"DEGAS, the great painter, is not personally a commercial success, though he has enriched more than one art collector. He lives very humbly on a fourth floor in Montmartre."-NEWS DESPATCH. DEGAS lives up fourni and somewhat EGAS lives up four flights of stairs- It is n't art? I hate the term. twisty? Why not? Why all these foreign airs? You must admit he is no Christy. Any art editor well knows That "art for art's sake" 's just a pose. Who is this Degas, anyhow? I've never seen a thing he 's painted. Sounds like a Dago. Frenchman? Wow! Take it from me, French art is tainted. Why, don't I see that thing, "Le Rire"? Such dinky drawing don't go here. Give me our pretty Gotham girls. There's one for my midsummer cover. Say, did you ever see such curls? Some class to that! I love a lover. And all the public loves 'em, too. That's why we run 'em all year through. Oh, no hard feelings. Who cares for art? My illustrators Are all immune to such a germ; They don't know art from alligators. Americans, I have a hunch, Must have a picture with a punch. What is a "punch"? That lets you out. Unless the sentiment is hoary— What's that you say? Line, color, form, And composition? Ah, you task me. I am not hired to stir a storm, But just to "raise the wind." You'll Maybe for what 's original; By no means. A genius? Say, down in my jeans I'd go to help him out, and- Hello! He 'll go, I'll try his illustration. THE SENIOR WRANGLER A NEW THINKER I NEVER have any luck in picking out the signs of the times, and try as I may to overtake new movements, new thoughts, new dawns, and social reawakenings, dozens of them for one reason or another still get away. Even when I do succeed now and again in catching up with an advanced thinker, I seldom share that bright and early feeling with which he manifestly glows. For example, I once got abreast of a man much admired in his day for mental forwardness. I forget his name, but recall that it was short and energetic, and suited to this Age of Steel-something like Chuggs, I think. He had been pent up as a young man in some college professorship, but had broken away, and was lecturing on progress along all the principal trade routes of the country. Professor Chuggs was one of those who assure us at short intervals that the present moment is the most egregious moment of the most egregious year of the most egregious century that "the world has ever seen," and that the next moment will be more egregious still. He wrote a good many of those articles which declare that China is turning over in her sleep and that Persia is fairly buzzing; that in the waste places of Africa five business men will soon be blooming where one blade of grass had grown before; that through the mighty arteries of commerce the life-blood of civilization is coursing to the extremities of the earth; that already there is open plumbing in Patagonia and steam drills are busy in Tibet. He used all the metaphorical paraphernalia of progress, including "giant strides." Yet the effect on the human mind was singularly quieting. I wonder why it is that some men "write up" Niagara in such a manner that you prefer your own lawn-sprinkler. His magazine, "The On-Rush," which was defined in a sub-title as "A Handbook of the Coming Cataclysm," announced as its policy the avoidance of conformity with "every bourgeois conception," which, in its application, seemed simple enough; for the writers had merely to find out what a bourgeois conception was, and then take a flying leap away from it. It opened with a "Hymn to Moral Rapidity," of which one stanza ran, as I remember, something like this: One thought in the bush is worth two in the head, So it tossed systems of philosophy about like bean-bags, "hit off" each classic writer in a phrase careless but final, was on familiar, joking terms with all the sciences, explained woman, silenced history, summed up everything and everybody-the human race, the fathers of the church, genius, love, marriage, and the future state. In short, each page was conscientiously prepared as a mustard-plaster to draw the blood to some unused portion of the reader's intellect. Yet it had no such effect. On the contrary, one gathered from it nothing more specific or exciting than that materialism was an inadequate philosophy, that socialism was in the air, that there was corruption in politics, that education did not educate, and that marriage was a good deal of a bother. Apparently the editor and contributors had nerved themselves by battle-songs into repeating these common remarks of our tea-tables, all in a tone of desperate valor, as if hourly expecting each platitude to be their last. I suppose there must be "new thinkers" in this country, and that they must sometimes come out on the news-stands. Yet a "new thinker," when studied closely, seems merely a man who does not know what other people have already thought. The "new thinker," if I may attempt a definition derived from my own unfortunate magazine readings, is a person who aspires to an egregiousness far beyond the limits of his thought. He is a fugitive from commonplace, but without the means of effecting his escape. F. M. Colby. "CONTINUED IN ADVERTISING SECTION, PAGE 290," UNABLE OR MAGAZINE FICTION À LA MODE BY GEORGE JEAN NATHAN [Page 290 INABLE to contain himself longer, although he realized the vast futility of it all, Massington seized her in his arms and buried her lovely eyes and hair in the storm of a thousand kisses. "You love me, Lolo-tell me you love me!" he choked. "No! no!" she cried, struggling from his clasp with an adorable coquetry. “No, it must not be." Massington, for the moment, found himself unable to speak. Then, "Why?" he asked simply, softly. "Because," the girl replied, with a cunning moué-"because [Page 291 [Page 292 I don't yet know my own mind," she finished. Massington moved toward her. The amber glow of a small table lamp lighted up the bronze glory of Lolo's tumbled tresses. And her eyes were as twin Chopin nocturnes dreaming out the melody of a far-off, unattainable love. He paused before daring to lift his voice against the wonderful silence that, like the midnight on southern Pacific seas, hung over her. Presently, "When you do decide, what then?" he ventured. "When I do decide," she told him, "it will be forever. But ere I give you my answer, ere we take the step that must mean so much in our lives, we must both be strong enough to remember that RESICURA SOAP [Page 293 gives natural beauty to skin and hair. It is not only cleansing and soften "But, darling," breathed Massington, "what are mere conventions for us two now?" Lolo tore at one of the roses with her teeth. "Oh!" she exclaimed, flinging out her arm wildly toward the ugly green wall-paper of her room that symbolized everything she so hated-"Oh, I knowI know! I do not want to think of them, but I-but we-must, Jason sweetheart, we must! And life so all-wondrous, beating vainly against their iron bars and looking beyond them into paradise. We must think of them,' -a little sob crept from her throat,-"we must think of them!" "Let us think, rather," said Massington, "of that other world in which we might live, to which, Lolo dear, we might go, and, once there, be away from every one, all alone, we two-just you and I. Let us think of Spain, shimmering like some great topaz under the tropic sun; of the Pyrenees that, purpled against the evening heavens, watch over the peaceful valleys of Santo Dalmerigo; of the drowsy noons and silver moons of Italy; let us think, loved one, of the rippling Mediterranean and of OXO-CRYSALENE (established 1864) [Page 295 for Whooping Cough, Spasmodic Croup, Asthma, Sore Throat, DEAREST ELRA, THE RURAL LETTER-WRITER BY CLARENCE CARRIGAN Ma said when she seen the postman nearin the house with your sweet leter, seemed like 't was God's finger. Ezra cried. Cries most all the time now, Ezra does. Thin, why, Elra, t' other day, no joshin, he put on Pa's coat, used to be miles small for Ezra, too, and 't looked ter me as I sed, meanin no harm, looked like a ten foot table drape was put ter cover a footstool. Doc' Purtner up the line here, sez Ezra 's more 'n half way up God's staircase. That I calls powtry. . . . No tellin' either what 's the dope with him. Doc. sez "Unhampered by aught of dread desease, he merely drifteth toward the goal" Doc writ that so 's I could paste it in Byrd's album. Dear Lordie!! Seems though I sed it fifty times, and then did n't know no more of it. Oh, say, Ezra, Jake Dullrimple as works at . . Dekin's grocery, sez to me last evening passin' the house after biz., he sez, Some folks makes Sweet, to Margareete, but I will pick a ROSE. I turned rose, you just can bet on that. How 's he know them things Elra? Bud Saunders he asked Min Brashly ter marry him Tuesday, and Jake knew Bud used to be sweet on me. I was goin' to cry, till he said that about pickin' Rose. Well, I can tell Min a thing or two 'bout Bud, and I don't care neither whether Jake did mean I wuz the Rose. I ain't no thorn to a widered mother like Min is, with her stuck up jigety airs. Love to yer ma, and others you, so there) ****(Kisses for Dimple) **** (Kisses for ROSEY FOOLEY. |