Chapter V: Part 5

But whoa! I believe I have forgotten my manners! I have insulted my fellows, guyed the girls, and here I am on the high road to disqualifying myself with the more respectable generation. So I shall cease, but I will not apologize, for though I came to scoff, I shall not remain to prey. I believe I am not more than half wrong after all. There is love, and there is loving, and if you have followed me, you know which is which. It was Rosalind who said, "Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps!" How she would smile and sneer at this verbiage! She knew a lover from a philanderer, she had her opinion of the laggard and the butterfly rover, and she would no doubt say: "Cupid hath clapped him on the shoulder, but I'll warrant him heart-whole!"

*Where is Bohemia?*

The name "Bohemian" was first used to describe the gypsies of that nationality who appeared in France in the thirteenth century, but to us the term has come to carry with it a wider significance than any dependent upon that little kingdom in the north of Austria, and only a few characteristic traits of those wandering vagabonds survive in those who bear, whether in reproach or praise, the appellation "Bohemian."

To take the world as one finds it, the bad with the good, making the best of the present moment--to laugh at Fortune alike whether she be generous or unkind--to spend freely when one has money, and to hope gaily when one has none--to fleet the time carelessly, living for love and art--this is the temper and spirit of the modern Bohemian in his outward and visible aspect. It is a light and graceful philosophy, but it is the Gospel of the Moment, this exoteric phase of the Bohemian religion; and if, in some noble natures, it rises to a bold simplicity and naturalness, it may also lend its butterfly precepts to some very pretty vices and lovable faults, for in Bohemia one may find almost every sin save that of Hypocrisy.

Yet, if we were able without casuistry to divide misdeeds into two categories, those subjective and objective in their direct effects--separating those sins which hurt only the sinner from those which act upon his fellows--the Bohemian would, perhaps, be found to have fewer than most of this harsher, crueller sort. His faults are more commonly those of self-indulgence, thoughtlessness, vanity and procrastination, and these usually go hand-in-hand with generosity, love and charity; for it is not enough to be one's self in Bohemia, one must allow others to be themselves, as well.

So much for the common definition of this much-used name. But no English word can stand for long in its primary meaning. It must change insensibly, growing from day to day, till it embraces the spirit as well as the letter of the fact it expresses. The word "gentleman" has thus grown with a secondary, spiritual significance; so has the word "prayer" by the interpretation of a more liberal, far-reaching thought. So with the name "Bohemian"--it has ranged beyond the vagrom, inconstant, happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care, hand-to-mouth follower after pleasure, and now under its banner may be found more serious enthusiasts who are not afraid to offend smug respectability, and are in more or less open revolt against convention, bigotry and prejudice. It is their bond that they have forsworn allegiance to Mrs. Grundy. They dare be themselves without pretentious, they make and keep their friends without compromise.

What, then, is it that makes this mythical empire of Bohemia unique, and what is the charm of its mental fairyland? It is this: there are no roads in all Bohemia! One must choose and find one's own path, be one's own self, live one's own life. Whether one makes for the larger freedom of the hills, or loses one's self in the sacred stillness of the forest, the way is open to endeavour wherever one wills. Yet, though there is no beaten track, there are still signs in the wilderness showing where master minds have passed. Here is a broken jug beneath the bough, snowed under with drifting rose petals, where one frail-souled dreamer loitered on the way, and, with his Beloved, filled the cup that clears Today of past regrets and future fears, singing out his heart in lovely plaint. And here, along a higher trail, a few blazings in the forest mark where another great Bohemian in this life exempt from public haunt found tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones and good in everything.

Within Bohemia are many lesser states, and these I have roughly charted on my travels, so that, though I may have left some precincts unexplored, I know at least that these territories lying on my map are veritable provinces of this land of freedom and sincerity. On the shore of the magic Sea of Dreams, beyond whose horizon dances the Adventurous Main, lies the Pays de la Jeunesse, the country of Youth and Romance, a joyous plaisaunce free from care or caution, whose green, wide fields lie bathed in glamorous sunshine. To the eastward lie the pleasant groves of Arcady, the dreamland, home of love and poetry. Here in this Greek paradise of rustic simplicity and joyous innocence and hope, has lived every poet who has ever sung the lyric note, and here have visited, for some brief space, all who have dreamed, all who have longed, all who have loved. Here is the old joy of life made manifest and abundant; here Mother Nature speaks most clearly to her children. For the most, however, it is but a holiday country, and they who discover it often pass, never to return, forgetting its glories and its mysteries as they forget that lost country of their youth, counting it all illusion. Yet some few come back to the Port of Peace to lose the world again, renewing the immemorial enchantment.

To the south, over the long procession of the hills, lies Vagabondia, home of the gypsy and wanderer, who claims a wilder freedom beneath the stars--outlawed or voluntary exile from all restraint. This country is rocky and precipitate, full of dangers, a land of feverish unrest.

One other district lies hidden and remote, locked in the central fastnesses of Bohemia. Here is the Forest of Arden, whose greenwood holds a noble fellowship, bound in truth and human simplicity. It is a little golden world apart, and though it is the most secret, it is the most accessible of refugees, so that there are never too many there, and never too few. Here is spoken a universal language, Nature's own speech, the native dialect of the heart. Men come and go from this bright country, but once having been free of the wood, you are of the Brotherhood and recognize your fellows by instinct, and know them, as they know you, for what you are.

Now, as Bohemia, unfortunately, is not an island, it has its neighbours and its frontiers. To the west lies Philistia, arid, dry and flat, the abode of shams, dogmas and sluggish creeds. Here stands Vanitas, overlooking a great desert, walled in by custom, guarded by false pride. It is but a step over the border, however, from Bohemia the true to that false Debatable Ground whose affectations are more insincere even than the shams of the real Philistia, and the youngster, questing the hero-haunted country of his youth, chasing his phantoms, may go wide of his reckoning, misled by the mockery of life made by these disguised Philistines. In the City of Shams, hypocrites are content to assume the virtues they have not, but here on the borders of Bohemia their vices are all pretense as well!

On the further boundary of Bohemia, also, hangs an unsavoury neighbour. Here is a madder and more terrible domain, the land of lust and cruelty, lawless and loveless, dwelling in endless war. To this fierce country Vagabondia lies perilously near, and many a wanderer has crossed the frontier to find himself, before he knew, within that evil land, where freedom has become licence, and tolerance grown into Anarchy.

Wide across all three empires stretch the Hills of Fame. In Philistia men must be born great; there is no other distinction possible save that of riches or inherited power. In Bohemia men achieve greatness, working onward and upward, bringing their own great dreams to fulfillment; while in Licentia, those only become great who have an infamous notoriety thrust upon them by their own high crimes.

We cannot all mount those heights from whose crest one may look over the Sea of Care, past the Isle of Idleness to the Adventurous Main, but there is joy enough on the lowland. Happy indeed is he who, in his journey of life, has escaped the perils of that false Bohemia, crouching on the frontier, and has found his way to the happy forest, met his own people and drunk of the Fountain of Immortal Youth; for there is the warm, beating, human heart of the True Bohemia!

*The Bachelor's Advantage*

There are enough who think "a young man married is a young man marred" to cause the bachelor to hesitate before renouncing his liberties, and to fight shy of entanglement as long as possible. If he writes down the "pros" and "cons," like Robinson Crusoe, he will find he has many advantages in his single state that must inevitably be forfeited when he weds.

It is not only that "when I was single my pockets would jingle, I would I were single again"; it is not so much, either, that his play-day will be over and he must "settle down," stop butterfly-lovering to and fro, and gathering the roses as he goes, and have no haunting white face sitting up for him at home to ask him why, and how, and where. This licence, if he be a man of sentiment, he willingly foregoes for the larger possibilities of satisfactory comradeship and sympathy. He can pay double rent and taxes, too, without grumbling; take manfully the shock of surprise when expenses jump with the new establishment; he may be initiated in doctors' fees, and submit debonairly to a thousand restrictions of time, place and opportunity. But more piquant than any of these trials is the discovery that he has lost his old-time place and privilege of welcome as a bachelor--that "come any time" hospitality of his dearest friends. He is saddled with a secondary consideration.

Try as he may, no young man can marry to please his whole acquaintance. The world, for the most part, still looks with patronizing approval upon a girl's wedding so long as she chooses or is chosen by a man not hopelessly impossible. She has embraced an opportunity and usually her mother cultivates a grateful fondness for the son-in-law. If he has a scarcity of amiable traits she will even manufacture them for him, and put them on the market with display. Not so the mother of the groom. She analyses the bride with incisive dissection, and it is hardly possible that any woman shall be found quite worthy to mate with her son. It takes a woman to read women, she says, and the little wife has to make a fight for each step of the road from condescension through complaisance to compliment.

The young man's friends, too, are exigent, and he soon finds that, though the two have been made one in the sight of law and clergy, society knows no such miraculous algebra. You may squeeze in an extra chair at the dinner table for a desirable and "interesting young man," but to include another lady, and that his wife, requires a tiresome rearrangement. He does not come alone ordinarily, nor would he if asked, and so he drops out of his little world and must set about the creation of a new one. He may have had latch-key privileges at a dozen houses, free to come night or morning, the recipient of many sudden invitations for theatre, supper or country--but that is all over. It is his turn to do the inviting. The table has been well turned when he sits down to meat!

Is it to be wondered at, then, that the bachelor is selfish? He escapes lightly the lesson of compromise; his whole life is a training in egoism, and he makes the most of his desirability, getting usually far more than he gives. He is free to experiment in acquaintance though it goes no farther than innocuous flirtation. He may make friendships for himself and break them at will, lightly dodging the tie. There are hundreds in every city who need go only where they wish, skipping even "duty calls," sure of forgiveness. He may know men and women he cares for, and, through the lack of experience in a life-long intimacy, he may preserve many illusions as to women. If he has an income, or a profession that demands no abode, he can wander "to and fro in the earth and walk up and down in it" free as Satan. He travels the farthest who travels alone.

Still, this cannot go on forever, and his franchise wanes. With the first pang of middle age Nature asserts her imperious demand for permanent companionship. The "cons" grow heavier, and the "pros" more attractive. He sees maid after maid of his younger fancy pass out of the game without regret, but the first sight of the new generation strikes him to the heart. He is "uncled" by more and more adopted nephews and nieces, and the sight of their fresh eyes awakens the immemorial longing in him. And then, suddenly, another "pro" comes upon the list, an undeniable item of importance, throwing its influence so heavily upon the side of marriage that no number of his foolish little "cons" can ever balance the account. He is in love, and there is but one definition for that state. It is the immediate, ravenous, compelling desire for a wife. There is nothing for it but to renounce allegiance to his old friends and become naturalized into a new citizenship.

But though all over town the doors to which he cried "open sesame" bang sullenly to shut him out, he does not notice it if that one portal lets him in!

*The Confessions of an Ignoramus*

Musicians tell me that I am exceptionally fortunate. I know absolutely nothing of music. It is not a bald, fathomless innocence, however. I am not tone-deaf, for instance, and certain compositions please me; and, knowing nothing, I have been treated with indulgent complaisance by the profession, and amongst them I have the unique licence of being privileged to like whatever I choose. It is no small distinction this, nowadays, when one is nicely and strictly rated by his compliance to the regnant mode, but I have to fight tooth and nail to defend my innocence. I have determined that whatever happens, I will not be educated.

For a while, once on a time, I hazarded my franchise of free speech and weakly accepted the tutelage of a master, that I might at least gain a familiarity with the catch-words of the musical fraternity. It was the more reprehensible and foolish because I had already lost my virginity in art circles by the same servility. Long ago I learned to phrase and gesticulate at the picture galleries, and try as I may, I cannot forget the formulas. I learned to stand with eyes half closed before a painting, and waving my hand, murmur, "I like _this_ part, in here!" I caught that knowing waggle of the right thumb, and prated of "modelling, tricky work, atmosphere, composition, values," and such humbuggery. I could say, straight-faced, and with a vicious, explosive gesture, "Oh, it's good in colour, but it just lacks _that_, you know!" By Jove! I was in it up to the ears before I knew it, and now my critiques are retailed to the semi-elect as coming from one of the Cognoscenti. I have learned the terminology of the craft so well that my very instructors have forgotten my novitiate; but an art exhibition is a horror to me, for I go bound by the tenure of hypocrisy and dare not walk freely, forced to rattle my chains as I limp through the forbidden pastures of delight--the candy box pictures and chromos that my soul loves with that fierce first love that never dies.

So I have learned to avoid the Pierian spring now, having escaped the seductions of Euterpe by the merest chance. He is said to be a fool who is caught twice by the same trick, and I write myself down a worse-witted clown yet when I confess how far on the high-road to folly I was before I jumped the fence of conventional parlance and broke for the wide fields where lies my freedom.

I had been led astray by practicing the non-committal remark, "Oh, what _is_ that?" as soon as the piano keys cooled off from the startling massage of the furious performer. I was bold. I even dared to be the first to speak, and I threw ambiguous meanings into that well-known exclamation, for I was assured it was always safe, whether it followed a Moskowski mazurka hot from the blunt fingers of a Kansas City poor relation, or a somnolent Chopinian prelude hypnotized by the evening star. I learned that the statute of Absorbed Attention had expired, and that the lifted eyebrow, the semi-concealed shrug, the overt smile behind the performer's back, and the _ex post facto_ rescindment of all these in one mucilaginous compliment, were now good taste. Bah! I sickened of it all soon enough, for I had been piously brought up, and my Puritan blood was anti-toxic to the corruptions of the musical microbe.

And so I have forgotten to speak of Grieg as a "mere sentimentalist" and all the rest of the Pharisee's Phrase-book, thank God! I can hear the "Mill in the Forest" and check up its verisimilitudes, item by item, even as I have dared to renew my youth with Charles Dickens, and laugh, cry, and grow hot and cold with Scott's marionettes.

Yet, as I said, my innocence is not altogether empty. There is, indeed, no such thing in life as absolute darkness; one's eyes revolt and hasten to fill the vacuum by floating in sparks, dream-patterns, figures whimsical and figures grotesque, shifting, clad in complimentary colors, to appease the indignant cups and rods of the retina. And so my musical ignorance is alive with a fey intelligence of its own. I have come at last to an original conception of what is good and what is bad by its mere psychological effect, as illogical as a woman's intuition, yet as absolute and empirical as the test of acid and alkali by litmus.

It has come to this, that I know now I shall never hear good music again. When I was young the phrase "classical music" was still extant (I come of the middle classes, where one calls a spade a spade), and that variety of sound, "the most expensive of noises," was as incomprehensible as was the training for its appreciation arduous; so that beauty for its own sake was unknown, or lurked behind the horizontal mountains of Truth that shut in the New England landscape.

But as my knowledge and love of art grew, and I mingled with those that spoke this foreign tongue of beauty, I had opportunity of hearing music, the only music that was worth while to them, the music that endures and lives, continually virile and creative. Curiously enough, and unhappily for me, so long a stranger to such influences, I found that some compositions spelled me with their subtlety, tranced me into revery, while others awakened active feelings of amusement, surprise, or scientific curiosity as to their construction; and so, ignorant of technique and composition, harmony, and all the rules of the art, I have gone back to the woman in me, and trust to her little ounce of instinct.

When the vibrant chords, the sobbing pulsations and the mystical nuances grow faint and die away as my dream mounts on the wings of an invisible melody, leaving the sawing bows, the brazen curly horns, the discs, cylinders, strings, keys, triangles, curves and tubes, with which paraphernalia the magicians of the orchestra have bewitched me, far, far, far below where I soar aloft, naked and alone in the secret spaces of my soul,--I know (not then, but afterward) that the talisman has been at work, and as the rhythm dies and I drop, drop to the world again and turn to the trembling, wide-eyed girl at my left, and am roused by the brutal applause that surges around me,--I know that this was music. But I have not heard it. Alas! Shall I never hear it?

*A Music-Box Recital*

Hid secretly in my heart, I long had a passion for music-boxes. While I was innocent of the ways of the world, and thought that Art, as some think that Manners, had a ritual to which one must conform in order to be considered a gentleman, I hid this low-born taste from my friends and talked daintily of Brahms, his frozen music, of the architectural sonata, and other things I did not understand. How musicians and artists must have laughed at me when they saw my hands--square, constructive palms, wilful thumbs and mechanical fingers! Music-box hands! But though I had long ceased cutting stencils of other people's thoughts and frescoing my own vanity therewith, I dared not confess to John this wretchedly vulgar _penchant_ for the music-box of Commerce--the small, varnished, brass and cedar affair, which is the only instrument I can play.

But at ten of the clock one night the yearning became so intense in me that I burst the bonds of my discretion, and lo! at the first word John fell heavily into my arms. He, too, cherished this unhallowed joy in secret, and had long hidden this _tendresse_ behind a mask of propriety. We dried our eyes, and were into overcoats and out on the street in a single presto measure, set to a swift staccato march for the Bowery. We must have a music-box apiece before we slept--we swore it in a great forte oath! Prestissimo! but we were hungry for a good three-dollar package of discord! It was none of these modern contrivances with perforated discs and interchangeable tunes we were after; not the penny-in-the-slot, beer saloon air-shaker nor the authropomorphic Pianola; only the regulation old-fashioned Swiss instrument would serve, the music-box of our youth, the wonderful, complicated little engine with a cylinder bristling with pins that picked forth harmonies from the soul of a steel comb, its melody limpid with treble accompaniments lithely sustained at the small end, where the teeth are small and active, with a picture of children skating on the cover top, and beneath, under glass--oh! rapture!--the whirring wheels all in sight, tempting the small, inquisitive finger of youth.

After an incredible amount of discussion as to the relative merits of the repertoires, we came to a decision and fled home, to abandon ourselves to the distractions of our tiny orchestras. The boxes were so full of music! They have been trying to empty themselves ever since, but the magic purse seems inexhaustible. One night, in my idyllic youth, a German band played all night long under my window; but now I could carry the divine gift of music in my overcoat pocket! I was like that Persian monarch for whom was made the first pair of shoes. "Your Majesty," said his vizier, "now at last for you, indeed, is the whole world covered with leather, as thou hast demanded!" O Allah! Now for me was the whole world patrolled with German bands! They played "Say Au Revoir, but not Good-bye" under my pillow; they gave me "Honey, my Honey" as I ate my breakfast.

Before the week was up we had learned every tune by heart, down to the last grace-note in the accompaniment. We had learned, too, the sequence of tunes, inevitable, unchanging as the laws of the Medes of old. Never again shall I be able to hear "Sweet Marie" played without a shock that it is not followed by the "Isabella Waltz!" Never again shall I hear the end of "Honey, my Honey" without a tremble of nervous suspense till comes the little _click!_ of the shooting cylinder, the apprehensive pause, and then--hurrah! the first gay notes of "Sweet Marie!"

But we could not long endure the perfect simplicity of the airs, and the old touch of supercivilization led us on to attempt to vary and improve the performance of our songs. It was John who discovered the virtue of a few pillows stuffed on top of the machine, and he achieved immense _con expressione_ effects by waving the box wildly in the air. I contented myself with changing the angle of the fan-wheel so as to make it play _allegro_; then one got so very much music in such a very little while--surely a pardonable gluttony! Had my box been larger I might have heard seven complete operas in an hour, like the old Duke in "Sylvie and Bruno!" Yet, after all, it was versatility of quality, rather than mere quantity, that should be the greatest victory, and we set out on experiments in _timbre_. At last we found, John and I, that by inserting a little paper cylinder under the glass, so as to press on the keys, we could give Sousa the grip, as one might say, and he would cough and wheeze in a way to amply discredit the statement that there is no such thing as humour in music. A greater thickness of paper gives the effect of a _duo_ with mandolin and banjo, and this was by far the most successful of our variations.

I should end as I began, I know, by a bit of maudlin philosophical moralysis. I might, for instance, trace the resemblances in the musical world and say that for me the conductor waving his baton is as one who winds the key to a very human music-box, in which each tooth of the comb is a living, vibrant human being. Or I might broach a flagon of morality, forbye, and show how each one of us plays his little mental tunes in a set routine, wound up by the Great Musician; what devils stick their fingers into our works, and bid us play more fast or slow, more loud, more low; what jests of Fate, who inserts her cacophonous paper cylinder that we may wheeze through misfortunate obbligatos of pain.

But no! My forelegs are stuck in the bog of realism, and I shall not budge from the literal presentation, for my little kingdom of delight suffered a revolution! It was John's fault, for John had been affecting a musical countess who gave afternoon talks on the "art of listening," in a studio--dry molecular analyses of Kneisel Quartets and such like verbiage. So he came home late one night, while a music-box was bowling away merrily upon the couch with a one-pillow soft pedal. It was my music-box, too!

"Bah!" he swore, "your box phrases so abominably. It is so cold, so restrained, so colourless! Hear mine, now--isn't that an excellent _pianissimo_? There's polished technique! There's _chiaro scuro_! Oh, listen to that 'Cat Came Back!' My machine is an artist; yours is a mere _virtuoso_. Mine is a Joachim, a d'Albert; yours is a Musin, a de Kontski. Get onto the smooth, suave _legato_ of this wonderful box! Hear its virile octaves! Hark to those scales, like strings of white-hot pearls dropping upon velvet!" He was moaning and tossing as he snored these parodies. It was a nightmare, both for him and for me. At four o'clock, in the first pink grey of the morning, I could endure it no longer. I arose haggardly and threw the two music-boxes into the fire!

*A Plea for the Precious*

Now if a youth as mad-headed as I, without bookishness or literary education of any sort, with neither much of anything to say, nor much desire to say anything--if such a charlatan would have his wares bought and his words read, he must be antic beyond his contemporains (a shorter word than the English equivalent, whereby I go forward one step in brevity and back two in translation). He must pique curiosity and tempt the reader on; he must pay a contango, which is, by the same token, a premium paid for the privilege of deferring interest. He must in short, be "precious," a quality essentially self-conscious. This has been at times a popular pose in Letters, and when successful it is a sufficiently amusing one, as poses go; but I name no names for the sake of the others who fall between the stools of purpose and pretence--who tie, as one might say, two one-legged beggars together and think they have made a whole man.

If I have lured you so far into the web of my vagary, pray come into my parlour, too, and be hung for the whole sheep that you are, that I may fleece you close with my sophistries before you go. I have but one toy here to amuse you. I juggle idioms and balance phrases upon my pen, and whether you laugh at me or with me, I care not, _moi_. But as seriously as is possible (seriousness is not my present pose, I assure you), I would I might wheedle some of your dogged, clogged, rugged, ragged, fagged, foggy wits out of you, and constrain you to accept my pinchbeck for true plate the while; for I have a little sense in my alloy, after all, and you might go further and fare the worse than by my chatter. If I dared I would jump boldly into my thesis, without apologies; but it so happens that it is one that should be itself its own illustration. I should convince you of its truth by its own garment of expression, instead of depending upon my logical introductory presentation. But this I fear to try. My pistols, I fear, are, as the Duchess of Malfi might say, loaded with nothing but perfumes and kissing-comfits.

Now that you are well a-muddled, and like to turn to a saner page, let me button-hole you with one clean statement while you stand, gasping. Indeed I fear that a dozen have fled already from my gibbering, and I speak to but one sullen survivor, determined to collect his promised interest. We know, then, the joy of colour, taste, sound and odour as mere sensual gratifications, undiluted with significance. But, since I seldom read, I have never seen the apology for the sensual pleasures of diction, pure and simple in its essence. Swinburne, I hear, has his lilts and harmonies in poesy, and perhaps that is the nearest like, except for the Purpose that drives his chariot; but I am for that runaway mood that gallops gayly forth into Nowhere, unguided and unrestrained. A twenty bookmen shall come up to me, no doubt, with their index fingers set upon examples, but I am happier in my ignorance, and I prefer to think it has not yet been done--or, at least, not exactly as I mean. Indeed, you may depend upon me to evade proof with some quibble.

Your didactic prose is a wain, pulled over the hard city street. Fiction is the jaunting-car that paddles down the by-side lane. Poetry wallops you along the bridle path with your mistress Muse on a pillion, and, but very rarely, dares across country, over a low hedge or two (but always after some fleeting hare of thought); but I--I am for the reckless run over the moor and downs--the riderless random enthusiasm of nonsense! So out of my way, gentlemen of the red coats, or I bowl you down! Mazeppa might do for a figure, but his steed was hampered with the load; his runaway had too savage an import, and it is my purpose to be only a little mad. Pegasus is a forbidden metaphor nowadays. He is hackneyed by the livery of vulgar stables. I prefer that Black Horse, vanned and terrible, who flicked out the eyes of the Second Calender, as my mount is like to serve me!

In the Sonata is an exemplification of my theory. There, now, is a vehicle that carries no passengers, save what one's fancy lades it with--it charges and soars with no visible rein to guide it, except when a thread of melody steers it into some little course of delight. So there is a secret rhythm in the best prose that is more subtile than the metres of verse, and which is to the essay what the expression of the face is to the talker. One may, indeed, use that same word, expression or gesture, instead of the common term, style. But a common or house observation shows us that there is some pleasure in the face whose lips are dumb, and I dare say there is joy for the coxcomb and female fop in the unworn gown, as it hangs on its lonely nail, or is draped on the lay figure of meaningless, meaningful form. So it is to such hair-brains and cockatoos I appeal. Come to my Masquerade and let us for a wild half-hour wear the spangles and tights of palestric impropriety, hid by a visor that shall not betray our thought. In this lesser pantomime one may be irrelevant, inconsequent and immature, and sport the flower of thought that has not yet fruited into purpose.

Can you find your way through this frivolity, mixed metaphor and tricksy phrase, and see what a wanton a paragraph may become when one sends it forth, free from the conventional moralities of licenced Literature? I have been to many such debauch, and have got so drunk on adjectives that I thought all my thoughts double. In this Harlequinade, too, there are more games than my promised Sonata. I will mock you the "Mill in the Forest," or any other descriptive piece, with coloured words, parodying your orchestra with graphic nonsense. I will paint the charms of the dance in seductive syllables; or no! better--the long forthright swing of the skater, this way, that way, fast and faster, the Ice King's master, the nibble of the cold, the brush of the rasping breeze, the little rascally hubbies where the wind has pimpled the surface, and the dark, blue-black slippery glare beyond, where--damn it! I shock you with a raucous expletive, and you plunk into a dash of ice-cold remonstrance up to your ears, and flounder, cold and dripping, tooth-loose, and grey with fright!

So, at the expense of good taste and to the grief of the judicious, I force my point upon you. _En garde, messieurs_, and answer me! I find few enough who can play the game with me or for me. The age of Chivalry is gone, in horsemanship as well as in feats of arms and sword-play. Who knows the demi-volt, the caracole, the curvet, the capriole or the rest of the Seven Movements? Who is elegant in the High Manege or Raised Airs? Who prances for the sheer delight of gallant rhetoric, on Litotes, Asteism or Onomatopoeia? Fain would I be bedevilled, but the Magi are passed away. I must fall back on Dr. Johnson's pious flim-flam, but the humours of his verbiage are in me, not in him.

Yet the New Century Carnival is proclaimed and, over the water, there are, I hear, a few who are to revel with King Rex in the Empire of Unreason. On this side the nearest we have got to it is a little machine-made nonsense, ground out for the supposititious amusement of babes. But what I mean is neither second childhood, nor bombast, nor buffoonery, nor silliness, nor even insanity--though that is nearest the mark--but a tipsy Hell-raising with this wine of our fine old English speech. It has been too long corked up and cobwebbed by tradition, sanctified to the Elect, and discreetly dispensed at decorous dinner tables by respectable authors, and ladies-with-three-names who also write. It has been too long sipped and tasted mincingly out of the cut-glass goblets of the literary table. Gentlemen-inebriates all, I wave you the red flag! A torch this way! What ho! Roysterers! Up younglings, quodlings, dabchicks, devil-may-cares and mad-mannered blades! To the devil with the tip-staves and tithing-men, constables, beadles, vergers, deputy sheriffs and long-lipped parsons! A raid on the wine-cellar to break flagons of good English, and drink, drink, drink, till your heads spin! There is still joy and intoxication in the jolly old bottles that Shakespeare and his giddy-phrased Buccaneering crew of poets filled! "By Gad--slid! I scorn it, to be a consort for every humdrum, hang them, scroyles!"

*Sub Rosa*

Perhaps I am as discreet, honourable and loyal as the ordinary man, but I confess that at times I have a frantic desire to escape to the moon and tell all I know, or to unburden myself of the weight of dynamic confidences, pouring my revelations into the ears of some responsive idiot. In the old days a corpse was fastened to the felon's back in punishment of certain crimes, and to me a secret seems almost as deadly a load. The temptation to vivify the tale and make it walk abroad on its own legs is hard to deny.

There are secrets so dangerous that to possess them is foolhardy. It is like storing dynamite in one's drawing-room; an explosion is always imminent, and publication would mean disaster. I have known secrets myself, so outrageous, so bulging with scandal, that, had I not promptly forgotten them, they would have undone society twenty times over! There is a titilating pleasure in the keeping of such terrific truths and it increases one's inward pride to think that one knows of another what, if told, would change the aspect of a life. The temptation to tell is like being in church and suddenly seized with an almost irresistible impulse to shriek aloud, or like standing at the verge of a cliff and being impelled to throw one's self over. To give way to the perfidious thought means moral death, and when one falls, one brings others down as well.

Many of us, though we conceit ourselves to be worthy of trust, are, as regards our secrets, in a state of unstable equilibrium. Women, seeing and feeling things more personally and subjectively than men, are especially hazardously poised. So long as the friendship with the confidant is preserved, the secret is safe, but let estrangement come, and suddenly the balance becomes top-heavy; one's morality falls and the secret escapes in the crash of anger. I have known women who felt themselves quite free to tell secrets when the proper owner of them proved guilty of unfaithfulness. The difference in viewpoint of the sexes seems to be this: men have a definite code of honour, certain well-recognized laws of conduct acknowledged even by those who do not always obey them. "The brand of the dog is upon him by whom is a secret revealed." If a woman is honourable (in the man's sense of the term), it is a test of her individual character, and not of conformity to any feminine ethical system.

Most men, for instance, and some women (especially when influenced by love or great friendship), will keep a confidence not only passively, but actively. As Kipling's _Hafiz_ teaches:--

"If there be trouble to Herward, and a lie of the blackest can
clear,
Lie, while thy lips can move, or a man is alive to hear!"

It seems right, too, that in lesser cases one is justified in lying to protect one's own secret, as in disavowing the authorship of an anonymous book; for one surely need not be at the mercy of every questioner. The true confidant is not a mere negative receptacle for your story, but a positive ally.

On the other hand, there are those who hold that a singular and prime friendship dissolves all other obligations whatsoever, and that secrets betrayed are the greatest sacrifices possible upon the altar of love. Montaigne says, "The secret I have sworn not to reveal to any other I may, without perjury, communicate to him who is not another, but myself." There are few friendships nowadays so close as his with Estienne de la Boetie (who, himself, "would not so much as lie in jest"); theirs was one of the great friendships of history; but there is much casuistry used by those who would manifest their importance in knowing mysterious things. They obey the letter of the law and tell without really telling, letting the truth leak out in wise hints and suggestions, or they tell part of a tale and hoodwink themselves into thinking that they have violated no confidence. Yet nothing is so dangerous as half a truth. It is like pulling one end of a bow-knot. Sooner or later it is inevitable that the hearer will come across the other side, and the cat will be out of the bag.

But some secrets have so great a fiction interest, or such sensational psychology that one is quite unable to refrain from telling the tale, without names, or localities, perhaps, merely for the story's sake. This is, perhaps, permissible when one really tells for the study of human nature rather than as gossip. It is dangerous always, but a clever person can so distort certain details that the true characters can never be traced. For myself, I would never demand absolute confidence, for I would never tell anything to anybody whose discretion I could not absolutely trust, and a friend can as often aid one by telling at the proper time as by keeping silent.

Some secrets are told only for the purpose of being repeated. What one cannot tell one's self one must get others to tell for one, and this trick is the theme of many a farce. Women understand this perfectly; it is their code, and men laugh at it, feeling themselves superior. The three quickest ways of communication, cynics say, are telephone, telegraph, and tell-a-woman. Women are notoriously fond of secrets; it is their only chance for romance. No man who desires to obtain a woman's affection should forget this. Not that it is necessary to initiate her into your affairs, but you will, as soon as possible, see that something happens which she may consider it wise not to tell. Cement her interest with some lively secret that ties you to her irrevocably, so that she cannot come across your photograph or your letter without a knowing smile.

There are those, too, who hold that their own idea of a secret's importance is the excuse for divulgence or defense, but a man of honour will keep the secret of a child as closely as that of an intimate friend. The ass who surrounds his every narration with mystery and takes needless precautions, has his rights, and though you may hear the tale at the next corner you are still bound to silence. Some respect their own secrets but not those of others and have no compunctions against wheedling out a confidence from a weak acquaintance, thereby becoming accessory to the fact of his faithlessness. A secret discovered should be held as sacred as a secret confided.

The desire to tell secrets is one of the most contagious of diseases, and few of us are immune. Some vigorous moral constitutions never succumb, but once an epidemic begins, it is hard work stopping it, and a secret on the rampage is well nigh irresistible. Tell your secret, then, broadcast, and let it have its way until it dies out, or else lock it in your own heart. But above all confide it not to her who asserts that she never has the slightest desire to tell, for there, like a seed sown in fertile ground, it will germinate and flower long after you have forgotten it, aye, and bring forth fruit you never planted.

* * * * * * * *

*Books by Gelett Burgess*

VIVETTE: or, The Memoirs of the Romance Association. With a Map of Millamours, by the Author. 152 pp., 8vo. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston. $1.25.

A GAGE OF YOUTH: Poems, chiefly from the "Lark," Set Forms, Lyrics and Ballads. 58 pp., small 8vo. Small, Maynard & Co., Boston. $1.00.

THE LIVELY CITY O' LIGG: A Cycle of Modern Fairy Tales for City Children. With 53 illustrations (8 in colour) by the Author, 210 pp., small 4to. Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York. $1.50.

GOOPS, AND HOW TO BE THEM: A Manual of Manners for Polite Infants, in Rhyme. With 90 illustrations by the Author. 88 pp., small 4to. Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York. 4th edition. $1.50.

THE BURGESS NONSENSE BOOK: Being a Complete Collection of the Humorous Masterpieces of Gelett Burgess, Esq. With 196 illustrations by the Author. 239 pp., small 4to, heavy paper. Frederick A. Stokes Co., New York. $2.15.

THE ROMANCE OF THE COMMONPLACE: A Collection or Essays upon the Romantic View of Life. With decorations by the Author. 152 pp., small 4to. Elder & Shepard, San Francisco. $1.50.