Refreshments over, they managed It wasn't until dinner that they were joined. a place next to the rope which divided the awaiting friends from the incoming passengers. These were These were the last moments of expectancy before the ultimate reunion, and Mrs. Eaton found them hard to bear. The train was in. People began to filter through the gate, at first sparsely and then in pushing crowds. It seemed as though her father would never appear. But he did at last, walking with that deliberate slowness of his and looking tired from his journey. He didn't hear her greeting, which had to be repeated. But it was a relief to have him back again, slow or tired or deaf or anything else. And once the taxi had made its way through the afternoon traffic they would all be together. All of them. Her fine brilliant boy, her distinguished father, her beautiful and talented daughter, and herself no mean binding for the clan. They couldn't live without each other that had been proved. This would be the beginning of a era of understanding and of harmony. It was unworthy of all of them that their life together should ever be marred by futile bickerings about nothing. Her own fault, Mrs. Eaton condemned herself. She would never be at fault again. They were of the same blood, and it was a dam to the free circulation of that blood that they should have set themselves asunder. Irene hadn't returned yet from the rehearsal. Mr. Eaton wanted a cup of coffee and to lie down. Bobby was busy in his room, strewing about the mixed contents of two large bags. Mrs. Eaton descended to the kitchen to direct the activities of a new cook. "Of all the God-awful places, Mountain Lake is the worst," Mr. Eaton began, "and Will's wifeshe means well-but I'd forgotten. what she looks like something between a suet pudding and a whale—” "She hasn't anything on Jack's mother. And as for Arizona-the bugs and the alkali-I thought I'd crack-" "Well, if you think it's funny, staying in New York in a hot theater all summer-and that old fluff, Miss Eldridge— "It wasn't so extremely amusing," Mrs. Eaton found herself chorusing, "living in a fisherman's hut—” "Yes," Bobby turned on her, "you can talk! It was you that planned the whole thing in the first placebecause you wanted to get rid of us!" "I'm sorry it wasn't a success, she replied coldly. "This family makes me so sick," said Irene. "It's the only one you've got," said her grandfather. "And don't forget, we have to put up with a few inconveniences in regard to you!" her brother put in his word. "Oh, stop talking! Go and get me a taxi. I want to be at the theater a little early to-night." Bobby laid down his napkin. "Well, of all things! I'm not your slave." They were all of the same blood. Mrs. Eaton only hoped that his grandfather wouldn't see the new poem of Bobby's that had just been published. But she knew her hope was vain. THE GORILLA GRIEVES Written after the Tunney-Dempsey Fight "H LEWIS COLWELL E was the most heroic of the herd! Of all who claimed the jungle—dark Gaboon To raise his head that long had hung A heavy sagging weight, With sagging brain, And lift it till it heard a whispered word. "Then came the wonder of more whisperings, Telling him he could make His stature straight: No longer need he hang with downward gaze, To smite to death A wayfarer whose pathway crossed his lair: No more a thing of death, But fashioned fair To grasp in friendliness Hands likewise fashioned And watch glad stars Light heaven's bright thoroughfare. "And so we sped him onward Brave adventurer! And we have lived unknowing Silence through all the sundering of the years For us no story of his upward going Only a wondering wondering And then What is this surging sound Beating upon our ears? Why is the sleepy stillness of our jungle Beating like blows upon our gentle hearing Whence are these raucous throated outcries thrown?" Slowly, by dint of pain And wilful might, A sagging head raises its cumbrous weight And prodding that slow brain Translates the sound "They are the sons of him Who long years gone Fared forth from the Gaboon With dreams of upright stature, And high-hung stars "And it is thus he fares After uncounted years of waiting! The tongues that tear the air about our heads Hark to their stating— "Tunney has jabbed a left to Dempsey's jaw! Hooked a left and blood is flowing And we have hoped, unknowing." The fight-crazed thousands Sounds which these thickets hold Where apes abide. "They clinch-They sway! They fall! More blood flows down." Then roaring rocks the air And the mad tides of unloosed cheers On the wet night-wind ride The sheltered stillness of the green Gaboon Is torn like shattered sheeting From its spar . . Was it for this he lifted up His heavy sagging head And saw a star? ATLAS WAKES UP Phases of Life as a Business Man Sees Them J. D. MOONEY HE urge to create, to perpetuate himself in his works, is the trait above all others that distinguishes man from the lower animals. For thousands of years after the dawn of civilization this driving impulse in the human race found its sole expression in an exploration of the arts. The fertile fields that lay before him were attacked vigorously from every angle of approach, and successive ages saw the rise to golden heights of poetry and sculpture, painting and music, architecture and the drama. Calliope and Melpomene, Terpsichore and Clio did man's bidding through all these years, but as time went on the limits of their repertory began to be approached, and the graceful movements of the muses have to-day become set in repetitious measures. Here and there new weavings of the old patterns still occur; a masterpiece in painting is produced, a new rhythm in music is discovered; but to an increasing degree standardization and mass-production are the horrible by-words that mark the output of current artistic inspiration. It is all so old and time-worn, this field of the arts. Eschylus and Homer smile down with tolerance through the ages, and Michelangelo and Vinci look on unafraid at the efforts of their modern imitators to do better what they did long since. The gamut of all the arts has been run over and over again, and little remains to-day to satisfy the creative urge of mankind beyond an occasional worth-while interpretation into terms of modern thought of the things that have gone before. Best evidence of the vital exhaustion of the arts lies in the frantic gestures of the impotent few who have tried in recent years to express originality to do something new under the sun. These cults, crude excrescences on the artistic body, take fanciful and exotic forms, and give birth to correspondingly grotesque designations-modernism, cubism, impressionism, neo-impressionism, postimpressionism, dadaism. Gauguin challenging Praxiteles to mortal combat! While this futile effort of the few to expand the field of the arts was taking place, based though it was upon a very human and a very laudable creative urge, the latter part of the nineteenth century saw sounder mentalities turning toward that exploration of the new field of the sciences to which impetus had first been given by such pioneers as Newton and Galileo and Descartes, and which Darwin and the evolu tionary philosophers galvanized into action. The attention of an eager world became focused upon the unique opportunity which arose through this medium to give new vent to the creative impulse. Out of the period of intensive scientific research that followed has come the dominant note of the first half of the twentieth century. Posterity will not consider the present age as having expressed its creative urge in artistic supremacy, or in high literary attainment, or in original develop ments in painting or music. It will know it as the age whose creative energy spent itself in applied science and in commercial and industrial progress. 20 The scientific development of commerce is a natural corollary of the development of the whole field of the applied sciences. Between commerce and art there is, of course, no quarrel; there is, indeed, a strong link of interdependence. But commerce and science are integral with each other; and commerce, the parent of both art and science, has found its full flower only with the growth to maturity of scientific achievement. Spencer very appropriately pointed out that an accumulation of surplus wealth essentially an economic condition resulting from the intelligent practice of commerce is necessary to support the research of science and the pursuit of the arts. From time immemorial industry has been playing the part of Atlas. To-day old Atlas is waking up. He has held the world on his shoulders so long that he had almost come to consider himself only a means to an end. He is beginning now to think that the vital forces inherent in him are worthy of attention per se, and he seems no longer to be willing that the dependents living of his strength shall arrogate to themselves the total measure of the world's approbation. I know a man who very effectively typifies old Atlas. He is a business man who started his career with a pair of strong hands and a clear brain, his only assets. To-day he does things that contribute after a fashion to the world's progress and security. He has built a railroad or two and thrown a few bridges across streams, and once he erected a dam that turned an arid wilderness into a land of flowers and grain. When this man comes home from his office at night to his wife and children he finds the atmosphere charged with a certain peculiar sense of superiority that he does not quite understand. For Mother is not in business; she is doing worth-while things. Twice a week she meets with her little group of serious thinkers and abolishes war or eradicates the social evil or substitutes a pinkish form of communism for the dreadful grubbing, grasping nature of our present-day social structure. And Sister has taken up painting in an earnest sort of way— not with the toilsome technique and delineation of detail of the terribly old masters, but in the free, untrammeled manner of the New Schoolwhere, if you are really clever, you can distinguish the result from kindergarten work. And Brother has let his hair grow just a trifle too long toward the back and over the ears, and sits up nights writing scathing indictments of the American peasantry for bright-green magazines that |