Love's an artificial 'value'

Savage hearts have ever scorned; Now it's dead, so don't go howling: Trivial things are best unmourned.

All the sad young men are waiting

For the flower they helped to smutch; Never mind the fibs I told you:

Love is left without a Krutch.

'Come and see the moon a moment'?
Nonsense, woman; I'll not stir!
As for you - go get my supper:
I'm a savage now, by G-r-r!
Yours most humidly,

GEORGE BRANDON SAUL

Robert Lynd explained in our September umber why literature declines. His reflecions have led at least one sympathetic Feader to offer us these grounds for hope.

MADISON, WISCONSIN

DEAR ATLANTIC, Mr. Lynd's article, 'Why Literature Declines,' your September number, touched a vibrant hord. It is sad but true that in this world f stark realism and materialism—the world hich has discarded Heaven, Hell, Purity, anctity, Ideals, even clothes there remain, espite its efforts at the extinction of such, some w old fogies who still cling lovingly, in memory t least, to the literature of bygone days; and who ill cherish a secret hope that some day men will gain write of the things which stir their souls stead of searching for methods of suppressing em or explaining them away in terms of ›mplexes and phobias.

But this age is the avowed enemy alike of him ho would read or him who would write any but e literature of its kind. We used to find keen y in taking flights out of the material world with ante and Goethe and Shakespeare; but who In crowd one of those flights in, now, between e directors' meeting and the foursome? We ed to delight in standing "mid the eternal ays' with Burroughs; but now those ways are verrun by the jostling mobs who know that eaven is right here on earth and that each must Furry if he wishes to seize a piece for himself. We used to pluck a flower from the 'crannied all' and thrill, with Tennyson, to hold it in nd, 'root, stem and all'; but now the signs ad, 'Do not touch flowers or shrubs.'

And who cares to write what will not be read? There is but one hope! Cæsar did not write s will the day Mark Antony read it to the pulace. Our hope must rest in the closets!

Perhaps somewhere, even now, there are some few fine spirits-rarely has an age produced them in numbers who understand that some day this era of sophistication and arrogant rationalism will have passed, that there will come a time when the flight of a spirit into the world of imagery will no longer be cause for an anxious visit to the family psychoanalyst, and who even now are writing truly great literature against that hour.

Would it not be a happy moment in Heaven (though, of course, that is merely a puerile concept) if one might look down (how absolutely absurd!) and hear a critic say, upon bringing to light a beautiful work for the sake of which some genius 'suffered the slings and arrows' of this generation, 'I found it in his closet'? But, of course, apartments and family hotels do not have closets. He will probably merely announce, 'It was in his safe-deposit box.'

Very truly,

E. MARGARET PARKER

Turning back to the eighteenth century, here is the kind of letter a long-lost husband of that period used to send to his wife. The author, a native of Charlestown, Massachusetts, never reached home, as his ship was wrecked. Molly lived to be ninety.

DEAR MOLLY,

ness

LONDON, June 23, 1766

This will inform you that I am still in the world. I have been so long counted among the Dead that I suppose all the remembrance of me is this viz., that I was a bad husband because I left no Money. I suppose my Character has been canvassed as customary. Some have imputed my Poverty to Extravagance, others to Unskillfulness, and others to Carelessness in busivery few to the True Cause, the Will of God. You (who knew me best) I hope have done me justice in your Thoughts, in the midst of all your difficulties. I think I was not an Unkind Husband or Father, nor disagreeable Friend and Acquaintance. I do assure you when I expected momentarily to perish I had that consolation that I had endeavored to make you and my children happy. I remembered that I had some oddities in my Behaviour which might not have been always agreeable to you but which I hoped your Goodnature would forgive. I believe I may say the greatest Trouble I had at that Time (for I trusted God would forgive my sins) was the circumstances I should leave you and my children in — but notwithstanding those things and that I have been so long imagined dead that your Grief for the loss of my Person may possibly be

at an End, yet I hope that my Resurrection to you and Life again if it Please God may not be disagreeable to you. I think you loved me and cannot have forgot me so soon.

As you may want to know what has befallen me (for you formerly had curiosity to know things) I will acquaint you. On the 10th of January last in a hard gale of wind a very bad sea struck my vessel and occasioned her to leak very much. We kept continually pumping Night and Day till the 13th, and then the Water had increased so much that the Vessel was just upon sinking when we hoysted our boat out and got into it hardly in expectation of saving our lives but in the Hopes of living a little longer to repent of our Sins and ask Forgiveness, but it pleased God, after we had been 8 days in the boat in very stormy weather, and suffering a great deal for want of Victuals and Drink, to carry us to the Island of Flores inhabited by Portugese and who were exceedingly kind, especially to me. I having by being constantly wet, got the Gout in both Legs and Feet and left Hand so that I was unable to help myself, was taken from the Boat by two of them and carried about a mile, where I had an House and Bed provided for me and where I lay 17 days in great misery. After continuing in that Island (where I was obliged to sell my Hat, Buckles, and Buttons to subsist me) four months, I was carried to Dover in England and thence I came by land to this city, where I cant find that kindness that I have exercised upon many-I mean to let me have a passage without paying for it. I hope under these Frowns of providence that we shall behave suitably with a Religious Resignation, and not one murmuring thought arise. If it be best for us we shall yet meet with prosperity, but let us endeavor to act our part well upon this stage of the World, having this to comfort usthat when the Curtain is drawn, he that acts well the part of a beggar will have as much applause as he that acts the part of a King - or as Christians let us run with Patience the Race set before us not despising the Chastisement of the Lord, but by patient continuance in well doing, let us seek Glory, Honor, and Immortality and in the end we shall undoubtedly obtain Everlasting Life. Then we shall look back upon what we called Troubles and Adversities in this world and wonder we gave them so hard a name. We shall then know that they were only the kind Chastisements of a Beneficent Father, for our Good, to wean us from a Fondness for this World and its Vanities. We shall then glory in the Tribulations we met with seeing they were necessary for us in the Road to Happiness.

I hope you and my children have health. I long most heartily to see you. If God continues my health I shall come home in Captain Howard who sails in about a week.

I do not know what to say more. Pray give my duty to your Mother; tell her I am sorry I am the cause of so much uneasiness to her as I must necessarily have been. My love to your brother Nathaniel. I wish him happiness. To my Father and Mother give my dutiful regards; my love to all you think will be glad to hear I am alive. Give my blessing to my Children and accept the Love and Esteem of one whose greatest satisfaction is that he was beloved by you, and who is in Life or Death

My Dearest,

Your Constant Affectionate Husband,

E-K

Here's a pedagogue who up and revolted and even thinks it's great. We only hope the example will not spread too widely, for the time may come when others of us will find ourselves as bored with our labors as our preceptors seem to be with theirs. And when that happens who will run our trains, mine our coal, wash our dishes, and write our Contributors' Columns for us?

August 29, 1928

DEAR PEDAGOGUE IN REVOLT, Yes, resign! Better yet, retire. Retire along with me, the best is yet to be. This is not an invitation - simply a misquotation.

I have just read your article in the September Atlantic and my thoughts flew back to more than thirty years ago when, with all the glories of undiscovered Paris beckoning to me, I forced mysel to toil in ill-ventilated libraries. When instead of joyously following adventure into unknown paths I doggedly pursued the fate of Latin o in the poems of Gonzalo de Berceo. I could not enjoy the quaint charm of his verse lest I miss one of those pesky little letters. No one could tell what disguise they might have assumed since first they wandered from the Roman moorings, and it was up to me to track them to their Spanish lairs Six long months I was a Romance sleuth, and when I finally rounded up all my captives my only reward was an enigmatical combination of letters to be suffixed to my name. And in my soul was born a distrust of the value of a certain kind of scholarship. I had sinned against that sweet old poet beyond forgiveness, and my punishment was that I never could read him again.

So your article struck an answering chord in my own experience. I stuck to my job of interpreting (?) literature for over thirty years, but finally gave it up a year ago. I am free! Free to say what I think and do what I want. It's great. Sympathetically yours,

E. W

FR

ROST came with the nights. The corn stalks Wwithered and the hills were fire and scarlet. Partridge drum

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...

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