Part 2

Ah Lin saw the knife, and something slipped from his sleeve and two knives gleamed--then disappeared.

Some one struck a light. The owner of the place picked up the fallen God and placed it on the table. It calmly looked down upon two dead men.

SUI SEEN FAR.

OUR HERITAGE.

“Retire within thyself, O mortal Man!” Was the grand doctrine of the classic age, From whence has come the imperishable page Of rarest wisdom that the eye may scan. The city that Augustus raised--nay, mighty Pan, And all the wonders penned by bard and sage Have vanished ’neath the unconquerable rage Of rival factions since their doom began. But we who live and look with rev’rent gaze Across the awful space that marks their course, May struggle with great odds to gain perforce This heritage of mind from sundered days: Or, with hearts athirst, mid barren ways, Drink of ennobling life from such unfailing source.

B. F. D. DUNN.

ONE FAILURE TO FORGET.

Two others, both men, had nodded silent assent when Wooler made the declaration, lightly, that the pleasures of memory must surely pall before the pleasures of forgetting.

And presently, when the ladies had gone into the drawing-room, these three men found themselves looking one another over with that calm scrutiny in which one wonders who the deuce the other man is. As a matter of fact, however, these three, John Wooler, Andrew Insgate and Tom Farlough, knew one another fairly well. Each was merely trying to gauge the other’s sincerity.

“She objected, of course,” Wooler went on, as if there had been no interruption at all, “but then, I expected nothing else. A woman would always rather remember than forget.” He sipped thoughtfully at his port. “With us--it is different.”

At the other end of the table a group of portly, elderly gentlemen were regaling one another with anecdotal alletria.

“Do we really mean it?” asked Wooler, “or do we take the appearance of the thought for sake of its unorthodoxy?”

“For my part,” said Farlough, fingering his cravat, “I would give much of my life if I could forget some of it.”

Insgate held his wine glass to the light and gazed at the rich tint of red within. “Leopardi was right,” he said, “no man would live his life over again. But--I would begin anew tomorrow if I could wipe out all the yesterday.”

The other men had left the head of the table and joined the ladies in the drawing-room. The butler moved about silently for a few moments and then left these three alone with their wine, and their thoughts.

Wooler spoke again. “We are all able to, h’m, take a little for granted. Our reasons scarcely matter much.” The others nodded. “The only consideration is that we wish to--forget. Why shouldn’t we try, we three? We are not bound in any way. Neither wives nor debts stare us in the face. We have both time and money. Why not try?”

“Why not?” repeated Insgate.

“Gentlemen,” said Farlough, smiling, “I would represent the minority were I to do else than agree with you. Why not?”

“Very well. From now on, then, we attempt forgetting. Each in his own way. From time to time we report progress or regress.”

“Each in his own way! Are there so many ways to forgetfulness? I can only think of two: work and drink.”

“Ah, but there is Woman!”

“True, there is Woman. Strictly speaking, I considered her included in--however, that is but a quibble! Personally, I have no preference. I will take what you gentlemen leave.” It was Wooler who said this.

“Would _you put us upon our_ consciences? No; let Dame Chance take a hand in dealing. We write the names--so!--and we each draw--so! Mine is work.” That was Farlough’s luck.

Insgate’s slip said “Drink.”

“For me,” said Wooler, “the Woman.” He lifted his glass, laughing quietly. “I wonder who she is. Well, we shall see.”

“Where shall we meet again?”

“And when?”

“A year from today. In the garden of the Belle-Alliance Theatre in Berlin. Travel is a necessary obligato.”

Somewhat solemnly, though with cheerful gestures, they pledged one another in a silently emptied glass of port.

And then they sauntered into the drawing-room.

* * * * *

A year later, Farlough strolled into the Belle-Alliance Theatre. He looked healthier and stronger; the tired look had left his eyes. He looked over the theatre lovingly. It had not changed much. Never very gay, but always cosy.

They were presenting Lortzing’s ever delightful “Zar und Zimmerman,” and, while it was by no means an adequate performance, it was decidedly a pleasant one.

When the curtain had come down after the first act, Farlough strolled out into the garden. The place was brilliant with its hundreds of crystal-clasped lights overhanging the graveled walks. A throng of Berliners went chattering about. Only a very occasional Englishman or American came into evidence.

In the small open air theatre a comedian was giving a lively imitation of Sarah Bernhardt.

But nowhere was there a sign of either of those two gentlemen, John Wooler and Andrew Insgate.

Farlough turned his steps toward the box office. He made an inquiry.

The official bowed politely. He handed him two letters. He bowed again and muttered mechanically, “Gehorsamster Diener!” He was from Vienna.

Putting the letters into his pocket after a quick scrutiny of the writing upon each envelope, Farlough returned to the theatre.

When the last notes had joined the echoes, he had himself driven over to the _Hotel D’Angleterre_. There he opened the envelopes and read the two letters.

The one from Insgate was dated at London. “At this moment,” went the screed, “I am remembering the matter of our meeting in Berlin. This is due to unexpected and inexplicable sobriety. As I may not remember again, I write now. You see, I shall not be there myself. I have managed to forget nearly all things. I began by trying the liquors of all civilization. They have succeeded in destroying my memory--except in such brief lapses as this is. And these are very rare now. By the time my money and my constitution are gone, I am sure my memory will be gone also. But as I am a sinner in agony, I swear that God in all his wisdom and wrath never invented so cruel a torment as this that I have wrought for myself. I pray that you two may not have succeeded so well.”

Farlough looked at the cold ink mutely. He pictured once again the scene at that dinner a year ago: Insgate’s nervous, aristocratic face; Wooler’s smiling cynicism.

He opened the latter’s missive. This man wrote from San Francisco. “Absent, John Wooler! Because of a woman. You see, I went the gamut of the sex. But never succeeded in forgetting until this one came into my life. When I am with her I forget everything else; when I am away from her, I remember with tenfold distinctness. So I have found heaven, and live in hell. For she happens to be another man’s wife.”

Farlough tore up the two letters slowly and burned the pieces of paper one by one at the candle by his side.

“And so,” he thought, looking straight out in front of him, “they have found the way and I have not. And yet, I have won while they have lost. For my work is such a pleasure to me that the past has been atoned for long ago, and none of my memories are tainted by regrets. I am all in my work, and in it I find the ecstasy of atonement.”

And then this man who had failed to find the way of forgetfulness, sought out a railway time table to see how soon he could start back to his workshop.

PERCIVAL POLLARD.

THE STAGE AND ITS CULTURE.

Undoubtedly one of the greatest influences of the modern world is the stage, and one of the problems of modern art is to raise the tone of the stage. This must of course be done through gaining the sympathy of the acting profession in intellectual dramatic work. The question arises in my mind, is this possible? What is the average intellectual calibre of actors and actresses? I have a suspicion that, as a class, they are imitative, and but too often destitute of real intellectual interests. There are a few notable exceptions--Henry Irving, Beerbohm Tree, Jefferson, Edward S. Willard, Mounet-Sully, Richard Mansfield, James A. Herne and others. But the ordinary actor and actress, even the successful and talented ones, so far as I could ever discover, are too completely absorbed in the narrow world of play-acting, press criticisms, dresses and the jealousies and cliques of the profession, to have any leisure or inclination for an interest in the larger and freer intellectual world outside, to which men in all other callings have access as the refuge from their occupation.

I confess I never _knew_ any actor or actress who was addicted to reading--except the newspapers for the criticisms. But I have heard that Francis Wilson is not only a bookman but a bibliomaniac, and I have longed to ask him whether he included among his spoils the first editions of _American_ authors. I have a notion that even the despised bibelots of today will be treasures tomorrow.

It would be interesting to know if some of our leading ladies and gentlemen in the dramatic profession really spend much of their time in gaining that intimate acquaintance with life through literature which would certainly so greatly help their interpretation of character in the drama. It is almost impossible for us, who have not free access to the green room, to tell. It is a pity the average writer is so little in touch and contact with this mimic life that gives him so much instruction in his art and observation of life. But from the quality of the literature provided in our contemporary “Footlights,” of Philadelphia, it begins to look as if the theatrical profession is sharing with every other class in modern society in the increasing interest in printer’s ink. “Footlights” is, however, interesting to all who love the theatre, as well as to the profession, and it is not altogether restricted to the affairs and doings of the footlights. It contains especially good criticism of current literature, written in a vein of independence and vigor, which is another sign that, with the recruiting of the younger men in journalism and literature, criticism will again assume its proper importance and character in America.

JONATHAN PENN.

ICONOCLASM.

I.

“When Shakespeare died the Drama died.” This cry Has echoed down the ages as a truth None would gainsay, until, today, forsooth, Like weaklings we all fear to make reply, But suckle at Tradition’s milkless breast. O ART! your name to mingle with the dust Of dead men’s bones, and scarred with sordid rust Of years, and in a catacomb to rest! O YOUTH! throw off the shackles of the Past, It is the Present that is yours alone; The excellence you seek can never last If linked to models that today’s outgrown.

II.

How long shall we perpetuate untruth And teach that Art does not exist today? That only idols crumbling with decay Are meet as shrines for eager, suppliant youth? How long shall we bow down to foreign gods And worship them with lips, but not with heart? We are ashamed to recognize our art, We sneer and call our native writers clods. But from the prairies of the grander West-- Free from the ancient gyves that bind and gall-- Are men and women rising to the call, Intent on only what is new and best. The East is dead and buried in the Past, The West alone can do what work will last!

JOHN NORTHERN HILLIARD.

BUBBLE AND SQUEAK.

There are lots of things I should like to say in this place about some of my esteemed contemporaries, but, though not by any means diffident in the expression of my critical opinions, I daren’t unburden my deepest thoughts about the performances of some villains I have in mind. It is not that all the things I _think_ are not strictly within the bounds of severe veracity, but truth is so unpopular in this world,--and especially in the literary world.

Ex-President Harrison has given damning evidence against himself. He has publicly declared himself an utterly impossible person for re-nomination by writing platitudes to the order of “The Ladies Home Journal” genius. We can enjoy a president who goes off “at half-cock” on some questions, and we can respect one who goes fishing while the whole country is anxious about a great national policy, but a president who writes for “The Ladies Home Journal” is beyond our sense of humor or pathos. That is the unforgivable sin--to make one’s self supremely ridiculous.

Alfred Austin, the new poet laureate, is reported to be sitting up night after night, reading his predecessor in the office, carefully, critically straining and comparing the text with his own. He is striving to discover in what this “doosid” difference consists.

It really does strike a person of some sense of humor, and some tenderness for all human creatures, that at this moment the late Earl of Dunraven and the newly appointed poet laureate are the two most pathetic figures in the English-speaking world.

A notable departure in good bookmaking is Percival Pollard’s “Cape of Storms,” a novel in paper covers, with a cover design in colors by Will H. Bradley, and a title page by John Sloan, which is printed in a limited edition and sold at a popular price. This is a new thing in America. Perhaps, however, we are going to adopt the French fashion of paper covered literature. It will give all our authors a wider circulation. Pollard’s story is good, racy reading, which means clever writing.

What modern love has lost in sentimentality and romance it has gained in companionship, depth of feeling and intimacy. The latest phase of courtship is this: When a young man is in love he no longer sends his heart’s delight a silly sentimental poem, he sends her a symbolical Poster. Posters hold some hint of the vagaries and fantasies of the human heart, as sentimental poetry does not.

The triumph of modern love is that both sexes are now allowed to be _human_, and so the old disparity between carnal humanity and cold and frigid divinity, has been abridged. The Poster has helped in the promotion of art feeling in the community. It is also an educational factor in the problem of establishing an equality of common sense between the sexes, that shall not destroy the witchery of woman and the eternal attraction of the sexes.

A lady journalist, who has a decided taste for the belle-lettres, and considerable faculty of her own in the art of making life picturesque, has just apprised me of a very novel scheme of hers in the way of book making.

She once had, as is the custom of so many ladies, an ordinary and inoffensive autograph album. Asking a certain Impressionistic poet for his autograph one day, she received her book back with a few lines, in which the poet thanked Heaven he had had a birthday, so that he had looked upon her beauty and _lived_, in the deeper sense than mere living. This date disappeared from the album.

But the incident gave my quick-witted young lady an idea. She bought a dainty book of manuscript leaves bound in Russia leather. It is now worth its price in gold, for she has, by flattery and cajolery, and the fine art of being beautiful, got it filled with sketches from the pens of some of the leading authors of the day. And the character of the volume is more unique since the theme of all these fine wits is the same. The sketches are all prose pastels, inspired by the young lady’s own personality.

After reading Ian Maclaren’s “Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush,” I feel like following the precedent of the illustrious Horace Greeley and giving some advice to ambitious wayfarers. The Drumtochty folk are so uniformly generous, self sacrificing, unselfish, humane and philanthropic, that I should advise all young men of unsettled prospects not to turn their gaze westward, but to cross the seas and settle in Drumtochty. Intellectual enterprises of the most ambitious and revolutionary character, I observe, are practically encouraged and prosper there as in no other place on earth that I ever heard of. Are you a young and poor boy consumed with a desire to fit yourself for a scholar’s life and easy fortunes? Then start for Drumtochty without further ado. The blameless farmer folk there have only to be approached by the Dominie and they will immediately start you in life and pay all your expenses to a professorial chair. Are you literary? There never was such another community with the same keen scent for true imagination and poetry. Oh, it is an ideal hamlet, truly, for the intellectuals! There are more philanthropists huddled together there in one small parish than in the rest of Great Britain and the whole United States. I think even the FLY LEAF would bring in great returns in such a community.

An old lady in a hill-top town in New Hampshire has written to her local newspaper warning the youth against my corrupting influence and machinations--and so I am evidently in imminent nearness to the popularity that attends all corrupters of morals.

This good lady does not charge me with any actual breaches of morality, but she detects an irreverence in my temperament and mind that might lead me to the commission of all the crimes that moral folk find so much joy in contemplating. There is, she avers, a flippancy in my view of some established things that might lead to any perversion of youth. She is sure I am immoral and should be suppressed, although she can discover no more heinous offence in me than a certain callousness in regard to the feelings of witless respectables and old fogies. She objects to the use of that term of opprobrium, and considers it _indecent_.

If it could only be proved so--why, hooray! If this rumor of our immorality can only be carried far and wide enough, it is clear our fortunes are made. This is the secret of success in contemporary literature. All the novelists of the day are worrying out this problem: How to present some new phase of morality that shall contain the broadest suggestions of immorality.

THE LONDON ACADEMY

The Leading Critical Literary Journal of London, in a long review of “MEDITATIONS IN MOTLEY,” by WALTER BLACKBURN HARTE, says, among other things:

“When any book of good criticism comes it should be welcomed and made known for the benefit of the persons who care for such works. The book under notice is one of these. It is, so far as I know, the first from the author’s pen; but his writings are well known, and those who read his present book will, with some eagerness, await its successor. For it is a book in which wit and bright, if often satirical, humor are made the vehicle for no flimsy affectations, but for genuine thought. Mr. Ruskin has affirmed that the virtue of originality is not newness, but genuineness.

“In this true sense Mr. Harte’s book is original. Here is his own thought on several topics, pleasantly displayed, and no mere echo or second-hand production of the ideas of others. If Mr. Harte continues to act up to this sentiment, [a long quotation from the book under consideration] as he does in the present book, he may not achieve the triumph of twentieth editions, but he will be a power for good--as every true man of letters is, and must be in the world. If it were practicable I should be much disposed to let the author recommend himself by giving copious quotations from these essays. At his best--that is, in his most characteristic and seemingly unconscious passages--he reminds one of Montaigne: the charming inconsequence, the egotism free from arrogance.”

PRICE IN HANDSOME CLOTH, $1.25.

_For sale by all Booksellers, or sent Postpaid on receipt of Price by the Publishers_,

The Arena Publishing Co.,

Copley Square, Boston, Mass.

Economists and Politicians

Talk and write of the waste of society and the waste of health and the waste of luxury and poverty. But they never remark upon the equally disastrous and wanton

WASTE OF WIT

Which has for so long been the result of old-fogyism and timorous commercialism in periodical Literature. If Statistics could be compiled of the fine wits and humorists and writers of individual talents and power whose brains and productions are spoiled or altogether suppressed under the old regime of the Popular Literature for the weak minded they would be appalling. There is a ruthless waste of good wit in America, in behalf of good dullness.

THE FLY LEAF aims to stem this tide of wasted wit. There are ever so many clever writers in America, though they are seldom heard of. These Younger Spirits are the backbone of THE FLY LEAF, which will present the Best and most Individual Literature of the Day--as much as can be squeezed into a Bibelot.

It is not quantity but quality we seek to provide. THE FLY LEAF interests all cultivated independent minds, which can recognize “a good thing” at sight. It appeals to Thoughtful and Bookish People, and it will never pander to the Mob that buys its Literature by weight.

Every issue is the most amusing and Unexpected little Bundle of Surprises. It is the only Periodical in America that has Wit to waste. Others have more Cash but no Wit.

THE FLY LEAF,

269 St. Botolph Street, Boston, Mass.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.