III.

The Golden Symphony (_A Screen by Sotatsu_)

Golden clouds, and a golden bridge Lifting in a great arc, swinging in a high arc, Under clouds of gold, over clouds of gold,— From the long slow curve of a golden shore Across wide spaces of dark river!... And behold! a drifting miracle— Behold the long steady advancing prow Of a golden boat, heavier than the sun, Quiet upon the dark river; bearing two lovers In robes of state, intricate, luminous, Upon this dim river—where the great arc Of the bridge from clouds into clouds Swings, from golden shore to golden shore, From the gold earth to the gold heaven.

The Struggle

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

The story came to me from a woman, met on a train. The car was crowded, and I took the seat beside her. There was a man in the offing, who belonged with her,—a slender, girlish figure of a man, in a heavy brown canvas coat such as teamsters wear in the winter. He moved up and down in the aisle of the car, wanting my place by the woman’s side, but I did not know that at the time.

The woman had a heavy face and a thick nose. Something had happened to her. She had been struck a blow or had a fall. Nature could never have made a nose so broad and thick and ugly. She talked to me in very good English. I suspect now that she was temporarily weary of the man in the brown canvas coat, that she had travelled with him for days, perhaps weeks, and was glad of the chance to spend a few hours in the company of some one else.

Everyone knows the feeling of a crowded train in the middle of the night. We ran along through western Iowa and eastern Nebraska. It had rained for days and the fields were flooded. In the clear night the moon came out and the scene outside the car-window was strange and in an odd way very beautiful. You get the feeling: the black bare trees standing up in clusters as they do out in that country, the pools of water with the moon reflected and running quickly as it does when the train hurries along, the rattle of the car-trucks, the lights in isolated farmhouses, and occasionally the clustered lights of a town as the train rushed through it into the west.

The woman had just come out of war-ridden Poland, had got out of that stricken land with her husband by God knows what miracles of effort. She made me feel the war, that woman did, and she told me the tale that I want to tell to you.

I don’t remember the beginning of our talk, nor can I tell you of how the strangeness of my mood grew to match her mood, until the story she told became a part of the mystery of the still night outside the car-window and very pregnant with meaning to me.

There was a company of Polish refugees moving along a road in Poland in charge of a German. The German was a man of perhaps fifty, with a beard. As I got him, he was much such a man as might be professor of foreign languages in a college in our country, say at Des Moines, Iowa, or Springfield, Ohio. He would be sturdy and strong of body and given to the eating of rather rank foods, as such men are. Also he would be a fellow of books and in his thinking inclined toward the ranker philosophies. He was dragged into the war because he was a German, and had steeped his soul in the German philosophy of might. Faintly, I fancy, there was another notion in his head that kept bothering him, and so to serve his government with a whole heart he read books that would re-establish his feeling for the strong, terrible thing for which he fought. Because he was past fifty he was not on the battle-line, but was in charge of the refugees, taking them out of their destroyed village to a camp near a railroad where they could be fed.

The refugees were peasants, all except the woman in the American train with me and her mother, an old woman of sixty-five. They had been small land-owners and the others in their party were women who had worked on their estate. Then there was the one man, my companion’s lover, weak in body and with bad eyes.

Along a country road in Poland went this party in charge of the German, who tramped heavily along, urging them forward. He was brutal in his insistence, and the old woman of sixty-five, who was a kind of leader of the refugees, was almost equally brutal in her constant refusal to go forward. In the rainy night she stopped in the muddy road and her party gathered about her. Like a stubborn old horse she shook her head and muttered Polish words. “I want to be let alone, that’s what I want. All I want in the world is to be let alone,” she said, over and over; and then the German came up, and putting his hand on her back pushed her along, so that their progress through the dismal night was a constant repetition of the stopping, her muttered words, and his pushing. They hated each other with whole-hearted hatred, that old Polish woman and the German.

The party came to a clump of trees on the bank of a shallow stream. The German took hold of the old woman’s arm and dragged her through the stream while the others followed. Over and over she said the words: “I want to be let alone. All I want in the world is to be let alone.”

In the clump of trees the German started a fire. With incredible efficiency he had it blazing high in a few minutes, taking the matches and even some bits of dry wood from a little rubber-lined pouch carried in his inside coat-pocket. Then he got out tobacco, and, sitting down on the protruding root of a tree, smoked, and stared at the refugees, clustered about the old woman on the opposite side of the fire.

The German went to sleep. That was what started his trouble. He slept for an hour, and when he awoke the refugees were gone. You can imagine him jumping up and tramping heavily back through the shallow stream and along the muddy road to gather his party together again. He would be angry through and through, but he would not be alarmed. It was only a matter, he knew, of going far enough back along the road, as one goes back along a road for strayed cattle.

And then, when the German came up to the party, he and the old woman began to fight. She stopped muttering the words about being let alone and sprang at him. One of her old hands gripped his beard and the other buried itself in the thick skin of his neck.

The struggle in the road lasted a long time. The German was tired and not as strong as he looked, and there was that faint thing in him that kept him from hitting the old woman with his fist. He took hold of her thin shoulders and pushed, and she pulled. The struggle was like a man trying to lift himself by his boot-straps. The two fought and were full of the determination that will not stop fighting, but they were not very strong physically.

And so their two souls began to struggle. The woman in the train made me understand that quite clearly, although it may be difficult to get the sense of it over to you. I had the night and the mystery of the moving train to help me. It was a physical thing, the fight of the two souls in the dim light of the rainy night on that deserted muddy road. The air was full of the struggle, and the refugees gathered about and stood shivering. They shivered with cold and weariness, of course, but also with something else. In the air, everywhere about them, they could feel the vague something going on. The woman said that she would gladly have given her life to have it stopped, or to have some one strike a light, and that her man felt the same way. It was like two winds struggling, she said, like a soft yielding cloud become hard and trying vainly to push another cloud out of the sky.

Then the struggle ended and the old woman and the German fell down exhausted in the road. The refugees gathered about and waited. They thought something more was going to happen, knew in fact something more would happen. The feeling they had persisted, you see, and they huddled together and perhaps whimpered a little.

What happened is the whole point of the story. The woman in the train explained it very clearly. She said that the two souls, after struggling, went back into the two bodies, but that the soul of the old woman went into the body of the German and the soul of the German into the body of the old woman.

After that, of course, everything was quite simple. The German sat down by the road and began shaking his head and saying he wanted to be let alone, declared that all he wanted in the world was to be let alone, and the Polish woman took papers out of his pocket and began driving her companions back along the road, driving them harshly and brutally along, and when they grew weary pushing them with her hands.

There was more of the story after that. The woman’s lover, who had been a school-teacher, took the papers and got out of the country, taking his sweetheart with him. But my mind has forgotten the details. I only remember the German sitting by the road and muttering that he wanted to be let alone, and the old tired mother-in-Poland saying the harsh words and forcing her weary companions to march through the night back into their own country.

The feeble and poor in spirit must not be allowed to judge life.—_Nietzsche._

A Mischievous Rhapsody of the First Recurrence

I Zarathustra, declare myself! Ye have dulled me with priests; ye have sweetened me with girls; ye have betrayed me with envious anarchists.

Lo, I am not for the preacher, I am not for the woman, I am not for the oppressed! Ye say that by me ye shall save the world; I say that I shall destroy the world!

These things do I hold sacred—my strength, my lust, my joy. These ye shall feed, and die.

Too long have I stood silent in the cackle of my followers. Poultry after my corn! I have said, “Dost thou seek to multiply thyself? Find ciphers!”

I will give you a new law:—Love your enemy, for him ye may destroy. Fear your friend, for he shall steal your raiment.

Dost thou think that my aloofness is thy aloofness? Dost thou flutter upon a ridgepole because I stand upon a mountain? Fool, thou shalt starve unless thou peck the earth.

I say unto the preacher: Stick to the Nazarene; he hath deserved his Golgotha. But who shall make my words a law for me?

I say unto the woman: My scourge is yet upon thee. Dost thou set thyself against myself? I shall ravish thee when I desire thee. Who art thou to pretend manhood? Submit or deny thy life. Serve, or go barren into the earth.

I say unto the poor and lowly: I denied you my pity; now ye think to rob me of my scorn. Paltry ones! Shall I deny myself because of you? Lo, if I delight in riches, I shall take them. My life is not your life; my children are not your children. Cry not at my oppression; ye shall not move me. And if ye mock me with my own words, they shall scorch your tongues; ye shall go to a blacker oppression, ye shall find harder masters—yourselves!

And I say unto the priest, the woman, and the lowly: Touch me not; ye are my enemies! I have declared myself, and ye have not known me. I am life, I am splendor, I am eternity. Ye deny me as ye lay your hands upon me. Remain afar off; then may I be in you. I will keep you slaves; thus only shall I live.

_Also sprach Zarathustra!_

Poems

DAPHNE CARR

Welt Schmertz

I have crushed so many roses That my hands Drip with red fragrance. But I would crush to death against my breast The wind That is raging drunk with the perfume of all flowers.

I have bathed in a hundred cool springs— Still I am burning. I would plunge into the ocean, Diving down and down To find myself Freshly fluid As a wave.

Prisoners

A wind runs through the room, And leaps out of the window. The white curtain springs after Fluttering out. But it is fastened tight inside.

My love kisses me And goes Waving good-bye And laughing. Am I also held fast in this room?

Leo Ornstein

MARGARET C. ANDERSON

Nietzsche thought Wagner was the artist of decadence; Arthur Symons thinks he was a unique genius. Nietzsche regarded him as the great corrupter of music:—“he has made music sick”; Symons says that to find a parallel for Wagner’s achievement we must look back to the Greeks, to the age of Æschylus and Sophocles. Each one proved his point. It’s a bit confusing, and you begin to wonder what Art is.

Have you ever found a definition of aesthetic values that will hold through the whole art miracle? I never have and never expect to. Even in Pater’s _The School of Giorgione_ you are merely told that since all art constantly aspires toward the condition of music, toward that perfect identification of matter and form, the chief function of aesthetic criticism is to estimate the degree in which all the arts approach to musical law. But musical law is constantly changing; and the criterion of the degree to which matter and form become identical will be a sort of sliding scale. And what every one wants to know is how to gauge that scale. Can you think of a single art judgment in the whole realm of aesthetics that you can use as an infallible touchstone; with which you can make a mediocre poet realize why his work is bad instead of good? You can make him realize, by the desperate wildness with which you shriek “It’s not well done”, that something is wrong; but to save your life you can’t convince him that you are talking about anything except your own instinct—as you aren’t; and of course he feels that his instinct may be just as good as yours—which of course it can’t! Suppose you choose one of the best definitions ever thought of,—Mérimée’s “all art is exaggeration _à propos_”; you find that you’re just as badly off as before: by what standard is the _à propos_ measured?

* * * * *

It was in this frame of mind that I heard Leo Ornstein’s music. First he came one night and played for us alone, on our Mason and Hamlin, in a half light and an atmosphere of intense excitement. None of us had decided beforehand that we should want to laugh or hiss or throw things at him, as they did in London two years ago. We expected something beautiful and we got it. He played his _Impressions of the Thames_, which he afterward described as a river of “towers and turrets and stars, of dark rushing water, of bridges and buildings, of desolate muddy banks, and then something which you cannot bear to look at any longer.” I can’t “see” music, so I only know that it was sound which interested and pleased and shook me. Then he played his _Funeral March_, which had something dark and vast in it; then some Ravel, the music of which interested me more than his playing of it; and finally the Schumann _Arabesque_, which he did so beautifully that I thought “Here is a man who plays just as he wants to, and probably comes nearer to what Schumann would have liked than all the strict interpreters with their flawless ‘taste’ have done.” It seemed to me that Ornstein did what he did with it—stretched its slenderness to a lovelier curve—in the interest of the piano; and that is the very best thing anyone can do with written music for the piano, even if the pedagogues can’t beat time to it.

So at the end I was beginning to think: perhaps this is the man who is to bring to the piano that something it still needs.

* * * * *

But the next morning, at his recital, I made an interesting discovery. Ornstein has brought nothing to the piano. He has brought something to the world of music: compositions which show that the piano music is more pliable than we had thought, and interpretations which show an exaggeration _à propos_. To the piano, as an instrument, he has brought what all the others have brought: virtuosity—and in this case a not exceptional virtuosity. This may sound like hair splitting, but it really is not.

Ornstein has done this: he has written some very interesting music, and he plays it as most composers of talent—perhaps of genius—would play their things if they had studied the piano as thoroughly as he. What is there in this to cause hysterics? The fact that it sounds different from the music you have been hearing? But that would seem to be a reason for interest, not merely for mirth. This reaction belongs in the same plane with patriotism and duty:—you laugh at what is strange, you love what is familiar, you obey what has been tested:—the three ready-made emotions, with which you can escape most effectively from art and life. So they howled at Ornstein. Two respectable women sitting near me, who would not have dared—what do I say? who would not have _been able_—to laugh at a minister’s treatise on good and evil or a president’s speech on loyalty to a flag, were so convulsed over Ornstein’s _Impressions of the Thames_ that they moved their seats to the rear of the theatre where they could not be watched,—where they could merely disturb the pianist by their audible snortings. The critics have done the same thing—laughed at Ornstein’s own music and criticised scathingly his manner of playing familiar music. Ornstein’s interest, I am sure, is chiefly in what he has to say, and second in the way he says it. He is a composer-virtuoso. I had hoped he would be a piano-lover. That is the kind of artist I am looking for with more interest than I have for anything else in this world.

As for Ornstein himself, I think he is a sincere person who means to go on doing his work. I sometimes judge the sensitiveness of a nature by the intensity of expression that moves across the cheek-bones. You might look carefully at Ornstein’s face instead of judging him by the fact that his hair falls into his eyes when he plays. Of course he has been indiscreet enough to mention that he does not like Beethoven. Why that is unforgivable I can’t imagine. A man may surely like what he pleases. The high genius of a Mozart or a Haydn is a thing he feels intensely. He admires Chopin deeply as an artist who could do one thing very well and was content to let it go at that. Grieg he thinks is not a worthy mouthpiece for all that Norway has to give a musician. He loves Debussy, but thinks that Ravel is the greater man: “Debussy stands beside a pond and tells you beautifully of all he sees there; Ravel plunges into the pond and gives you the life of it.” Stravinsky and Scriabine are the two he cares for most, as I remember. “Schönberg has worked out his theory before he has worked out his art.” Something of that sort might apply to Ornstein himself, as in the case of his Chopin _Nocturne in E Flat_: I disliked his “exaggeration” in it as much as anything I have ever heard on a piano.

* * * * *

Oh, does no one realize what the unique beauty of a piano is, and that there are secrets of sound in it which have not yet been touched upon?

Nocturne

(_From the French of Paul Verlaine_)

CLARA SHANAFELT

Your soul is like a lovely garden place Where masque and bergamasque move graciously, Playing the lute and dancing, yet of face Half sad beneath their guise of fantasy.

The while they sing in minor key Love conquering, life opportune, They seem to doubt their own felicity— Their song floats faintly upward in the moon,

In the clear moonlight, sad and fair, That makes birds dream where dim boughs sway, And fountains sigh their rapture on the air From marble pools—the tall slim fountain spray.

White Mists[1]

There are grey stone rat-traps on the earth Where human beings are put to die By other human beings. They die hour after hour, a million million times, And still face death....

There is blue air between the clouds and the earth Which they once saw; There are gold stars, And suns that come up red, And trees that turn to purple in the evening— But they cannot remember....

Now their days are bundles of soiled rags, Their nights are stone.... I dare not think of them: It drives me toward the whiteness of insanity.

M. C. A.

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[1] _In the year of our Lord 1916 Emma Goldman was sent to jail for advocating that “women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open.” Some extracts from letters written during her fifteen-day sentence appear on the next page._

Letters from Prison

EMMA GOLDMAN

_Queen’s County Jail, Long Island City, New York. April, 1916._

What am I doing? I am watching human misery. There is no misery so appalling as imprisoned misery. It is so helpless, so humiliated.

Yes, I think the prisoners do love me, at least those who have been thrown in with me. It is so easy to get their love. The least bit of kindness moves them—they are so appreciative. But what can one do for them?

Do you remember that passage from Galsworthy’s _Justice_ in which some one says to Falder: “No one wishes you harm”? Therein lies the pathos. No one wishes these social victims harm. The Warden and Matron here are exceptionally kind. And yet the harm, the irreparable harm, is done by the very fact that human beings are locked up, robbed of their identity, their self-respect, their self-hood.

Oh, I am not sorry I was sentenced. In fact I am glad. I needed to get to these pariahs who are the butt of all the horrors. It would be well if every rebel were sent to prison for a time; it would fan his smouldering flame of hate of the things that make prisons possible. I am really glad.

* * * * *

... We are awakened at six and unlocked at seven in the morning. Then comes breakfast, of which I have so far eaten only oatmeal with what pretends to be milk. The coffee or tea I have not managed to get down. At seven-thirty we are taken out into the yard. I walk up and down like one possessed, to get the exercise. At eight-thirty we are back, and the women keep themselves busy scribbling; but my girls will not let me do that; I must talk to them. (The Warden, by the way, is reading my _Anarchism_, and the Matron my _Social Significance of the Modern Drama_). In fact, I seem to have more devotion here than on the outside. At eleven we have dinner, and at four in the afternoon supper—which I will describe to you when I come out. Then we are locked up until seven A. M.—fifteen hours, the hardest of all to bear. Do you remember the line in _The Ballad of Reading Gaol_: “Each day a year whose days grow old”? To me it is “each night a year whose nights grow long”. I have always loved the night, but jailed nights are ghastly things.

The lights are on until nine P. M., and we can read and write all day—which is a god-send. Also this prison is one of the cleanest in the country.

* * * * *

... What on earth have I done that people should go into such ecstasies? No one raves because you breathe; why rave if you take a determined stand when that means the very breath of life to you? Really I feel embarrassed with all the love and devotion and adulation for so little a thing, so infinitesimal compared with the truly heroic deeds of the great souls. My only consolation is that the fight is not at an end and that I may yet be called upon to do something really great. But for the present it is hardly worth the fuss.

* * * * *

Today is Sunday and we were taken out to the yard for a walk. It was a glorious day, marred only by the monotony of the stripes and the spiritless slouching figures. Yet the sky excluded no one; its glorious blue spread over them all, as if there were no sorrows in all the world and man was never cruel to his kind.

* * * * *

The days pass quickly between the study of my fellow prisoners, my letters, and other writing. The evenings are taken up with reading. But jailed nights are so oppressive. They lie like stone upon your heart. The thoughts, the sobs, the moans that emerge like pale shadows from every human soul. It is stifling. Yet people talk of hell. There is no more threatening thing in all the world than the hell of jailed nights.

* * * * *

Good morning. Another crazing night has gone....

Off The Turnpike

AMY LOWELL

Good ev’nin’, Mis’ Priest. I jest stepped in to tell you Good-bye. Yes, it’s all over, All my things is packed And every last one o’ them boxes Is on Bradley’s team Bein’ hauled over to th’ station. No, I ain’t goin’ back agin. I’m stoppin’ over to French’s fer to-night, And goin’ down fust train in th’ mornin’. Yes, it do seem kinder queer Not to be goin’ to see Cherry’s Orchard no more, But Land Sakes! When a change’s comin’, Why, I allus say it can’t come too quick. Now, that’s real kind of you, Your doughnuts is always so tasty. Yes, I’m goin’ to Chicago, To my niece, She’s married to a fine man, hardware business, And doin’ real well, she tells me. Lizzie’s be’n at me to go out ther fer the longest while. She ain’t got no kith nor kin to Chicago, you know. She’s rented me a real nice little flat, Same house as hers, And I’m goin’ to try that city livin’ folks say’s so pleasant. Oh, yes, he was real generous, Paid me a sight of money fer the Orchard, I told him ’twouldn’t yield nothin’ but stones, But he ain’t farmin’ it. Lor’, no, Mis’ Priest, He’s jest took it to set and look at the view. Maybe he wouldn’t be so stuck on the view Ef he’d seed it every mornin’ and night for forty year Same’s I have. I dessay it’s pretty enough, But it’s so pressed into me I c’n see’t with my eyes shet. No. I ain’t cold, Mis’ Priest, Don’t shet th’ door. I’ll be all right in a minit. But I ain’t a mite sorry to leave that view. Well, maybe ’tis queer to feel so, And maybe ’tisn’t. My! But that tea’s revivin’. Old things ain’t always pleasant things, Mis’ Priest. No, no, I don’t cal’late on comin’ back, That’s why I’d ruther be to Chicago, Boston’s too near. It ain’t cold, Mis’ Priest, It’s jest my thoughts. I ain’t sick, only— Mis’ Priest, ef you’ve nothin’ ter take yer time, And have a mind to listen, There’s somethin’ I’d like ter speak about. I ain’t never mentioned it, But I’d like to tell yer ’fore I go. Would yer mind lowerin’ them shades, Fall twilight’s awful grey, And that fire’s real cosy with the shades drawd. Well, I guess folks about here think I’ve be’n dret’ful unsociable. You needn’t say ’taint so, ’cause I know diff’rent. And what’s more, it’s true. Well, the reason is I’ve be’n scared o’ my life. Scared ev’ry minit o’ th’ time, fer eight year. Eight mortal year it is, come next June. It was on the eighteenth of June, Six months after I’d buried my husband That somethin’ happened ter me. Maybe yer’ll mind that afore that I was a cheery body. Hiram was too, Allus liked to ask a neighbor in, And ev’n when he died, Barrin’ low sperrits, I warn’t averse to seein’ nobody. But that eighteenth o’ June changed ev’rythin’. I was doin’ most o’ th’ farmwork myself, With jest a hired boy, Clarence King ’twas, Comin’ in fer an hour or two. Well, that eighteenth June I was goin’ round, Lockin’ up and seein’ to things fore I went to bed. I was jest steppin’ out to th’ barn, Goin’ round outside ’stead of through the shed, ’Cause there was such a sight of moonlight Somehow or another I thought ’twould be pretty outdoors. I got settled for pretty things that night, I guess. I ain’t stuck on em no more. Well, them laylock bushes side o’ th’ house Was real lovely. Glitt’rin’ and shakin’ in the moonlight, And the smell o’ them rose right up And most took my breath away. The colour o’ the spikes was all faded out, They never keep their colour when the moon’s on ’em, But that smell fair ’toxicated me. I was allus partial to a sweet scent, And I went close up t’ th’ bushes So’s to put my face right into a flower. Mis’ Priest, jest’s I got breathin’ in that laylock bloom I saw, layin’ right at my feet, A man’s hand! It was as white’s the side o’ th’ house, And sparklin, like that lum’nous paint they put on gateposts. I screamed right out, I couldn’t help it, And I could hear my scream Goin’ over an’ over In that echo behind th’ barn, Hearin’ it agin an’ agin like that Scared me so, I dar’sn’t scream any more. I jest stood there, And looked at that hand. I thought the echo’d begin to hammer like my heart, But it didn’t. There wus only th’ wind, Sighin’ through the laylock leaves, An’ slappin’ them up agin’ the house. Well, I guess I looked at that hand Most ten minits, An’ it never moved, Jest lay there white as white. After a while I got to thingin’, that o’ course ’Twas some drunken tramp over from Redfield. That calmed me some, An’ I commenced to think I’d better git him out From under them laylocks. I planned to drag him inter th’ barn An’ lock him in ther’ till Clarence come in th’ mornin’. I got so mad thinkin’ o’ that all-fired brazen tramp Asleep in my laylocks, I just stooped down and grabbed th’ hand and give it an awful pull. Then I bumped right down settin’ on the ground. Mis’ Priest, ther’ warn’t no body come with the hand. No, it ain’t cold, it’s jest that I can’t bear thinkin’ of it Ev’n now. I’ll take a sip o’ tea. Thank you, Mis’ Priest, that’s better. I’d ruther finish now I’ve begun. Thank you, jest the same. I dropped the hand’s ef it’d be’n red hot ’Stead o’ ice cold. Fer a minit or two I jest laid on that grass Pantin’. Then I up and run to them laylocks An’ pulled ’em every which way. True as I’m settin’ here, Mis’ Priest, Ther’ warn’t nothin’ ther’. I peeked an’ pryed all about ’em, But ther’ warn’t no man ther’ Neither livin’ nor dead. But the hand was ther’ all right, Upside down, the way I’d dropped it, And glist’ning fit to dazzle yer. I don’t know how I done it, And I don’t know why I done it, But I wanted to get that dre’tful hand out o’ sight. I got in t’ th’ barn, somehow, An’ felt roun’ till I got a spade. I couldn’t stop fer a lantern, Besides, the moonlight was bright enough in all conscience. Then I scooped that awful thing up in th’ spade. I had a sight o’ trouble doin’ it. It slid off, and tipped over, and I couldn’t bear Ev’n to touch it with my foot to prop it, But I done it somehow. Then I carried it off behind the barn, Clost to an old appletree Where you couldn’t see from the house, An’ I buried it, Good an’ deep. I don’t rec’lect nothin’ more o’ that night. Clarence woke me up in th’ mornin’, Hollerin’ for me to come down and set th’ milk. When he’d gone I stole roun’ to the appletree And seed the earth all newly turned Where I left it in my hurry. I did a heap o’ gardenin’ That mornin’. I couldn’t cut no big sods Fear Clarence would notice and ask me what I wanted ’em fer, So I got teeny bits o’ turf here and ther,’ And no one couldn’t tell ther’d be’n any diggin’ When I got through. They was awful days after that, Mis’ Priest, I used ter go every mornin’ and poke about them bushes, And up and down the fence, Ter find the body that hand come off of. But I couldn’t never find nothin’. I’d lay awake nights Hearin’ them laylocks blowin’ and whiskin’. Finally I had Clarence cut ’em down An’ make a big bonfire of ’em. I told him the smell made me sick, An’ that warn’t no lie, I can’t a’ bear the smell on ’em now. An no wonder, es you say. I fretted somethin’ awful about that hand. I wondered could it be Hiram’s, But folks don’t rob graveyards hereabouts. Besides Hiram’s hands warn’t that awful, starin’ white. I give up seein’ people, I was afeared I’d say somethin’. You know what folks thought of me Better’n I do, I dessay, But maybe now you’ll see I couldn’t do nothin’ diffrent. But I stuck it out, I warn’t goin’ to be downed By no loose hand, no matter how it come ther’. But that ain’t the worst, Mis’ Priest, Not by a long way. Two years ago Mr. Densmore made me an offer for Cherry’s Orchard. Well, I’d got used to th’ thought of bein’ sort o’ blighted, And I warn’t scared no more. Lived down my fear, I guess. I’d kinder got used t’ the thought o’ that awful night, And I didn’t mope much about it. Only I never went out o’ doors by moonlight; That stuck. Well, when Mr. Densmore’s offer come, I started thinkin’ about the place An’ all the things that had gone on ther’. Thinks I, I guess I’ll go and see where I put the hand. I was foolhardy with the long time that had gone by. I knew the place real well, Fer I’d put it right in between two o’ the apple-roots. I don’t know what possessed me, Mis’ Priest, But I kinder wanted to know That the hand had been flesh and bone, anyway. It had sorter bothered me, thinkin’ I might ha’ imagined it. I took a mornin’ when the sun was real pleasant and warm, I guessed I wouldn’t jump for a few old bones. But I did jump, somethin’ wicked. Thar warn’t no bones! Thar warn’t nothin’! Not even the gold ring I minded bein’ on the little finger. I don’t know ef there ever was anythin’. I’ve worried myself sick over it. I be’n diggin’ and diggin’ day in and day out Till Clarence ketched me at it. Oh, I knowed real well what you all thought, An’ I ain’t sayin’ you’re not right, But I ain’t goin’ to end in no country ’sylum If I c’n help it. The shiv’rin’ fits come on me sudden like. I know ’em, don’t you trouble. I’ve fretted considerable about the ’sylum, I guess I be’n frettin’ all the time I ain’t be’n diggin’. But anyhow I can’t dig to Chicago, can I? Thank you, Mis’ Priest, I’m better now. I only dropped in in passin’! I’ll jest be steppin’ along to French’s. No, I won’t be seein’ nobody in the mornin’, It’s a pretty early start. Don’t you stand ther’, Mis’ Priest, The wind’ll blow yer lamp out, An’ I c’n see easy, I got aholt o’ the gate now. I ain’t a mite tired, thank you. Goodnight.

Potatoes in a Cellar

R. G.

I am not here to harry institutions, to prod up mummies swathed in red tape and embalmed in routine and respectability, nor am I here to bury the unburied dead.

People say, “Why do you jump on the Art Institute for becoming a trade school? It is only following the tendencies of the times. Art is like everything else.” There you have it!—the whole trouble. There is no consciousness of art, no consciousness that art is beyond all these things—that it is as the sun to the earth, and if it were to fail us we should grow like potatoes in a deep cellar.

It is only when art students say, “This is not what we sought. Where shall we go, what shall we love, what do, to find what we sought?” that the Art Institute is brought into it, and then only to serve as an example of the lack of art consciousness everywhere, and to emphasize the fact that the artist has no place in this land of wasteful virtues.

An artist almost disgraces the family into which he is born, he is pitied a little by outsiders, he is left alone. At last, when he can stand it no longer, he breaks the parent heart, and goes out full of high hope to find his own kind and to keep his own faith. After a short time he finds the art school very much like a factory; he learns to do his piece, when he had thought to create a new beauty, and he finds, too, that he is still an outcast for his beliefs and desires.

More than ninety-nine percent of the students who study art never qualify as artists. We are all born into the world creators. In the interval some wander into by-paths, play nicely upon the piano or violin, do art, or write poetry. Maiden aunts and fond grandmas proclaim them geniuses, all the time praying that they do not become artists. When love comes, they leave the by-paths to fall into lock step on the old worn way.

It is not what is accomplished on these journeys along the outposts of art, but it is the experience that counts. If they have met there one or two who stirred their senses with the impression of bearing a “fragile and mighty thing,” who could rise above the earth and shout in a flamelight of joy, or fall upon the earth and moan with the dark trouble of Things; if they have caught from these a quickened sense of Life, and learned a broader observation and consciousness of beauty; even though they cannot create as the artist creates—still from this experience they should feel the power to create a new life for those whom they in their turn may meet. If they would so much as teach the children, not the old formidable “Fear God and keep his commandments,” but rather

“Find in every foolish little thing that lives but a day Eternal Beauty wandering on its way”

we should grow a race with a deep desire for the “free, unsullied things which never fail and never can decay.”

The Artist knows as surely as though he walked with God upon those six days of creation that _this_ He made and nothing more—but here He made all. Other men fill in the gap between what they are and what they feel they could be, what they long for and cannot find, what they attain and aspire to, with Religion. Then, walled in with the belief of finding completion in a future life, they live on unconscious of the passionate splendor and ecstasy of this life. The artist, realizing that here we must live our life and our immortality, cries out to men to know all, to feel all, to be all here, and he strives with his whole soul, gives up his life to show men what he has seen. But the turning of great wheels, the blasts of furnaces, and the straining of millions of human beings that a few may be comfortable, drown his voice. And because he does not take part in this great struggle for physical contentment, does not live the cramped, dwarfed life of society, there is no place for him in modern life. Even though the wisest seem deceived, still the artist must believe that a consciousness of Art will come, and that even the most stupid will sometime know that he must have Art before bread.

I know—for I have experienced it and perhaps experienced little else!—that art is of more value than truth.—_Nietzsche._

New York Letter

ALLAN ROSS MACDOUGALL

(_The Poetry Society of America Meets and I Attend, Taking with Me a Sense of Humor._)

There is, in this city, a Poetry Society. Once a month they gather together at a handsome club to talk and be talked to. Once a year they foregather at a grand hotel for a handsome dinner and some more talk.

I am inquisitive, God help me! He and good training have made me so. To gratify my curiosity concerning the makers of American poetry, I asked Master Witter Bynner, one of their band, to take me to their monthly meeting at the National Arts Club. I ache still from suppressed laughter. (Dear sense of humor, what would I do without you when I visit the habitations of the pretentious and the congregation of the hum-bugs?)

It is the custom of this body of—of—the word I want will come to me later. It is their custom, I say, to ask for unpublished verse to be read aloud to the assemblage. The reader of the evening was Witter Bynner. Now Mr Bynner is a poet with a fine, vibrant voice and a rare appreciation for pause and effect, but when he read the verse of those anonymous poets such feeling did he put into them that his legs quivered and showed great emotion. That distressed and distracted me.

After each poem was read it was criticized by the audience. Criticism of a certain type is the easiest thing in the world. That type, that petty, empty, wordy type, was present in all its glory. Its chief exponent was one Shaemas O’Sheel, a wordy fellow loving the sound of his own voice and giving vent to many empty phrases with much gusto and argumentative fervor. Mr O’Sheel once wrote and had published in a book this plaintive thing:

My song is such a little thing Oh, such a little thing! It is not loud; it is not long, And wherefor should I sing?

Echo answers, Wherefor?

Another fellow who fancied himself as critic was a youth named Joyce Kilmer. Perhaps you have heard of him. He is the author of charming conceits, in verse, on trees and delicatessen stores. He has also written some sweet roundels and ballades. Incidentally he is a member of the staff of _The New York Times_. Occasionally he makes excursions to Women’s Clubs and other intellectual organizations to tell them all he knows about poetry. God save him! And God save me from ever hearing another night of such criticism from ponderous youths and knowing old maids!

After the reading of the poems, and the stupid remarks that followed the reading, there came what was called the “social intermission”. During this time insipid punch and silly little biscuits were served to as many of the mob as could grab them, and a noise as of a host of parrots in a small place filled the room. (Curious what bad punch will do to good, respectable people!) Following the excitement of the jabber and the near-wine the audience settled down to be sobered up by the reading of two seeming epics by Cale Young Rice. Mr Rice is dull—oh, very dull he is. Not only so, but his verse is—I won’t say; and he reads it with the voice of the spirit of a one-time virtuous Methodist minister chanting a prayer in the coolest part of Hell.

So he read his dreary interminable poems. So I had visions of all the precious Sundays my Presbyterian parents had forced me to waste. That vision passed and I still heard the whining drone. Back to my mind again where I had vicious thoughts of the tortures I would like to play upon bad poets who write bad verse and read it with bad accent and bad voice to good harmless people. By the time I had thought out and perfected a most amazing and subtle form of torture for such disturbers of human happiness, the dismal noise had stopped. Some day....

After the effort of the Rice man, Laurence Houseman read some of his fanciful poems. They were welcome. A Spring wind among the reeds after a prolonged dull thaw.

Poetry flourishes in America.

The poets are paid well by the Magazines; and strange women dine and wine them and pay them sweet homage.

The majority own and sport dress suits. They are eminently decent and respectable.

Poetry readings are now a well-attended form of afternoon time-killing.

Poetry flourishes.

_THE PASSING OF FORBES-ROBERTSON_

The stops are in. The organ is closed. For forty years it has “discoursed much excellent sweet music.” Now the organist is weary, and would fain rest. He has played many things and played them well. A gentle sweet melody like _Mice and Men_ was made more sweet by his playing; and even if he did sometimes play a popular tune like _The Third Floor Back_ were we not the more thrilled and moved when we heard the beauty of his playing of the symphony of _Hamlet_?

On Saturday, April 22, I watched, now from the wings, now from a side box, the last public performance of this artist’s _Hamlet_. Oh that I could write as well as I feel; that my words had the strength and the bursting keenness of my emotions. Then might I tell something.

Have you seen the sudden brilliant leap of a flame sometimes before it finally goes out? There was the same sort of spurt in that past performance. I had seen Robertson play Hamlet a year ago; in Brooklyn a week before I had watched him wearily play his part, and by the comparison I understood the effort involved in the brilliancy of his playing that day. There was a heart-bursting poignancy about his swan song. I cried with the Queen: “Oh Hamlet, thou hast cleft my heart in twain!” And when at the end of it all he sat there on the throne of Denmark with that unforgettable look, purged from all the suffering and weariness; and when they bore him off to the music of Tchaikovsky’s _Dead March_, what could a feeling mortal do but—but—I cannot tell what I did.

“The rest is silence.”

“Good night, sweet prince.”

Amber Monochrome

MARK TURBYFILL

I pass Outside into the amber night.

A lamp within Prints shadow-flowers On the stiffness of an amber screen.

My dream is like that— An amber scheme Straining through cold, stiff screens.

Three Imagist Poets

JOHN GOULD FLETCHER