O

NCE upon a time there were three artists, a poet, a painter, and a musician. They lived in garrets, and every night they sat around a table in a small restaurant and discussed art. They had a friend who sat with them, a philistine person who worked on a newspaper; they tolerated him, for he was a good listener, and often paid for the refreshments.

One night when they met the poet seemed strangely excited. No sooner had the other three taken their places than he cried exultantly:

"To-day I wrote my masterpiece! Listen!" And drawing a paper from his pocket, he read as follows:

Upon his face was a look of great bewilderment and dawning uneasiness.

The next night, when the friends met again, the philistine seemed anxious to atone for his tactless remark of the night before. He insisted upon ordering and paying for the finest dinner the restaurant afforded, together with four bottles of the best wine. So his friends forgave him, for he was a decent sort, after all.

This time it was the painter who seemed unduly restless. Finally he laid a flat package upon the table, and spoke as follows:

"To-day I painted my masterpiece! Look!" And opening the package, he displayed a square of painted canvas. looked like this:

It

BROUILLARD

Upwards....

And yet ever in the damp night

I hardly know.

Through wild, familiar forests

You-

And on the misty hill the curlew screams.

I, too, sometimes.

Lust and laughter-

Ah.......

Why did you never tell me?

Ah.......

Ah.......

"Tremendous!" cried the painter. "My congratulations, old fellow."

"A very moving piece of work," commented the musician.

"But," said the philistine, diffidently, "it has neither rhyme, rhythm, nor sense. How can you call it poetry?"

"Who said I did?" retorted the poet. "It is a word-painting."

And the philistine was silent. Though the others sat late, talking of life and art, he said nothing.

"Remarkable!" cried the poet. "My congratulations, old fellow."

"A very interesting piece of work,"

commented the musician.

"But," stammered the philistine, "it is ugly as the devil, and does n't look like anything. How can you call it painting?"

"Who said I did?" retorted the painter. "It is a color-symphony."

And again the philistine was silent.

"Superb!" cried the poet and the painter in unison. "Congratulations, old fellow." "But," protested the philistine, "it has neither melody nor rhythm, and the harmony sounds awful. How can you call it music?"

"Who said I did?" retorted the musician. "It is a sound-poem."

The philistine seemed more puzzled than ever. "Are n't you fellows getting your trades mixed?" he murmured.

Forthwith the three arose indignantly and left him, declaring that they could waste no further time upon such a lowbrow.

Oh, Shining Shoes!

By RALPH BERGENGREN

Na democracy it is fitting that a man

polished or, to use a brighter, gayer word, shined. We are all kings, and this happy conceit of popular government is nicely symbolized by being, for these shining moments, so many kings together, each on his similar throne and with a slave at his feet. The democratic idea suffers a little from the difficulty of realizing that the slave is also a king, yet gains a little from the fair custom of the livelier monarchs to turn from left foot to right and from right to left, so that, within human limits, neither. shoe shall be undemocratically shined first. Nor is it uncommon for the kings on the thrones to be symbolically and inexpensively served by yet other sovereign servants. Newspapers in hand, they receive the reports of their high lord chancellors, digest the social gossip of their realm, review its crimes, politics, discoveries, and inventions, and are entertained by their jesters, who, I have it on the authority of a current advertisement, all democratically smoke the same kind of tobacco. "You know 'em all, the great fun-makers of the daily press, agile-brained and nimblewitted, creators of world-famed characters who put laughter into life. Such live, virile humans as they must have a live, virile pipe-smoke." There are, to be sure, some who find in this agile-brained and nimble-witted mirth an element of profound melancholy; it seems often a debased coin of humor that rings false on the counter of intelligence; yet at its worse it is far better than many of the waggeries that once stirred laughter in medieval monarchs. The thought renders then bearable, these live, virile humans, that only a few centuries ago would have been too handicapped by their refinement to compete successfully with contemporary humorists.

But there are a good many of us, possessors of patience, self-control, and a sponge in a bottle, who rarely enjoy this

royal prerogative. We shine our own shoes. Alone, and, if one may argue from the particular to the general, simply dressed in the intermediate costume, more or less becoming, that is between getting up and going out, we wear a shoe on our left hand, and with the other manipulate the helpful sponge. Sometimes, too anxious, it polka dots our white garments, sometimes the floor; it is safe only in the bottle, and the wisest shiner will perhaps approach the job as an Adamite, bestriding, like a colossus, a wide-spread newspaper, and taking a bath afterward. Or

it may be that instead of the bottle we have a little tin box, wedded to its cover, -how often have we not exclaimed between clenched teeth, "What man hath joined together man can pull asunder!"and containing a kind of black mud, which we apply with an unfortunate rag or with a brush appropriately called the "dauber." Having daubed, we polish, breathing our precious breath on the luminous surface for ever greater luminosity. The time is passing when we performed this task of pure lustration, as Keats might have called it, in the cellar or the back hall, more fully, but not completely, dressed, coatless, our waistcoats rakishly unbuttoned or vulgarly up-stairs, our innocent trousers hanging on their gallowses, our shoes on our feet, and our physical activity not altogether unlike that demanded by at home exerciser to reduce the abdomen. Men of girth have been advised to saw wood; I wonder that they have never been advised to shine their own shoes-twentyfive times in the morning and twenty-five times just before going to bed.

My own observation, although not continuous enough to have scientific value, leads me to think that stout men are the more inveterate patrons of the shoeblacking-parlor,-Cæsar should have run one, -and that the present popularity of the sponge in a bottle may derive from superfluous girth. Invented as a dainty toilet accessory for women, and at first regarded by men as effeminate, it is easy to see how insidiously the sponge in a bottle would have attracted a stout husband ac

customed to shine his own shoes in the earlier, contortionist manner. By degrees, first one stout husband and then another, men took to the bottle; the curse of effeminacy was lifted; the habit grew on men of all sizes. It was not a perfect method, it blacked too many other things besides shoes and provided an undesirable plaything for baby,-but it was a step forward. There was a refinement, a je ne sais quoi, an "easier way," about this sponge in a bottle, and, perhaps more than all, a delusive promise that the stuff would dry shiny without friction that appealed to the imagination. Then began to disappear a household familiar, that upholstered, deceptive, utilitarian, hassock kind of thing which, when opened, revealed an iron foot-rest, a box of blacking (I will not say how some moistened that blacking, but you and I, gentle male reader, brought water in a crystal glass from the kitchen), and an ingenious tool which combined the offices of dauber and shiner, so that one never knew how to put it away right side up. This tool still exists, an honest, good-sized brush carrying a round baby brush pickaback, and I dare say an occasional old-fashioned gentleman shines his shoes with it; but in the broader sense of that pernicious and descriptive phrase it is no longer used "by the best people." Of late, I am told by shopkeepers, the tin box with the pervicacious cover is becoming popular, but I remain true to my sponge in a bottle; for, unlike the leopard, I am able to change my spots.

Looking along the ages from the vantage of a throne in the shoeblacking-parlor, it is a matter of pleased wonder to observe what the mind has found to do with the feet; nor is the late invention of shoe polish (hardly earlier than the Declaration of Independence) the least surprising item. For the greater part of his journey man has gone about his businesses in unshined footwear, beginning, it would appear, with a pair of foot-bags, or footpurses, each containing a valuable foot, and tied round the ankle. Thus we see him, far down the vista of time, a tiny figure stopping on his way to tie up his

shoe-strings. Captivated with form and color, he exhausted his invention in shapes and materials before ever he thought of polish: he cut his toes square; he cut his toes so long and pointed that he must needs tie them to his knee to keep from falling over them; he wore soles without uppers, -alas! poor devil, how often in all ages has he approximated wearing uppers without soles!-and he went in for topboots splendidly belegged and coquettishly beautified with what, had he been a lady, he might have described as an insertion of lace. At last came the bootolacking-parlor, late nineteenth century, commercial, practical, convenient, and an important factor in civic esthetics. Not that the parlor is beautiful in itself. It is a cave without architectural pretensions, but it accomplishes unwittingly an important mission: it removes from public view the man who is having his shoes shined.

The

You know him, as the advertisement says of the live, virile humans who must have the live, virile pipe-smoke; but happily you know him nowadays chiefly by effort of memory. Yet only a little while ago average, kindly, well-intentioned men thought nothing of having their shoes shined in the full glare of the sun. man having his shoes shined was a common spectacle. He sat or stood where anybody might see him, almost as immobile as a cigar-store Indian and much less decorative, with a peripatetic shoeblack busy at his feet. His standing attitude was a little like Washington crossing the Delaware; and when he sat down he was not wholly unlike the picture of Jupiter in Mr. Bulfinch's well-known "Age of Fable." He had his shoes shined on the sidewalk, congesting traffic; he had them shined in the park, with the birds sing ing; wherever he had them shined he was as lacking in self-consciousness as a baby sucking its thumb. Peripatetic shoeblacks pursued pedestrians, and no sensitive gentleman was safe from them merely because he had carefully and well shined his

own shoes before he came out. But how rarely nowadays do we see this peripatetic shoeblack! Soon he will be as extinct as the buffalo, and the shoeblacking-parlor is his Buffalo Bill.

In the shoeblacking-parlor we are all tarred with the same brush, all daubed with the same dauber; we have nothing, as the rather enigmatical phrase goes, on one another. Indeed, we hardly look at one another, and are as remote as strangers sitting side by side in a theater. Individually, in a steady, subconscious way, I think we are all wondering how we are going to get down when the time comes. One will hop, like a great sparrow; another will turn round and descend backward; another will come down with an absent-minded little wave of the foot, as if he were quite used to having his shoes shined and already thinking of more serious business; another-but this is sheer nervousness and lack of savoir-faire-will step off desperately, as if into an abyss, and come down with a thump. Sometimes, but rarely, a man will fall off. It is a throne-and perhaps this is true of all thrones-from which no altogether selfsatisfactory descent is possible; and we all know it, sitting behind our newspapers, or staring down on decadent Greece shining at our feet, or examining with curious, furtive glances those calendars the feminine beauty of which seems peculiar to shoeblacking-parlors, and has sometimes led us to wonder whether the late Mr. Comstock ever had his shoes shined.

And now, behold! the slave-king at my feet has found a long, narrow strip of linen, not, I fear, antiseptic, but otherwise suggestive of a preparedness course in first aid to the injured. He breathes on my shoes (O unhygienic shoeblack!), dulling them to make them brighter with his strip of linen.

It is my notice of abdication; he turns down the bottoms of my trousers. I do not know how I get down from the throne.