty's or from Dora's brow? Oh, I remember, it was Myrtle gave it me! No, I am wrong; I stole it from Nettie!) I pasted them in with eager trembling fingers, but I regard them now without a tremour. There are other pages being filled which interest me more.

Occasionally I open a book, 1895 perhaps, and consult a date to be sure that Millicent's birthday is on November 12th, or to determine just who was at Kitty's coming-out dinner. Here is a diagram of the table with the places of all the guests named. (So I sat beside Nora, did I? And who was Nora? I have forgotten her name! _Now_ she is Mrs. Alfred Fortunatus!)

Sometimes I think it would be better to write up my diary in advance, to fill in the year's pages with what I would like to do, and attempt to live up to the prophecy. And yet I have had too many unforeseen pleasures in my life for that. I would rather trust fate than imagination. So, chiefly because I have kept the book for seven years, I shall probably keep it seven years more. It gratifies my conceit to chronicle my small happenings, and somehow, written down in fair script, they seem important. And besides I am a bit anxious to see just how many times a certain name, which has lately begun to make itself prominent, will appear at the top of the pages. I promise to tell you some time, if Celestine is willing!

*The Perfect Go-between*

Surely the modern invention that has done most to perpetuate Romance is the telephone. The man that, however used to this machine, can take up its ear-piece without a thrill of wonder has no soul. The locomotive, the steamship, the automobile have but made travel a bit more rapid, they have added no new element of mystery. Even the telegraph fails to give any true feeling of surprise. It is no whit more wonderful than that one, after writing a letter and slipping it into a red mail-box, should be handed a reply by a strange, blue-clad gentleman, after many days. A telegraphic despatch does not even hold the handwriting of the sender; it is cold, colourless, metallic.

But a machine that can bring your friend into the same room with you, at a moment's notice, who can deny the poetry of such a victory over space and time! Not until some genius invents a thought-transmitter shall a more stupendous aid to Romance be discovered. For see! It is not only one's friends that are caught in the net of telephone wires, one can drag up a whole city full! I have but to sit down at my desk and call up a number, and he or she must reply. True, I cannot force any one to answer, but if I have the audacity and persistency, it will go hard if I do not find some one who is willing to while away a leisure, inquisitive moment in inconsequent conversation.

It is my privilege to live in a telephone city where the habit is extraordinarily developed. One out of every sixteen of the population is connected to that most amiable of go-betweens, the Central Office. I have the opportunity of investigating some thirty thousand souls at the ridiculously cheap price of five cents per soul! Not only every counting-house and shop, doctor's office and corner grocery has its wire, but every residence with any claims to acquaintance. What Romance gone to waste! For few, it seems, have imagination enough to embrace such unlimited opportunities!

This morning Sonia called me at 8:25, apologizing for her kind-heartedness in letting me sleep when she knew I wished to work. Think of that for an alarm clock--Sonia's voice, ten miles away! So I am awakened by the telephone, I call by telephone, flirt by telephone, shop, market and speculate over the same wire. We do not take long in utilizing the latest invention here in this hurried land--the city is ravaged by Telephonitis. One invites friends to dinner, one makes appointments, one breaks the news of the death of a friend, one proposes marriage--all by means of this little instrument. I know one lady who has her machine connected by flexible wires so that she may talk in bed. She need not be too strict in regard to dress for her interviews--no one ever knows! I know two old men who while away long evenings together playing chess, when the weather is too harsh to leave home. Beside each board stands the faithful receiver; one has but to whisper "K.B. to Q.3" or some such rigamarole into the nickel-plated "extension" and he has checkmated his opponent across the Bay!

With such common intercourse as this, many are the comedies of the telephone. I have myself entertained a visitor with a diversion he will not soon forget. The day he came I took him to my telephone and introduced him in turn to a half-dozen ladies of my acquaintance, who plied him with badinage. We set forth then on a tour of calls, and I enjoyed his several attempts at identifying the voices he had heard over the wire. It is not always easy to recognize a voice and remember it. I remember an unfortunate experience of my own with two sisters which brought a week's embarrassment, for the voices of members of one family do have a marvellous similarity in the telephone, and if one is anxious to call upon Fanny when Elizabeth is out, one must be very sure just which sister one is speaking to when making an appointment.

The necessity for such precaution has led some of my friends to adopt telephone methods which must be extremely amusing to one who could hear both sides of the conversation. In many houses the telephone is situated in the hall, altogether too near the dining-room for any confidential communication. If the questioner is careful he may so word his inquiries that they may be answered by a mere "yes" or "no"; and papa, smoking after dinner, is none the wiser. If the girl finds it impossible to reply in unguarded terms, she has been known to say, somewhat vaguely, "_Of course_," which conveys to the man at the other end of the wire the fact that she is not alone. Some, too, have more definite codes. Celestine has arranged with me that when she mentions the "_Call_" it means the forenoon; the "_Chronicle_" stands for afternoon, while by the "_Examiner_" I understand that she refers to the evening. If, then, I ring her up and say, "When can you go walking today? I want to be sure not to meet that fool Clubberly." Clubberly, who is at her elbow, hears her reply sweetly, "Really! Yes, I saw it in the "_Chronicle_"; and how is he to know what it is all about? Oh, he could have his revenge easily enough, were he not an ass, for he might be kissing Celestine (horrid thought) even as she is speaking, for all I could know.

With this romantic battery opposed to her, what chance has poor Mrs. Grundy? What hard-hearted parent can successfully immure his daughter while the copper wire strings out toward her proscribed lover? Here is where love laughs at locksmiths. Were a dozen ineligibles forbidden the house, the moment mamma's back is turned and she has gone out for her round of calls, little daughter takes the telephone off the hook and, presto! she has her room full of clandestine company! Does any rash young man dare ring her up while her parents are near, she has but to say, sweetly, "Oh, you have the wrong number!" and hang up. It is too wonderful. You may lie by telephone, with a straight face, or you may call a man a liar with impunity. If you have no answer ready to an ardent impertinence, you need only say nothing and listen--he is helpless; you need not speak unless you want to. Who made the first telephone made mischief for a thousand years to come!

_Rrrrrrrrrrng!!!!_ There is Celestine ringing me up now! Pardon me if I leave you for a moment, for I think she is going to give me her answer to a very important question. Tremendously important for me! Wish me good luck! I hope no one will be listening!

*Growing Up*

When I asked Perilla how she first came to realize that she was growing up, she said, "When I began of my own accord to wash my sticky fingers, without waiting to be told." I believe she meant it literally, with no moral significance that should make a parable of the statement. I hope so, at least, for then by that test I cannot hope to have yet attained the years of discretion. Little Sister says that she felt "growing pains," but here is a figure of speech, surely. I suppose she means the wonder of the passage from a great, wistful ignorance to a limited knowledge; for the first part of the path of life is a very steep up-grade.

I myself can point to no one circumstance that revealed to me the vision of the great march of time that is sweeping us on towards the goal. I was for long like one who looks from the window of a railway carriage, too busily engaged in watching the world fly past him to realize his own motion. Neither long trousers nor razors awoke me from the child-trance; I saw scorned infants master me by their inches; I heard rumours of love and death and duty, but I was unmoved. It was a part of the game of existence, and it seemed natural that persons should be classified and remain in categories of old and young. I was a spectator outside the merry-go-round. I was to be rich, of course; I had the mind to dare and the will to do. I should be wise, too--why not? Sometimes I should have memories, I thought, not knowing that I was even then living away my life, and that this was an era to which I should look back and deem important.

All my reading, too, went to show that I was an amateur at living. Things seemed really to happen in books, but not to me; there men were swung in unknown furies, sensations were keen and impelling, and life had the sharp sting of reality. My own emotions seemed insipid and inadequate for a citizen of the world. Surely such minor escapades and trivialities as mine were not worth considering. And so, when the storm and stress came, I was ill-prepared, and at the first blow my pride went down. Some devil, as in a dream, whispered in my ear that perhaps I might not succeed after all, and it came to me as a summons that the time had come to be out and doing. And I saw that the conquest of my ambition would be achieved, not by the impetuous onslaught that should carry all before it, but by the slow and tedious siege, laid with years of waiting and working and watching. It was then, perhaps, though I did not know it, that I began to grow up, and became a man. I opened my eyes and looked about me; it was as if I had been landed fresh from the country in the busy town, like the Sleeper Awakened. No more field-faring and trapesing holidays under the blue sky; I must choose my street and fight my way for it against the throng.

It struck me with a sense of my inferiority that there was an absolute quality of knowledge I had not mastered. Some of my classmates seemed to know things, while I had but acquired information. They could swim; I dared not go in over my head. They had convictions, I had only opinions; it was the difference between the language of Frenchmen and they who learn French. Here, I thought, was the final classification, and I wrote myself down a witless neophyte in the world's mysteries. For my whole education had been founded upon the value of the verity of the straight line, and wisdom was my highest ideal. By this standard I measured myself and my experience. I delighted in the beauty of science, but of that other beauty which is its own excuse for being, I did not know. I was as one who saw form without colour, or the outline without the mass. I had not yet come to myself; I was a child yet, and the result of my immediate environment--a mental chameleon. A few generations of my austere ancestors impregnated my blood with their stern virtues, and it still ran cold and tranquil in my veins. But there were more remote and subtle influences behind me that must work themselves out, and in some sub-stratum of consciousness the pure Greek in me survived.

And so it was Dianeme who brought me at last to the door of the temple, and I saw with her eyes and heard with her ears, and the world grew beautiful, an altogether fitting setting for her charms. And then I knew in very truth that I had grown up; but yet, by a sublime miracle I had in the same revelation recovered my youth--if, indeed, I had ever really been young before! Now, succeed or fail as I might, life would always be fair and interesting, for Dianeme was but one of a divine sisterhood, and there were many degrees to be taken. So a kind of passion seized me to know Life's different phases and find the secret of the whole; and that mood, God willing, shall preserve my virginity to the end.

So here I am, by the grace of Dianeme, on the true road to youth again, not to that absolute unconcern of all but the present, that I once felt, nor to the fool's paradise, where, Maida would have it, is the true happiness--"the ability to fool one's self"--but to a kind of childlike wonder at things (ah, Little Sister, may you never wander from it as I did!) and the knowledge of what is really the most worth while. (And you, Perilla, you need not pretend that you don't know, for the truth flashes from your jest!)

For this is the very blossom of my youth, the era of knowing, as that was the era of being, and though there may come other dark days, as there were before the bud burst into bloom, I have seen the beginning and I know the law now, and I trust that the fruit of my life, the doing, may be even more worth the while. And I shall perhaps find that wisdom and beauty and goodness are but one thing, as the poets say--that living is a continual growing up, and that age is only a youth that knows why it is happy!

*A Pauper's Monologue*

Understand, I am not one of those who are always longing to be rich. I do very well, ordinarily, in the shadow of prosperity, though there comes upon me periodically the lust for gold, at which times the desire to rush down-town and spend money indiscreetly must be obeyed. It is a common symptom, paupers tell me, and carries with it its own remedy, giving much the same relief that blood-letting did of old, if so be the practice does not lead to a dangerous hemorrhage. I have my ups and downs, like most unsalaried Bohemians, thin purse, thick purse, at erratic intervals, but my spendthrift appetite is curiously independent of these financial fluctuations. In fact, a miserly restraint is most likely to seize me when my pocket is full, and I usually grow reckless when it has no silver lining.

There are few paupers among us who do not conceit themselves to be artists at spending money, and believe the fit intelligence is most wanting in those who have the means. I confess that I share their convictions, having wasted much time in a study of the situation. Like those planning a foreign tour, I have mapped out the golden road of Opportunity, and know the itinerary by heart. And, without trespassing the science of Economy, of which I am criminally ignorant (having been somewhat prepossessed during my Sophomore courses), I submit there are active and passive categories into which coupon-cutters may be relegated. The symbol of your monied man is the cigar, involving a destructive process, whether applied to food, raiment or ministry to the senses. The greed of the collector is of the same flavour. It is the difference between spending the money to see and to stage the play that I mean.

For why should an access of wealth so dull the brain that the battle between the kings of hearts and spades seems more interesting than the game with human knights and pawns? I have often been minded to write an "Open Letter to Millionaires," and offer myself as a Master of their Sports, to guide them through fields of untried sensation and novel enterprises. I have my offers tabulated from an hundred dollars upward, each involving the inception of activities whose ramifications would provide diversion for years. There are twenty young men I know of in this town who are waiting for such a chance. Why should I not be elected to captain them? I promise you the rise and fall of stocks shall not be more exciting than our rivalries. Indeed, brains are for sale at absurd bargains today. Why not play them off against each other in a game of Life?

But these are dreams never to be realized. I am no promoter, and must play the beggar's part. Yet I have often wondered how I would be affected if these hopes came true, and if some capitalist, touched by my appeal, seeing this good seed cast upon barren ground, opening his heart and purse-strings, should present me with a modest fortune without conditions. Could I assume the responsibility of gratitude and fly with the load of obligation that I myself would assume? By all rules of fiction, no! Yet if my conscience were seduced I might frame my mind to accept debonairly and do my best. Tempt me not, millionaires, for this is my week of longing, and my brain boils with adventurous desires.

Yet, had I the ear of the benefactor, another mood would impel my renunciation; for, against my will and interest, I am forced to acknowledge that others are better fitted to be rich than I, who have been a pauper all my life, and am not so unhappy in my misery. I know some to whom wealth should come as a right, as has their beauty, and who play an inconsistent part upon the stage of poverty. There is Dianeme, who knows the names of all the roses, and can tell one etching from another. She is so instinct with tact and taste that I feel quite unworthy of affluence until she has been served. And there, too, is Little Sister, who is in worse case, having once ridden on high wheels and nestled against the padded comforts of life, now charioted by street cars, with a motorman for a driver and a conductor for a footman. And though it was her reverses that gave me chance to be her friend and discover her worth, yet I fear I would put back my opportunity ten years to give her the little luxuries she craves. She has acquired a relish for the flesh-pots, poor Little Sister, and somehow the weakness becomes her, as the habit of weeping fitted the eighteenth century ideals of women. Two more pairs of silk stockings would reinstate her as a lady complete. Not that anybody but Little Sister and her laundress would ever see them, but they would give her a nourishing satisfaction that is of itself worth while.

Yet, again I wonder--if Little Sister grew rich, what would become of me? I am told that the first pangs of the birth of Fortune are felt in the unpleasant acquisition of new claimants to friendship, but I do not believe this is so. I should myself fear to intrude, I am sure. There would be so many new relations and obligations that I could not take the friendship simply and naturally. I could make love to her by letter, perhaps, but not in her carriage. I would miss the ungloved hand of familiarity and enclose myself in starched formality, though I know the pain in so doing would be mutual. For the pride of riches is as nothing to the pride of poverty, and I am very, very poor! But surely Little Sister must be rich again, even if I have to wait for the second table.

And so I gracefully resign my claims to fortune, where I am so outclassed, and make off into the open fields towards the Hills of Fame, where the brougham of Opulence may not follow me, though I fare afoot. For we do not get rich in my family; there is no uncle in Patagonia whose death could benefit us, and the bag of diamonds, the hope of whose discovery sustained my immature youth, no longer haunts my dreams. For a long time yet I must deny myself the title of gentleman, forced as I am to carry parcels "over three inches square," which I hear is the test of fashionable caste. This is my last gasp. I shall be a man again tomorrow, and if any millionaire is tempted by this appeal, he must make haste. But I shall not be rung up from sleep tonight. It is the law of society that Spend helps Save, and Save helps Scrimp, and Scrimp helps Starve.

*A Young Man's Fancy*

Undoubtedly the most logical, though perhaps the least interesting, method of opening the discussion of a thesis, is that employed by the skillful carver who dissects his duck according to the natural divisions of the subject and proceeds therewith analytically. This is the system encouraged in academic courses and is said to enable any one to write upon any subject. But such an essay is mighty hard reading; unless a writer is so hungry for his theme that he forgets his manners and falls to without ceremony the chances are that his efforts will receive scant attention. And so I shyly speak of love.

So few essayists write with a good appetite! And yet, see how I restrain myself, and perforce adopt the conventional procedure, as one too proud to betray his ravening hunger! I must be calm, I must be polite--and you shall know only by my forgetfulness of the salt and my attention to the bones of thought, how the game interests me. In speaking of love, I must let my head guard my heart, too, for it is in the endeavour to misunderstand women that we pass our most delightful moments. They will not permit men to be too sure of them, and what you learn from one, you must hide carefully from the next. So I begin my fencing with a great feint of awkwardness, like a master with a beginner, knowing well enough how likely to get into trouble is any one who pretends innocence.

For a long time I believed it all a conspiracy of the novelists, and that love, so ideally depicted, was but a myth, kept alive by the craft, to furnish a backbone for literary sensation. But there are undoubtedly many bigoted believers in the theory of love. The women, however, who admit that it is a lost art, complain piteously of the ineptitude of the other sex. I confess that few men can satisfactorily acquit themselves of the ordeal of courtship without some tuition, but, once having acquired the rudiments of the profession, it seems inconsistent to taunt them with the experiments of their apprenticeship. It is too much to require a man to make a gallant wooing and then twit him with the "promiscuousness" by which he won his facility. Yet, some, doubtless, have learned also to defend themselves against this last accusation; it is the test of the Passed Master. For the other, poor dolts, who never see the opportunity for action, however adroitly presented, who speak when they should hold tongue and leave undone all those things that they ought to have done--the girls marry them, to be sure, but most of the love-making is on the wrong side. There are more yawns than kisses; the brutal question satisfies the yop, and he bungles through the engagement, breaking doggedly through the crust of the acquaintance, witless of the delightful perils of thin ice.

And yet I think the subject might be mastered in four lessons with a good teacher, so that a man of ordinary capacity could make good way for himself. This is by no means a new theory; it is the foundation of many a comedy of errors, this of Love with a Tutor. But go not to school of a maid, for she will fool you to the top of your bent, nor to a married woman either, but to a man like my younger brother here, no Lothario, but one who can keep two steps ahead of any affair he enters.

If a man be agile and daring, with sufficient ardour to assume the offensive, having an audacious tongue and a wary eye with a fine sense of congruity and tact, withal, if he can make love with a laugh and a rhyme, as Cyrano fought, then 'tis a different matter, and he needs no pilot to take his sweetheart over the bar and into the port. He must be bold, but not too bold, carry a big spread of canvas, luff, reef and tack her with no shuffling, cast the lead on the run, keeping in soundings, and never lose headway when she comes about into a new mood. He must bear a sensitive hand at the tiller, keep her close up to the wind with no tremble in the leach of the sail, and gain advantage from every tide and cross-current. Better dash against the reef than run high and dry upon the shoal!

It is a pity, is it not, to dissect love in such a fashion? I should have my hero quite at the mercy of the gale of passion, and be swept forward, he knows not how and cares not where; he should lose his wits and take a mad delight in the fury of the storm, seeing no spot upon his horizon. And yet I dare not be warmer, for sometime I may decide to fall in love myself, and I would not have my chances wrecked by any genuine confession of faith, set in type, to which She might refer, with a beautiful taunt. No! it is better to phrase and verbalize; the subject is too dear, and near done to its death already. I would but suggest the cross-references, and, under a mien of the most atrocious conceit, throw my female readers off their guard, leaving my fellow men to read between the lines.

For I hear that men do fall in love with women, and women fall in love with loving. So be it. I have known girls, too, to take both vanilla and strawberry in their soda-water, which proves them to be not altogether simple in their tastes. The best of them will talk volubly upon love in the abstract, while the average man (to which category I hope I have the honour of not belonging) keeps his mouth closed on the matter, with his tongue in his cheek, and his ideas, if he have any, well hidden behind his words.

So, if I avail myself of the feminine franchise, it must be done cautiously, for many are the difficulties of the young man who would love a girl today, and only a precious few of the old school of beaux would understand the twentieth century's subtleties, even if all could be explained. Many are the misfortunes in the Lover's Litany, from which the modern maiden sighs, "Good Lord, deliver us!" A man must take her in earnest, but he must by no means take himself too seriously; it is proper to treat your passion cavalierly--indeed, he jests at scars who has felt the most amorous darts, nowadays--but he must never make himself or her ridiculous. He may take whimsical amusement in his own conquest, but must beware "the little broken laugh that spoils a kiss." And above all, mind you the _mise-en-scene_,--the stage must be set so and so; the sun must not see what the moon sees. Sometimes you must have your heart in your mouth, and sometimes on your sleeve, and oftener she must have it herself. 'Tis very perplexing!

The best a man can do, in this practical age, is to mean business, while he is about it, and hold over as much for the next day as will not interfere with his commerce elsewhere. The woman may take her romance to bed, or keep it warm in the oven against his return, but he must be out and down-town to earn his living as well as his loving, amongst dollars and pounds and cent per cent, while she enjoys the traffic in pure abstractions. And both must hide and manage as if it were a sin, lest Mrs. Grundy undo them; they must snatch their kisses, as it were, on horseback. Such are the victims of supercivilization!

There was a time, the poets tell, when it was not so difficult, and a man might wear a lady's scarf on his sleeve, and be proud of the badge. It takes much more complicated machinery than that simple love to make the world go round, nowadays--perhaps because it goes so much faster. There was a time when an elopement might be picturesque and not necessarily followed by divorce; but where now shall I find the hard-hearted parent who shall justify the adventure? The modern mother is too easy. She is like Mrs. Brown in the _Bab Ballads_--"a foolish, weak but amiable old thing." She reposes a trust in her daughter that does more credit to her affection than to her knowledge of human nature.