Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers

Don Marquis

This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.

http://www.blackmask.com

  • PROEM
  • SINCERITY IN THE HOME
  • VIBRATIONS
  • AREN'T THE RUSSIANS WONDERFUL?
  • HOW SUFFERING PURIFIES ONE!
  • UNDERSTANDING, AND ONE'S OWN HOME
  • THOUGHTS ON HEREDITY AND THINGS
  • THE SWAMI BRANDRANATH
  • FOTHERGIL FINCH, THE POET OF REVOLT
  • HOW THE SWAMI HAPPENED TO HAVE SEVEN WIVES
  • THE ROMANTIC OLD DAYS
  • HERMIONE'S BOSWELL EXPLAINS
  • SYMBOLS AND DEW-HOPPING
  • THE SONG OF THE SNORE
  • BALLADE OF UNDERSTANDING
  • HERMIONE ON FASHIONS AND WAR
  • URGES AND DOGS
  • MOODS AND POPPIES
  • CONCENTRATION
  • SOUL MATES
  • HERMIONE TAKES UP LITERATURE
  • THE WORLD IS GETTING BETTER
  • WAR AND ART
  • A SPIRITUAL DIALOGUE
  • WILL THE BEST PEOPLE RECEIVE THE SUPERMAN SOCIALLY?
  • THE PARASITE WOMAN MUST GO!
  • THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL
  • MAMA IS SO MID-VICTORIAN
  • VOKE EASELEY AND HIS NEW ART
  • HERMIONE ON SUPERFICIALITY
  • ISIS, THE ASTROLOGIST
  • THE SIMPLE HOME FESTIVALS
  • CITRONELLA AND STEGOMYIA
  • HERMIONE'S SALON OPENS
  • THE PERFUME CONCERT
  • ON BEING OTHER-WORLDLY
  • PARENTS AND THEIR INFLUENCE
  • FOTHERGIL FINCH TELLS OF HIS REVOLT AGAINST ORGANIZED SOCIETY
  • THE EXOTIC AND THE UNEMPLOYED
  • SOULS AND TOES
  • KULTUR, AND THINGS
  • THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS
  • POOR DEAR MAMA AND FOTHERGIL FINCH
  • PRISON REFORM AND POISE
  • AN EXAMPLE OF PSYCHIC POWER
  • SOME BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS
  • THE BOURGEOIS ELEMENT AND BACKGROUND
  • TAKING UP THE LIQUOR PROBLEM
  • THE JAPANESE ARE WONDERFUL, IF YOU GET WHAT I MEAN
  • SHE REFUSES TO GIVE UP THE COSMOS
  • THE CAVE MAN
  • THE LITTLE GROUP GIVES A PAGAN MASQUE
  • SYMPATHY
  • BLOUSES, BURGARS AND BUTTERMILK
  • TWILIGHT SLEEP
  • INTUITION
  • STIMULATING INFLUENCES
  • POLITICS
  • HERMIONE ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH
  • ENVOY





  • PROEM




    (Introducing some of Hermione's Friends)



    I visited one night, of late,
    Thoughts Underworld, the Brainstorm Slum,
    The land of Futile Piffledom;
    A salon weird where congregate
    Freak, Nut and Bug and Psychic Bum.

    There, there, they sit and cerebrate:
    The fervid Pote who never potes,
    Great Artists, Male or She, that Talk
    But scorn the Pigment and the chalk,
    And Cubist sculptors wild as Goats,
    Theosophists and Swamis, too,
    Musicians mad as Hatters be—
    (E'en puzzled Hatters, two or three!)
    Tame anarchists, a dreary crew,
    Squib Socialists too damp to sosh,
    Fake Hobohemians steeped in suds,
    Glib females in Artistic Duds
    With Captive Husbands cowed and gauche.

    I saw some Soul Mates side by side
    Who said their cute young Souls were pink;
    I saw a Genius on the Brink
    (Or so he said) of suicide.
    I saw a Playwright who had tried
    But couldn't make the Public think;
    I saw a novelist who cried,
    Reading his own Stuff, in his drink;
    I saw a vapid egg-eyed Gink
    Who said eight times: "Art is my bride!"

    A queen in sandals slammed the Pans
    And screamed a Chinese chant at us,
    the while a Hippopotamus
    Shook tables, book-shelves and divans
    With vast Terpsichorean fuss . . .
    Some Oriental kind of muss . . . .

    A rat-faced Idiot Boy who slimes
    White paper o'er with metric crimes—
    He is a kind of Burbling Blear
    Who warbles Sex Slush sad to hear
    And mocks God in his stolen rhymes
    and wears a ruby in one ear—
    Murder to me: "My Golden Soul
    Drinks Song from out a Crystal Bowl. . . .
    Drinks Love and Song . . . my Golden Soul!"
    I let him live. There were no bricks.

    Or even now that Golden Soul
    were treading water in the Styx.

    A Pallid Skirt — Anemic Wisp,
    As bloodless as a stick of chalk —
    Got busy with this line of talk:
    "The Sinner is Misunderstood!
    How can the Spirit enter in,
    Be blended with, the Truly Good
    Unless through Sympathy with Sin?"

    "Phryne," I murmured, sad and low,
    "I pass the Buck—I do not know!"

    Upon a mantel sat a Bust. . . .
    Some Hindu god, pug-faced and squat;
    A visage to inspire disgust. . . .
    Lord Bilk, the Deity of Rot. . . .
    Nay, surely, 'twas the great god Bunk,
    For when I wunk at it, it wunk!

    I heard . . . I heard it proved that night
    That Fire is Cold, and Black is White,
    That Junk is Art, and Art is Junk,
    That Virtue's wrong, and Vice is right,
    That Death is Life, and Life is Death,
    That Breath is Rocks, and Rocks are Breath:—

    The Cheap and easy paradox
    The Food springs, hoping that it shocks. . . .

    Brain-sick I stumbled to the street
    And drooled onto a kindly Cop:
    "Since moons have feathers on their feet,
    Why is your headgear perched on top?
    And if you scorn the Commonplace,
    Why wear a Nose upon your Face?
    And since Pythagoras is mute
    on Sex Hygiene and Cosmic Law,
    Is your Blonde Beast as Bland a Brute,
    As Blind a Brute, as Bernard Shaw?
    No doubt, when drilling through the parks,
    With Ibsen's Ghost and Old Doc Marx,
    You've often seen two Golden Souls
    Drink Suds and Sobs from Crystal Bowls?"

    "I ain't," he says, "I ain't, Old Kid,
    And I would pinch 'em if I did!"

    "Thank God," I said, "for this, at least:
    The world, in spots, is well policed!"





    SINCERITY IN THE HOME



    SINCERITY should be the keynote of a life,
    don't you think?

    Sincerity — beauty — use — these are my
    watchwords.

    I heard such an interesting talk on sincerity the
    other evening. I belong to a Little Group of Serious
    Thinkers who are taking up sincerity in all its
    phases this week.

    We discussed Sincerity in the Home.

    So many people's homes, you know, do not
    represent anything personal.

    The SINCERE home should be full of purpose and
    personality — decorations, rugs, ornaments, hangings
    and all, you know.

    The home shows the soul.

    So I'm doing over our house from top to bottom,
    putting personality into it.

    I've a room I call the Ancestor's Room.

    You know, when one has ancestors, one's ancestral
    traditions keep one up to the mark, somehow.
    You know what I mean — blood will tell, and all that.
    Ancestors help one to be sincere.

    So I've finished my Ancestors' Room with all
    sorts of things to remind me of the dear dead-and-gone
    people I get my traditions from.

    Heirlooms and portraits and things, you know.

    Of course, all our own family heirlooms were
    destroyed in a fire years ago.

    So I had to go to the antique shops for the portraits
    and furniture and chairs and snuff boxes and
    swords and fire irons and things.

    I bought the loveliest old spinet — truly, a fine!

    I can sit down to it and image I am my own
    grandmother's grandmother, you know.

    And it's wonderful to sit among those old heir-
    looms and feel the sense of my ancestors'
    personalities throbbing and pulsing all about me!

    I feel, when I sit at the spinet, that my personality
    is truly represented by my surroundings at last.

    I feel that I have at last achieved sincerity in the
    midst of my traditions.

    And there's a picture of the loveliest old lady . . .
    old fashioned costume, you know, and all that . . .
    and the hair dressed in a very peculiar way. . . .

    Mamma says its a MADE-UP picture — not really
    an antique at all — but I can just feel the personality
    vibrating from it.

    I got it at a bargain, too.

    I call her — the picture, you know — after an
    ancestress of mine who came to this country in the
    old Colonial days.

    With William the Conqueror, you know — or
    maybe it was William Penn. But it couldn't have
    been William Penn, could it? For she went to New
    Jersey — Orange, N.J. Was it William of Orange?
    More than likely . . .

    Anyhow, I call the picture after her — Lady Clarissa,
    I call it. She married a commoner, as so
    many of the early settlers of this country did.

    When I sit at the spinet and look at Lady Clarissa
    I often wonder what people do without family
    traditions.

    And its such a comfort to know I'm in a room
    that really represents my personality.




    VIBRATIONS



    Have you thought much about Vibrations?

    We're taking them up this week — a Little
    Group of Advanced Thinkers I belong
    to, you know — and they're wonderfully worth
    while — WONDERFULLY so!

    That's what I always ask myself — is a thing
    WORTH WHILE? Or isn't it?

    Vibrations are the key to everything. Atoms
    used to be, but Atoms have quite gone out.

    The thing that makes the new dances so wonder-
    fully beneficial, you know, is that they give you
    Vibrations.

    To an untrained mind, of course, Vibrations
    would be dangerous.

    But I always feel that the right sort of mind will
    get good out of everything, and the wrong sort will
    get harm.

    The most interesting woman talked to us the
    other night — to our little group, you know — on one-
    piece bathing suits and the Greek spirit.

    Don't you just done on the Greeks?

    They have some of the most MODERN ideas — it
    seems we get a lot of our advanced thought from
    them, if you get what I mean.

    They were so UNRESTRICTED, too. One has only
    to look at their friezes and vases and things to
    realize that.

    And the one-piece bathing suit, so the woman
    said, was an unconscious modern effort to get back
    to the Greek spirit.

    She had a husband with her. He does lecture
    or anything, you know.

    But she isn't so very Greek-looking herself, al-
    though her spirit is so Greek, so she has this Greek-
    looking husband to wear the sandals and the tunics
    and the togas and things.

    She calls him Achilles.

    It's quite proper, you know — Achilles stays be-
    hind a screen until she wants to illustrate a
    point, and then he comes out with a lyre or a lute
    or something, and just stands there and LOOKS Greek. And
    then he goes back behind the screen and changes
    into the next garment she needs.

    Of course, there are lots of men couldn't stand
    it as well as Achilles. But when you come to that,
    there are lots of men who don't look so very well
    in bathing suits, either.

    And, of course, our American men don't have
    the temperament to carry off a thing like that.

    Of course, if we all turned Greek it would be
    quite a shock at first to see everybody come
    into a dining-room or a drawing-room looking like
    Achilles does.

    Not that temperament makes so much difference
    as it did a few years ago, you know — temperament
    and personality are going out and individuality is
    coming in.

    Have you thought much about automatic writing?

    It's being taken up again, you know.

    Not the vulgar, old-fashioned kind of
    spiritualism — that was so ordinary, wasn't it?

    The new ghosts are different. More — more —
    well, more REFINED, somehow, you know. Like the
    new dances as compared with that horrid turkey trot.

    One should always ask one's self: "Does this
    have a refining influence on me; and through me on
    the world?"

    For, after all, there is a duty one owes to society
    in general.

    Have you seen the new sunshades?





    AREN'T THE RUSSIANS WONDERFUL?



    Aren't the Russians marvelous people!

    We're been taking up Diaghileff in a serious
    way — our little group, you know — and
    really, he's wonderful!

    Who else but Diaghileff could give those lovely
    Russians things the proper accent?

    And accent — if you know what I mean — accent
    is everything!

    Accent! Accent! What would art be without
    accent?

    Accent is coming in — if you get what I mean —
    and what they call "punch" is going out. I always
    thought it was a frightfully vulgar sort of thing,
    anyhow — punch!

    The thing I love about the Russians is their
    Orientalism.

    You know there's an old saying that if you find
    a Russian you catch a Tartar . . . or something
    like that.

    I'm sure that is wrong. . . . I get so MIXED on
    quotations. But I always know where I can find
    them, if you know what I mean.

    But the Russian verve isn't Oriental, is it?

    Don't you just dote on verve?

    That's what makes Bakst so fascinating, don't
    you think? — his verve

    Though they do say that the Russian operas
    don't analyze as well as the German or Italian
    ones — if you get what I mean.

    Though for that matter, who analyzes them?

    One may not know how to analyze an operate, and
    yet one may know what one likes!

    I suppose there will be a frightful lot of imitations
    of Russian music and ballet now. Don't you
    just hate imitators?

    One finds it everywhere — imitation! It's the sincerest
    flattery, they say. But that doesn't excuse it,
    do you think?

    There's a girl — one of my friends, she says she
    is — who is trying to imitate me. My expressions,
    you know, and the way I walk and talk,
    and all that sort of thing.

    She gets some of my superficial mannerisms . . .
    but she can't quite do my things as if they were her
    own, you know . . . there is where the accent
    comes in again!




    HOW SUFFERING PURIFIES ONE!



    Oh, to go through fire and come out purified!
    Suffering is wonderful, isn't it? Simply WONDERFUL!

    The loveliest man talked to us the other night —
    to our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know
    — about social ideals and suffering.

    The reason so many attempts to improve things
    fail, you know, is because the people who try them
    out haven't suffered personally.

    He had the loveliest eyes, this man.

    He made me thin. I said to myself, "After all,
    have I suffered? Have I been purified by fire?"

    And I decided that I had — that is spiritually,
    you know.

    The suffering — the spiritual suffering — that I
    undergo through being misunderstood is something FRIGHTFUL!

    Mamma discourages every Cause I take up. So does Papa.

    I get no sympathy in my devotion to my ideals.
    Only opposition!

    And from a child I have had such a high-strung,
    sensitive nervous organization that opposition of
    any sort has made me ill.

    There are some temperaments like that.

    Once when I was quite small and Mamma
    threatened to spank me, I had convulsions.

    And nothing but opposition, opposition,
    opposition now!

    Only we advanced thinkers know what it is to
    suffer! To go through fire for our ideals!

    And what is physical suffering by the side of
    spiritual suffering?

    I so often think of that when I am engaged in
    sociological work. Only the other night — it was
    raining and chilly, you know — some of us went
    down in the auto to one of the missions and looked
    at the sufferers who were being cared for.

    And the thought came to me all of a sudden:
    "Yes, physical suffering may be relieved — but what
    is there to relieve spiritual suffering like mine?"

    Though, of course, it improves one.

    I think it is beginning to show in my eyes.

    I looked at them for nearly two hours in the
    mirror last evening, trying to be quite certain.

    And, you know, there's a kind of look in them
    that's never been there until recently. A kind of
    a — a ——

    Well, it's an INTANGIBLE look, if you get what I mean.

    Not exactly the HUNGRY look, more of a YEARNING look!

    Thank heaven, though, I can control it — one
    should always be captain of one's soul, shouldn't
    one?

    I hide it at times. Because one must hide one's
    suffering from the world, mustn't one?

    But at other times I let it show.

    And, really, with practice, I think I am going
    to manage it so that I can turn it off and on — if
    you get what I mean — almost at will.

    Because, you know, in certain costumes that look
    will be QUITE unbecoming.

    Quite out of Harmony. And Inner Beauty only
    comes through Inner Harmony, doesn't it?

    Harmony! Harmony! Oh, to be in accord with
    the Infinite!

    Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself,
    "have I vibrated in tune with the Infinite today,
    or have I failed?"




    UNDERSTANDING, AND ONE'S OWN HOME



    It's TERRIBLE when one can't get understanding
    in one's own family!

    Papa has very little real sympathy for my
    advanced ideas. And as for Mamma!

    Sometimes I think I shall WRITE!

    Express myself, my real Ego, in Song.

    Not rhymes, of course. If I worked a year I
    couldn't make two lines rhyme.

    But rhyme is going out, anyhow.

    Vers Libre is all the rage now.

    We took it up not long ago — our Little Group
    of Serious Thinkers, you know — and I feel
    confident it is My Medium of Expression.

    It is so untrammeled, isn't it?

    And one should be untrammeled, both in Art and
    Life, shouldn't one?

    Often I ask myself, at the close of day: "Have I
    been untrammeled today? Or have I FAILED?

    If I could put my real Ego — and how wonderful
    the Ego is, isn't it? — into vers libre, even Papa
    might understand me.

    I have always yearned to be understood!

    I have drawn back from matrimony again and
    again because I thought: "Will he understand me?
    Will he see my real Ego? Or will he not?"

    Only the other evening I was talking to the loveliest
    man, who has been misunderstood by his wife.
    It is FRIGHTFUL!

    He is a sculptor. A cubist sculptor. But he
    looks quite respectable — really, some very good
    people receive him.

    And he has the most wonderful eyes — sympathetic,
    you know, and psychic — but oh! so pure, too!

    He dotes on purity. He told me that.

    His wife does not understand him. She does
    not see his real Ego.

    He said to me: "I can read you like an open
    book. You are yearning. You are yearning for
    real understanding. No one has EVER understood you.
    Is that not so? Is that not your secret?

    Alas! It was. I could not deny it.

    I said to him: "But is real understanding EVER attainable?"

    He sighed and said: "Alas! The Unattainable!"

    I knew why he sighed—there is so much of it —
    the Unattainable!

    "What one attains," I said, "is often so intangible —
    do you not find it so?"

    "Alas!" he said, "the Intangible!"

    And I felt, somehow — in a queer psychic way
    that is elusive, you know — strengthened and
    sweetened spiritually by our sad little talk.

    Our real Egos had been in communion. That's
    what he said.

    He has nine very commonplace children, and his
    wife is very difficult socially.

    She insists on filling some sort of commercial
    position, although he says her place is in the home.

    So they have grown apart. People don't invite
    her places. Only him.

    Oh! to be understood!




    THOUGHTS ON HEREDITY AND THINGS



    Isn't Heredity wonderful, though!

    We've been going into it rather deeply —
    My little Group of Serious, you know.

    And, really, when you get into it, it's quite complicated.
    All about Homozygotes and Heterozygotes, you know.

    The Homozygotes are — well, you might call
    them the aristocrats, you know; thoroughbreds.

    And the Heterozygotes are the hybrids.

    Only, of course, they don't need to be goats at
    all.

    Not but what they COULD be goats, you know, just
    as easily as horses or cows or human beings.

    But whether goats or humans, don't you think
    the great lesson of Heredity is that Blood will Tell?

    Really the farther I go into Philosophy and
    Science and such things the more clearly I see what a
    fund of truth there is in the old simple proverbs!

    People used to find out great truths by Instinct,
    you know; and now they use Research — vaccinate
    guinea pigs, you know, and all that sort of thing.

    Instinct! Isn't Instinct wonderful!

    And Intuition, too!

    You know, I have the most remarkable intuition
    at times! Have I ever told you that I'm fright-
    fully psychic?

    Mr. Finch, the poet — you know Fothergil Finch,
    don't you? — he writes vers libre and poetry both
    — Mr. Finch said to me the other evening, "You
    are EXTREMELY psychic!"

    "How did you know it?" I asked him.

    "Ah!" he said, "how DOES one know these things?"

    And how true that is, when you come to think
    it over! How DOES one know?

    He has the great magnetic eyes! I could feel
    them drawing my thoughts from me as we talked.

    "You have a secret," he said.

    "Yes," I said. And to myself I added, "Alas!"

    "Your secret is," he said, "that there is a
    difference between you and the other girls."

    It was positively uncanny! I'VE felt that for
    years! But no one else had ever suspected it before.

    "Mr. Finch," I said, "I must have TOLD you that —
    or else it was just a wild guess. You COULDN'T have
    gotten it psychically. HOW did you know it?"

    "One knows these things," he said — a trifle sadly,
    I thought. "They come to one — out of the

    Silences; one knows not how. It is better not to
    ask how! It is better not to question! It is better
    to accept! Do you not feel it so?

    Sometimes I think that Fothergil Finch is the
    only man who has ever understood me.

    You see, I am Dual in my personality.

    There is the real Ego, and there is the Alter Ego.

    And, besides these, I have so many moods which
    do not come from either one of my Egos! They
    come from my Subliminal Consciousness!

    Isn't the Subliminal Consciousness wonderful;
    simply WONDERFUL?

    We're going to take it up in a serious way some
    evening next week, and thresh it out thoroughly.

    But I must run along. I have an engagement
    with my dressmaker at two o'clock. You know,
    I've really found one who can make my gowns
    interpret my inner spirit.




    THE SWAMI BRANDRANATH



    I HEARD such a lovely lecture the other night
    on the Cosmos.

    A Little Group of Advanced Women that I
    belong to are specializing this winter on the Cosmos.

    We took it up, you know, because the other topics
    we were studying included it so frequently. And
    it's wonderful, really WONDERFUL!

    Of course, an untrained mind will grapple with
    it in vain. One's interest must be serious and sincere.
    One must devote time to it.,

    Otherwise one will get more harm than good
    out of it, you know.

    It's like the Russian dances that way.

    They are so primal, those dances! And all those
    primal things are dangerous, don't you think?
    Unless one has poise!

    It's odd, too, that some of the most primal
    people have the most poise, isn't it?

    The Swami Brandranath was like that. I've told
    you bout the Swami Brandramath, haven't I?

    He wore such lovely robes! You can't buy silk
    like that in this country.

    And he had such a PURE look in this eyes. So
    many of these magnetic people lack that pure look,
    you know.

    He used to give talks to a Little Group of Serious
    Thinkers I belong to.

    He taught us to go into the Silences — only we
    never quite learned, for some of the girls would
    giggle. There are always people like that. The
    dear Swami! — he was so patient! It was
    Occidental levity, he said, and we couldn't help it.

    That is one of the main differences between the
    Orient and the Occident, you know.

    How wonderful they are, the Orientals. And
    just think of India, with all its yogis and bazaars
    and mahatmas and howdahs and rajahs and things!

    He was a Brahmin, the Swami was. A Brahmin
    and a Burman are the same thing, you know.

    It's a caste, like belonging to one of our best
    families.

    The Swami explained about the marks of caste,
    and so forth, to us.

    And then one of the girls asked him if he was
    tattooed!

    The idea!




    FOTHERGIL FINCH, THE POET OF REVOLT



    Isn't it odd how some of the most radical and
    advanced and virile of the leaders in the New
    Art and the New Thought don't look it at all?

    There's Fothergil Finch, for instance. Nobody
    could be more virile than Fothy is in his Soul.
    Fothy's Inner Ego, if you get what I mean, is a
    Giant in Revolt all the time.

    And yet to look at Fothy you wouldn't think he
    was a Modern Cave Man. Not that he looks like
    a weakling, you know. Butwell, if you get what
    I mean — you'd think Fothy might write about
    violets instead of thunderbolts.

    Dear Papa is ENTIRELY mistaken about him.

    Only yesterday dear papa said to me, "Hermione,
    if you don't keep that damned little vers libre run
    away from here I'll put him to work, and he'll die
    of it."

    But you couldn't expect Papa to appreciate Fothy.
    Papa is SO reactionary and conservative.

    And Fothy's life is one long, grim, desperate
    struggle against Conventionality, and Social
    Injustice, and Smugness, and the Established Order, and
    Complacence. He is forever being a martyr to the
    New and True in Art and Life.

    Last night he read me his latest poem — one of his
    greatest, he says — in which he tries to tell just what
    his Real Self is. It goes:

    Look at me!
    Behold, I am founding a New Movement!
    Observe me. . . . I am in Revolt!
    I revolt!
    Now persecute me, persecute me, damn you,
        persecute me, curse you, persecute me!
    Philistine,
    Bourgeois,
    Slave,
    Serf,
    Capitalist,
    Respectabilities that you are,
    Persecute me!
    Bah!
    You ask me, do you, what am I in revolt against?
    Against you, fool, dolt, idiot, against you, against
        everything!
    Against Heavy, Hell and punctuation . . . against
        Life, Death, rhyme and rhythm . . .
    Persecute me, now, persecute me, curse you,
        persecute me!
    Slave that you are . . . what do Marriage,
        Tooth-brushes, Nail-files, the Decalogue,
        Handkerchiefs, Newton's Law of Gravity, Capital,
        Barbers, Property, Publishers, Courts, Rhyming
        Dictionaries, Clothes, Dollars, mean to Me?

    I am a Giant, I am a Titan, I am a Hercules of
        Liberty, I am Prometheus, I am the Jess Willard
        of the New Cerebral Pugilism, I am the Mod-
        ern Cave Man, I am the Comrade of the Cosmic
        Urge, I have kicked off the Boots of Superstition,
        and I run wild along the Milky Way
        without ingrowing toenails,
    I am I!
    Curse you, what are You?
    You are only You!
    Nothing more!
    Ha!
    Bah! . . . persecute me, now persecute me!

    Fothy always gets excited and trembles and
    chokes when he reads his own poetry, and while
    he was reading it Papa came into the room and
    disgraced himself by asking if there was
    any MONEY in that kind of poetry, and Fothy
    was so agitated that he fairly screamed when he
    said:

    "Money . . . money . . . curse money! Money
    is one of the things I am in revolt against. . . .

    Money is death and damnation to the free spirit!"

    Papa said he was sorry to hear that; he said one
    of his companies needed an ad writer, and he didn't
    have any objection to hiring a free spirit with a
    punch, but he couldn't consider getting anyone to
    write ads that hated money, for there was a salary
    attached to the job.

    And Fothy said: "You are trying to bribe me!
    Capitalism is casting its net over me! You are trying
    to make me a serf: trying to silence a Free
    Voice! But I will resist! I will not be enslaved!
    I will not write ads. I will not have a job.

    And then Papa said he was glad to hear Fothy's
    sentiments. He had been afraid, he said, that Fothy
    had matrimonial designs about me. And the
    man who married HIS daughter would probably have
    to stand for possessing a good deal of wealth, too,
    for he had always intended doing something very
    handsome for his son-in-law. So if Fothy didn't
    want money, he wouldn't want me, for an enormous
    amount of it would go to me.

    Papa, you know, thinks he can be awfully sarcastic.

    So many Earth Persons pride themselves on their
    sarcasm, don't you think?

    And Papa is an Earth Person entirely. I've got
    his horoscope. He isn't AT ALL spiritual.

    But you can image that the whole scene was
    FRIGHTFULLY embarrassing to me — I will NEVER forgive Papa!

    And I haven't made up my mind AT ALL about
    Fothy. But what I do know is this: once I get my
    mind made up, I WILL NOT stand for opposition form
    ANY source.

    One must be an Individualist, or perish!




    HOW THE SWAMI HAPPENED TO HAVE SEVEN WIVES



    Isn't it terrible about that elephant at the Zoo
    — Oh, you know! — it's like Gunga Din, only,
    of course, it isn't Gunga Din at all.

    Anyhow, he's CHAINED FOR LIFE! I suppose some-
    one gave him tobacco for a joke and it made him
    cross. I've heard of those cases, haven't you?

    An elephant is such a — such a — well, NOBLE beast,
    isn't he?

    It's transmigration of souls makes them that way,
    perhaps.

    Oh is it a Rajah?

    Anyhow, it sits on top of an elephant.

    We took up transmigration of souls one time —
    our little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know —
    and it's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!

    That was when the Swami Brandranath used to
    talk to us. The dear Swami! Such eyes — so pure
    and yet so magnetic! — I have never seen in a human
    being.

    The eye is the window of the soul, you know.

    He's in jail now, the poor, dear Swami. But he
    wasn't really a bigamist at all. You see, he had
    seven spiritual planes. All of us do, only most of
    us don't know it. But he could get from one plane
    to another quite easily.

    Of course, he couldn't remember what he'd done
    on one plane while he was on the next one above
    or below it. And that's the way he happened to
    have seven wives — one for each spiritual plane.

    Only the Court took a sordid view of it. It seems
    there was something about life insurance mixed
    up with it, too.

    The Occidentals are so apt to miss the spiritual
    sweetness of the Oriental, don't you think?

    We are — all but the Leaders of Thought, and a
    little group, here and there — so commonplace.

    Don't you LOATHE the commonplace?

    Not loathe, really, of course — because the harmonious
    mind does not let itself be disturbed.

    The harmonious mind realizes that dirt is only
    useful matter in the wrong place, as Tennyson sings
    so sweetly somewhere.

    Tennyson has quite gone out, of course. He is
    so — so, well, if you get what I mean — so mid-
    Victorian, somehow.

    It seems he WAS mid-Victorian all the time, but
    it's only recently that it's been found out on him.

    Though I always will think of "come Into the
    Garden, Maud," as one of the world's sweetest
    little epics.

    I'm very independent that way, in spite of the
    critics. After all, criticism comes down to a question
    of individual taste, doesn't it? That is, in the
    final analysis.

    Independence! That is what this age needs.
    Nearly every night before I got to bed I say to myself:
    "Have I been independent today? Or have I FAILED?"

    I believe in those little spiritual examinations,
    don't you?

    It helps one to keep in tune with the Infinite, you
    know.

    The Infinite! How much it comprises! And
    how little we really understand it!

    We're going to take it up, the Infinite, in a serious
    way soon — our Little Group of Advanced
    Thinkers, you know.




    THE ROMANTIC OLD DAYS



    It must have been terribly difficult getting around
    in the days before automobiles were invented,
    or railroads or anything like that.

    Though, of course, it was wonderfully romantic,
    too.

    The old coaching days, particularly, when everybody
    blew on horns as they drove from town to
    town, and there were highwaymen and cavaliers
    with swords and all those people, you know, riding
    by the coaches.

    Don't you just DOTE on romance? I do!

    But, of course, there's no place for it in our hurried
    modern life, and I suppose we shouldn't regret it.

    But now and then I sigh over it. Like dropping
    a tear, you know, in a dear old chest perfumed with
    lavender and old roses.

    I always say that one can be advanced and in
    the van of modern progress, and still drop a tear,
    you know.

    Do you think that all this study of sex hygiene
    means the death of romance?

    It's a serious thought, isn't it?

    But what I always say is: "Which of these
    things will do the most GOOD in the world?"

    Especially good to the POOR!

    You know how frightfully interested I am in the poor.

    I make that my test. I always say to myself:
    "Which will do the most good to the great masses?"

    I take such a serious interest in the MASSES!

    We should think twice before we take romance out
    of their lives and replace it with science of any kind.

    For, after all, you know, they represent the Future.

    We should all think of the Future.

    That's what makes the Feminist Movement such
    a WONDERFUL thing — it is moving right straight ahead
    toward the Future!

    I'm thinking of being a Suffragist again. I was
    once, you know, but I resigned.

    The sashes and banners are such a frightful shade
    of yellow, you know. So I quit.

    Beauty, after all, is the chief thing. What, after
    all, do all our reforms come to, if the world is not
    to be made more beautiful because of them?

    And I simply CANNOT wear yellow.




    HERMIONE'S BOSWELL EXPLAINS



    Believe me, 'tis not with elation
      I dwell on Hermione's madness;
    The result of my rapt contemplation
      Is sadness, a terrible sadness!

    I weep when I note how she drivels;
      I sigh o'er her fake philanthropies;
    I am pained when I see how she frivols,
      Like a kitten, with serious topics.

    It is grief that her mental condition
      Inspires, not laughter or scorning;
    If she has any use, 'til her Mission
      To stand as a Horrible Warning.

    I am moral, essentially moral;
      I am grave, and hate everything trashy,
    And that is the reason I quarrel
      With intellects flighty and flashy.

    I yearn for the truth, I am earnest;
      I yearn to face facts without blinking,

    Of all of my years, quite the yearnest
      Is my yearn to be thorough in thinking.

    That's why I'm severe with this darling,
      Nor pardon nor whitewash nor gloss her, —
    The linnet — the parrot — the starling!
      I weep over her and expose her.




    SYMBOLS AND DEW-HOPPING



    Last week the Loveliest man lectured to us —
    to our Little Group of Serious Thinkers,
    you know — on the Ultimate Symbolism. In
    art and life both, you know.

    It was simply wonderful — WONDERFUL!

    Art, you know, used to be full of symbolism.

    But now, it seems, symbolism has dropped out
    of Art, and Nature has taken it up.

    Odd, isn't it? But really not surprising when
    you come to think about it.

    For, you know, Nature is always trying to keep
    up with advanced ideas — evolving and evolving
    toward the Superman.

    And the Superwoman, too.

    I think it is the duty of us who are advanced
    thinkers to give Nature a worthy idea to evolve
    toward, don't you?

    To set Nature a mark to come up to, you know.

    For what is the use of evolution if it doesn't
    evolve forward instead of backward?

    And the Best People, I think, should feel a sense
    of social responsibility and give evolution a model.

    Each should be a Symbol — that's what I always
    ask myself each night now: "Have I been a Symbol
    today? Or have I failed to be a symbol?"

    Down at the beach last week I nearly drowned —
    you don't mean to say you haven't heard of it? It
    was frightful.

    I'd always heard that, when a person sinks, his
    whole past life passes before him in review.

    But it didn't with me. What I said as I went
    down was: "Have I been a Symbol? Or have I
    failed?"

    And the life guard who got me out — he was simply
    the most gorgeous man! — burned bronze, you
    know, and with shoulders like a Greek god! — and
    with the most wonderful eyes and white teeth — he
    asked me, the guard did, "What, marm?"

    It was fearfully disappointing! Sometimes they
    are college men, you know, just life-guarding
    through the summer. But would any college man
    have said, "What, marm?"

    And then he went and saved a blonde creature
    in the most scandalous bathing suit I ever saw.

    He saved one in the most business-like way, too,
    as if he were a waiter, you know, passing from one
    table to another.

    No wonder the social fabric is crumbling when
    quite impossible people like life guards permit
    themselves to become blase' over such matters!

    The lower classes are very discouraging anyhow,
    don't you think? — after all we do for them in the
    way of philanthropy and sociology and uplifting
    them generally, you know!

    Of course, I haven't lost my interest in sociology
    — not by any means. I always hold fast the thought
    that all the world are brothers.

    I'm taking up Dew-hopping next week. It's a
    wonderful new nerve cure. Formerly it was quite
    the thing to walk barefoot in the dew at dawn.

    But at this new place I've discovered they don't
    merely walk — that's going out, quite. They HOP.
    Like frogs and toads, you know.

    It brings the patients into closer kinship with the
    electric currents of the earth, hopping does, the
    doctor says. It's WONDERFUL!

    He is the loveliest man — with mystic eyes! — the
    doctor is.




    THE SONG OF THE SNORE



    Fothergil Finch, Hermione's friend, the
    vers libre poet, dodges through life harried
    and hunted by one pursuing Fear.

    "Some day," he said to me —

    (It is Hermione's Boswell who is speaking in this
    sketch, in the first person, and not Hermione, the
    incomparable.) —

    "Some day," Fothergil finch said to me, the
    other night, in a tone of intense, bitter conviction,
    "some day It will get me! Some day I will overtake
    me. The great Beat, Popularity, which pursues me!
    Some day It will clutch me and tear me
    and devour my Soul! Some day I will be a
    Popular Writer!"

    It is my own impression that Fothergil's fears
    are exaggerated; but they are very real to him. He
    visualizes his own soul as a fugitive climbing higher
    and higher, running faster and faster, to escape
    this Beast. Perhaps Fothergil secretly hopes that
    the speed of his gong will induce combustion, and
    he will leap from the topmost hills of Art, flaming,
    directly into the heavens, there to burn and shine
    immortality, an authentic star. Well, well, we all
    have our little plane, our little vanities!

    "Fothergil," I said, cheerily, "Popularity has not
    overtaken you yet. Cheer up — perhaps it never
    will."

    We were in Fothergil's studio in Greenwich Village,
    where I had gone to see how his poem on
    Moonlight was getting along. He strode to the
    window. Fothergil is not tall, and he is slightly
    pigeon-toed — the fleshly toes of Fothergil symbolize
    the toes of his ever-fleecing soul — but he strides.
    Female poets undulate. Erotic male poets saunter.
    Tramp poets lurch and swagger. Fothergil, being
    a vers libre poet, a Prophet of the Virile, a Little
    Brother of the Cosmic Urge, is compelled by what
    his verse is to stride vigorously across rooms as if
    they were vast desert places, in spite of what
    his toes are. He strode magnificently, triumphantly,
    to the window and flung the shade up and looked
    out at the amorphous mist creeping
    in across the roofs. The crawling fog must
    have suggested his great, gray Dread, for presently
    he turned away with a shudder and sank upon a
    couch and moaned.

    'Ah, Heaven! Popularity! The disgrace of it —
    the horror of it! Popularity! Ignominy! When it
    catches me — when it happens ——"

    He plucked from his pocket a small phial and held
    it up toward the light and gazed upon it desperately
    and raptly.

    "I am never without this!" he said. "It is my
    means of escape. I will not be taken unawares!
    I carry it always. At night it is beneath my pillow.
    The day it happens — the moment I feel myself in
    the grip of Popularity——"

    I caught his hand; in his excitement he was
    raising the poison to his lips.

    "What I cannot understand, Fothergil," I said,
    "is why a Poet of the Virile, a Reincarnation of the
    Cave Man — excuse me, but that is what you are
    being this year, is it not ? — should give way to Fear.
    Is it not more in character to meet this Beast and
    slay It? Is there not a certain contradiction between
    your profession and your practice?"

    "More than a contradiction," he said eagerly. "It
    is more than contradictory! It is paradoxical!"

    I eliminate much that followed. When Fothergil
    gets started on the paradox, time passes. He is
    never really interested in things until he has dis-
    covered the paradoxical quality in them. Sometimes
    I think that his enthusiasm over himself is
    due to the fact that he discovered early in life that
    he himself was a paradox — and sometimes I think
    that discovery is the explanation of his enthusiasm
    for the paradox.

    "What," said Fothergil, "is the most paradoxical
    thing in the world? The Human Snore! It seems
    Ugly-yet it is Beautiful! It seems a trivial function
    of the body — and yet it is the Key to the
    Soul ——"

    "The Key to the Soul?"

    "Man sleeps," he said, "and his Conscious Mind
    is in abeyance. But his Subconscious Mind is still
    awake. It functions. It has its opportunity to utter
    itself. The Snore is the Voice of the Soul! And
    not only the Soul of the individual but of the Soul
    of the race. All the experiences of man, in his
    ascent from the mire to his present altitude, are
    retained in the Subconscious Mind-his fights, his
    struggles, his falls, his recoveries. And his dreams
    and nightmares are racial memories of these things.
    Snores are the language in which he expresses them.
    Interpret the Snore, and you have the psychic history
    of the ascent of man from Caliban to Shakespeare!

    "And I can interpret it! I have listened to a
    million Snores, and learned the language of the
    Soul! Night after night, for years, I harked to
    the Human Snore — in summer, hastening from
    park bench to beach and back again; in winter,
    haunting the missions and lodging houses. Ah,
    Heavens! with what devotion, with what passion
    of the discoverer, have I not pursued the Human
    Snore! I have gone miles to listen to some snore
    that was reported to be peculiar; I have denied my
    self luxuries, pleasures, and at times even food, in
    order to hire reluctant persons to Snore for me!

    "And I have written the Epic of the Snore in
    vers libre. You shall hear the prelude!"

    And this is Fothergil's prelude:


    Snore me a song of the soul,
    Oh, sleeper, snore!
    Whistle me, wheeze me, grunkle and grunt, gurgle
      and snort me a Virile stave!
    Snore till the Cosmos shakes!
    On the wings of a snore I fly backward a billion
      years, and grasp the mastodon and I tear him
      limb from limb,
    And with his thigh hone I heat the dinosaur to
      death, for I am Virile!
    Snore! Snore! Snore!
    Snore, O struggling and troubled and squirming
      and suffering and choking and purple-faced
      sleeper, snore!
    Snore me the sound of the brutal struggle when the
      big bull planets bellowed and fought with one
      another. in the bloody dawn of time for the
      love of little yellow-haired moons,
    Snore!
    Snore till Chaos raps with his boot on the walls of
    Cosmos and kicks to the landlord!

    Turn, choke, twist and struggle, sleeper, and snore
       me the song of life in the making,
    Sneeze me a universe full of star-dust,
    Snore me back to the days when I was a Cave Man,
      and with my bare hands slew the walrus, for
      I am Virile!
    Snore the death-rattle of the walrus, O struggling
      sleeper, snore!
    Snore me ——


    But I was compelled to leave. There is a great
    deal of it, Fothergil says. If you know Fothergil
    you are aware that when he declaims his Virile
    verses he becomes excited; he swells physically;
    sometimes he looks quite five feet tall in his moments
    of expansion; all this is very bad for him.
    More than once the declamation of his poem,
    "Myself and the Cosmic Urge," has sent him shaking
    to the tea urn.

    Before I left I was able to calm him somewhat.
    But with calm came reflection. And with reflection
    came his great, gray Dread again.

    When I left,. Fothergil was looking out of the
    window and shuddering, as if the Monster
    Popularity might be hiding behind the neighboring
    chimneys. One hand clasped the phial caressingly.

    But somehow I doubt that Fothergil will ever be
    compelled to drink the poison.




    BALLADE OF UNDERSTANDING



    "Does not the World's stupidity
    At times make Serious Thinkers fret?"
    I asked the fair Hermione;
      "Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and
        yet .

    We feel we owe the World a debt!"
    She waved a slim, bejeweled hand,
    She brooded on some vague regret. .
      "I hope," she sighed, "you'll UNDERSTAND!"

    "Is not your high Philosophy
    Too subtle for the Mob to get?"
    I asked . . . She pondered seriously;
      "Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and
        yet . . .

    She trifled with an amulet
    Imported from some Orient land. . . .
    "What fish can burst the Cosmic Net? . . .
      I HOPE," she sighed, "you'll Understand."

    "Art, Science and Psychology,
    Causes that rise and shine and set,

    Do all these never weary thee?" —
      "Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and yet .
    Would Thought and Life have ever met
    Unless" . . . She paused. Her lashes fanned
    Her eyes, with tears of ardor wet. . . .
      "I hope," she sighed, "YOU'LL Understand!"

    "Princess, is Bull the One Best Bet?"-
      "Sometimes," she said, "and yet . . . and yet
    She mused, and then; in accents bland,
    "I hope," she said, "you'll UNDERSTAND!"




    HERMIONE ON FASHIONS AND WAR



    ISN'T war frightful, though; simply FRIGHTFUL!

    What Sherman said it was, you know.

    Though they say there's an economic
    condition back of this war, too.

    We took up economics not long ago — our Little
    Group of Serious Thinkers, you know — and gave
    an entire evening to it.

    It's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!

    Without economics, you know, there couldn't be
    any Civilization.

    That's a thought that should give one pause,
    isn't it?

    Although, of course, this war may destroy
    civilization entirely.

    If I thought it was likely to do that I would join
    in the Peace Demonstration at once — or have they
    had it already ? — the march for peace, you know!
    Anyhow, no matter what the personal sacrifice
    might be, I would join in. Not that I care to march
    in the dust. And black never did become me. But
    I suppose there will be some autos. And, well —
    one must sacrifice.

    For if Civilization dies out, what will become of
    us then?

    Will we revert to the Primordial?

    Will the Cave Man triumph?

    The very idea gives me the creeps!

    Because, you know, the Cave Man is all right —
    and the Primitive, and all that — as a protest against
    Decadence-and in a LITERARY way — but if ALL men were Cave Men!

    Well, you know, the thought is frightful; simply frightful!

    You can have a feeling for just ONE Cave Man,
    you know, in the midst of Civilization, when a
    MILLION Cave Men would ——

    But the idea is too terrible for words!

    And in this crisis it is Woman who must save the world.

    The loveliest woman — she's quite advanced,
    really, and has the most charming toilettes — told
    our Little Group of Serious Thinkers the other
    night that this is the time when Woman must rule
    the world.

    It is the test of the New Woman.

    If ANYTHING is saved from the wreck it will be
    because of Her.

    She can write letters to the papers, you know,
    against war and-and all that sort of thing, you know.

    And, of course, if the Germans and Russians and
    English do all get together and conquer Paris,
    I suppose they won't kill the modistes and designers.

    Civilization, you know, is not so easily killed
    after all. The Romans were conquered, you know,
    but all their styles and philosophies and things were
    taken up by the Medes and Persians who conquered
    them, and have remained unchanged in those
    countries ever since.

    But in a time like this, it's comforting to have
    a Cause to cling to.

    No matter what happens, the advanced thinkers
    must cling together and make their Cause count.

    And if England should conquer France, and put
    a king on the throne there again, no doubt there will
    be a great revival of fashion, as there was in the
    days of Napoleon I. and the Empress Eugenie.

    But if all the advanced thinkers in the world
    could only get together in one place and THINK Peace
    and Harmony — sit down in circles, you know, and
    send Psychic Vibrations across the ocean — who can
    tell but what the war might not end ?

    The triumph of mind over matter, you know.

    I'm going to propose the idea to our little group
    and pass it on to all the other little groups.

    I'd be willing to give up an entire evening to it myself.




    URGES AND DOGS



    We had quite a discussion the other evening
    — our Little Group of Serious Thinkers,
    you know — as to whether it was Idealism
    or Materialism that had gotten the Germans into
    this dreadful war.

    Isn't Idealism just simply wonderful!

    Fothy Finch said it was neither; he said it was
    the Racial Urge.

    It's like the Cosmic Urge, you know; except it's
    altogether German, Fothy explained.

    Every once in a while you hear of a New Urge.
    That's one of the things that distinguishes Modern
    Thought from the old philosophies, don't you
    think?

    Although, of course, the Cosmic Urge isn't what
    it used to be a year or two ago.

    It's become — er — well, VULGARIZED, if you know
    what I mean. EVERYBODY'S writing and talking
    about it now, don't you know.

    I think, myself, it's going out soon. And a
    leader — a real pioneer in thought, you know,
    would scarcely care to talk about it now without a
    smile.

    I've just about dropped it myself. It's the same
    way with everything exclusive. It soon becomes
    common.

    Really, I hadn't worn my white summer furs
    three weeks before I saw so many imitations that
    I just simply HAD to lay them aside.

    Don't you think people who take up things
    like that, after the real leaders have dropped them,
    are frightfully lacking in SUBTLETY?

    Oh, Subtlety! Subtlety! WHAT would modern
    thought be without Subtlety?

    Personally, I just simply HATE the Obvious. It's
    so — so — well, so easily seen through, if you know
    what I mean.

    Fothy Finch said to me only the other day, "Has
    it ever occurred to you, Hermione, that you are NOT
    an Obvious sort of Person?"

    It is almost UNCANNY the way Fothergil Finch
    can read my thoughts sometimes. We are both so
    very psychic.

    Mamma said to me last night, "You are seeing a
    great deal of Mr. Finch, Hermione. Do you think
    it is right to encourage him if you don't intend to
    marry him? What ARE your intentions with regard
    to Mr. Finch?"

    I didn't answer her at all — poor dear Mamma is
    SO old-fashioned!

    But I thought to myself ——

    Well, would it be so IMPOSSIBLE?

    Of course, marriage is a serious thing. One must
    look at it from all points of view, if one has a
    Social Conscience.

    He has a LOVELY way with dogs, Fothy has. They
    trust him instinctively — he is just DEAR with them.
    I have some beauties now, you know. They are
    getting so they won't let anyone but Fothy bathe them.




    MOODS AND POPPIES



    We took up the Bhagavad Gita — our Little
    Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know —
    in quite a thorough way the other
    evening.

    Isn't the Bhagavad Gita just simply WONDERFUL!

    It has nothing at all to do with Bagdad, you
    know — though at first glance it seems quite like
    it might, doesn't it?

    Of course, they're both Oriental — aren't you just
    simply WILD about Oriental things? But really,
    they're QUITE different.

    The Bhagavad Gita, you know, is all about
    Reincarnation and Karma, and all those lovely old
    things.

    When I start my Salon I'm going to have a
    Bhagavad Gita Evening — all in costume, you know.

    I find that when I dress in harmony with the
    Idea I RADIATE so much more effectively, if you
    get what I mean.

    Fothergil Finch is the same way.

    He writes his best vers libre things in a purple
    dressing-gown.

    There's an amber-colored pane of glass in his
    studio skylight, and he has to sit and wait and wait
    and wait until the moonlight falls through that pane
    onto his paper, and then it only stays long enough
    so he can write a few lines, and he can't go on with
    the poem until he comes again.

    He brought me one last night — he wrote it to me
      yes, really! — and he waited and waited for
    enough moonlight to do it, and caught a terrible
    cold in his head, poor dear Fothy.

    It goes like this:

    Poppies, poppies, silver poppies in the moonlight,
       poppies!
    Silver poppies,
    Silver poppies in the moonlight,
    Youth!
    Poppies poppies, crimson poppies in the sunset,
       Love!
    Poppies, poppies, poppies!
    Black poppies in the midnight,
    Death!
    Three colors of poppies!
    One color is silver,
    The second color is crimson,
    The third color is black,
    And if there were a fourth color it would be
    green!

    Alas! Why is there never a fourth color?

    Poppies, poppies, poppies, but no Green Poppy!

    I asked the little crippled girl who sells poppies to
       Buy bread for the drunken father who beats her,

    And she said, "I, too, seek the fourth color!"

    I asked the boy who drives the grocer's delivery
       wagon, the old apple woman without teeth, the
       morgue keeper, the plumber, the janitor, the
       red-armed waffle baker in the window of a
       restaurant full of marble-topped tables and
       pallid-looking girls, the subway guard and the
       millionaire,

    And they all said,
    "Poppies, poppies, poppies,
    We have never known but three colors!"
    I am a Great Virile Spirit;
    I, with my Ego,
    I will give the world its Desire!
    I, the strong!
    I, the daring!
    I will create a Green Poppy!

    That about being Virile is just like Fothy! He
    prides himself on being Virile, you know — Poor
    dear Fothy!

    He said until he saw me he had always been satisfied
    with silver and red and black poppies, but
    as soon as he knew me he felt there MUST be a
    Green Poppy somewhere.

    It is likely a mood of my soul, you know — the
    Green Poppy is!

    Isn't it simply wonderful!




    CONCENTRATION



    Isn't it just simply terrible the way the Balkans
    are bombarding Venice . . . all those beautiful
    Doges and things, you know.

    I suppose there will be nothing left, just simply
    nothing, of the city that Byron wrote about in
    in — what was it? Oh, yes, in "Childe Harold to
    the Dark Tower Came."

    That's one comforting thing to think of if this
    country ever gets into a war, isn't it? I mean that
    we haven't any of those lovely old things that can
    be bombarded, you know.

    I suppose if we ever did get into war someone
    like Edison would invent something quick, you
    know, and it would be all over in a few hours.

    Isn't inventive science wonderful! Just simply
    wonderful!

    It's so — so — well, so DYNAMIC, if you get what I
    mean. Isn't it?

    Don't you just DOTE on dynamic things?

    Dynamic personalities, especially.

    I've often thought if I had it to do over again
    I'd go in less for psychics and more for dynamics.

    But then there are so many things that a modern
    thinker must keep up with, aren't there?

    And it's easy enough to concentrate one's mind on
    one or two things, but I often find it terribly difficult
    to concentrate on ten or twelve different things
    all at the same time.

    And one must if one is to keep up with the very
    latest in Thought and Life.

    Concentration! Concentration! That is the key
    to it all! Nearly every night when I am alone with
    my own Ego I go into the Silences for a little period
    of Spiritual Self-Examination and I always ask
    myself: "Have I Concentrated today? Really
    Concentrated? Or have I failed?"

    I call these little times my Psychic Inquisitions.

    In the hurry of this crowded age one must find
    time to get along with one's self, must one not?
    Fothy Finch has written a beautiful thing about the
    hurry of this crowded age which I wish everyone
    could hang over his desk.

    Well, I must be going on now. I have a committee
    meeting for this afternoon. I can't for the
    life of me remember whether it's about suffrage —
    Oh, yes, I marched! — or about some relief fund.




    SOUL MATES



    I'm taking up Bergson this week.

    Next week I'm going to take up Etruscan
    vases and the Montessori system.

    Oh, no, I haven't lost my interest in sociology.

    Only the other night we went down in the auto
    and watch the bread line.

    Of course, one can take up TOO MANY things.

    It's the spirit in which you take up a thing that
    counts.

    Sometimes I think the spirit in which you take
    a thing up counts more than the thing itself — counts
    in its effect on you, you know.

    Of course, the way to get the real meaning out
    of any thing is to put yourself in a receptive attitude.

    In serious things the attitude counts for everything.
    One mustn't scoff.

    If you look seriously and scientifically you'll'
    see there's a great deal more than you suspected
    in all this affinity and soul mate craze, for instance.

    Not that I care much for the words "soul mate"
    and "affinity" particularly; they have been so
    VULGARIZED, somehow.

    The Best People don't use those terms any more.

    Psychic harmony is the new term.

    The loveliest man explained all about it to us the
    other day. I belong to a Little Group of Thinkers,
    who take a serious interest in these things, you
    know.

    We are trying to find out how to make our
    psychic powers count for the betterment of the
    world. I am very psychic. Some are now.

    This man had the most interesting eyes and the
    silkiest beard, and he said his aura was pink.

    If he should meet a girl, you know, with an aura
    just the shade of pink that his aura is, why then
    they would know they were in psychic harmony.

    Simple, isn't it? But then all truly great ideas
    ARE simple, aren't they?

    But if his aura was blue, and her aura was yellow,
    then, of course, they would quarrel. That's
    what makes so much domestic unhappiness.

    But he said something that gave me the most
    frightfully insecure feeling.

    He said the aura CHANGES its color as the soul progresses.

    Two people may be in harmony today, and both
    have pink auras, and in a year hers may be green
    and his golden.

    What desperate chances a woman takes when
    she marries, doesn't she?

    I sometimes think life must have been a much
    more comfortable thing before the world got to
    be so terribly advanced.

    But, of course, it is our duty to sacrifice personal
    comfort for the future of the race and the
    betterment of the world.

    As I was looking at the bread line the thought
    came to me that the chief difference between this
    advanced age and other ages was in the fact that
    people today are willing to take a serious interest
    in such things.

    People are willing to sacrifice themselves today,
    you know.

    It is food for optimism, don't you think?

    Not that I was really so uncomfortable in the
    auto, you know. I had on my new mink coat.




    HERMIONE TAKES UP LITERATURE



    We've been going in for Astrological
    Research lately — our Little Group of
    Modern Thinkers, you know — and we've
    picked our own personal stars.

    Only it seems such a shame, doesn't it, that one
    isn't allowed to CHANGE stars? Keeping the same
    star all your life is rather monotonous, don't you
    think?

    Though, of course, if one changed and got some-
    one else's star things might be frightfully
    complicated, mightn't they?

    But it would make a charming little story,
    wouldn't it, for a girl to change stars, you know,
    and find that her new star belonged to some quite
    nice young man, and, of course, after that, their
    destinies would be one.

    I get some of the most ORIGINAL plots for stories!

    Fothergil Finch has often said to me that that
    is one difference between genius and talent. When
    you have genius, you know, things like that just
    come to you; but if you only have talent you must
    work and WORK for them.

    "If I only hd your spontaneity, Hermione!"
    Fothergil often says.

    And really, it's never been any trouble for me at
    all to dash off an idea, though of course they
    would have to be touched up by the editors a little
    before they could be printed.

    Fothergil said the other night I should try poetry.

    "Why, Fothy," I said, "if I lived a hundred years
    I never could make two lines rhyme with each
    other!"

    But he said Rhyme was out of fashion anyhow,
    and — would you believe it? — while we were talking
    I got an idea for a poem and just dashed it off
    then and there — a vers libre poem you know, and it
    goes:

       What becomes of
       People when they die?
       I used to ask when I was a little child,
       And now even since
       I am grown up I am not sure that I know!

    "Fothy," I said, "It was so easy — that makes me
    afraid it isn't really good!"

    "Ah," he said, "that modesty PROVES you are a
    genius! Heavens, what would I not give to
    have you spontaneity, your modesty, your spontaneity —"

    But I interrupted him. Another idea had come
    to me — just like that, and — would you believe it?
    I dashed off another one, right then and there! It
    went:

       I see the rain fall.
       It is no effort for the rain to fall.
       Why is it no effort?
       Because it falls spontaneously!
       O Spontaneity! Spontaneity!
       Rain is genius,
       Genius is rain!
       Fall, fall, rain!

    Fothy is going to get them printed — he knows a
    lot of vers libre publishers — if Papa will only put
    up the money. And one nice thing about poor dear
    Papa is that he always will put it up.

    So that night I wrote twenty or thirty more
    of them, and they were ALL good — ALL works of
    genius — they ALL came to me just like the first ones!

    The last one came to me just as I was going to
    bed. I looked out of the window and saw the moon
    and ran and got a pencil and wrote:

       I see the moon out of the window.
       I wonder what it thinks of me?
       Wouldn't the moon and I both be surprised
       If we found that neither of us
       Though anything at all about the other?

    The book's going to be vellum, you know, and
    that sort of thing. I'm going to have a gown just
    like the cover and give a fete when it comes out.

    The worst thing about being literary, though, is
    that it makes one feel so RESPONSIBLE for the gift,
    if you know what I mean, doesn't it?




    THE WORLD IS GETTING BETTER



    DR. JAGADES CHUNDER BOSE says that
    plants are almost as sensitive as human beings —
    they have feelings and susceptibilities,
    you know, and all that sort of thing.

    Isn't it wonderful how the Hindus find these
    things out?

    Soul speaking to soul, I suppose.

    But I have scarcely been able to eat comfortably
    since I read it.

    Every time I sit down to a salad it makes me
    feel quite like a cannibal!

    And to think, I was just on the point of becoming
    a vegetarian, too!

    I suppose to be on the safe side one should eat
    nothing but minerals.

    But, of course, advanced thinkers will have to
    take the matter up seriously and discover a way
    out — some day we will live on aromas and
    electricity, no doubt.

    Don't you think the world is getting kinder?
    A hundred years ago, for instance, no one would
    have cared whether plants suffer pain or not — people
    wouldn't have given it a second though, you know.

    And now, though, they will have to keep on
    eating them until something else is invented, they
    will do it with a shudder and won't enjoy them near
    so much. The world is losing much of its cruelty
    and thoughtlessness. Upward! Onward! Is the
    slogan.

    Do you like my new coat? Unborn lamb skin,
    you know. Isn't it lovely?




    WAR AND ART



    THIS war is going to have a tremendous in-
    fluence on Art — vitalize it, you know, and
    make it REAL, and all that sort of thing.
    In fact, it's doing it already. We took up the war
    last night — our Little Group of Serious Thinkers,
    you know — in quite a serious way and considered
    it thoroughly in all its aspects and we decided
    that it would put more SOUL into Art.

    And into life, too, you know.

    Already you can see it on every hand how much
    serious purpose it is putting into lives that were
    merely trivial before. Even poor, dear Mamma —
    and really, it would be hard to imagine a more
    trivial person than Mamma! — is knitting socks.

    She is going to send them to the Poles. She
    wanted to send them to the Belgians.

    But I said to her, "Positively, Mamma, you are
    ALWAYS behind the times. Don't you know the
    Belgians are going out and the Poles are coming in?"

    And, you know, it's been months since really
    Smart People have knit for the Belgians. The Poles
    are QUITE the thing now.

    It's strange how great movements keep going on
    and on from mountain peak to mountain peak of
    usefulness like that, isn't it? — changing their
    direction now and then as evolution itself does,
    but always progressing, progressing!

    That is one wonderful thing about evolution — it
    ALWAYS progresses.

    When one thinks it over, one grows more and
    more conscious that the human race owes a great
    deal to Evolution, doesn't one?

    WHAT could we have done without it?

    It's as somebody said about something else one
    time — if we hadn't had it, you know, it would have
    been necessary to invent it, though for the life of
    me, I can't remember who it was or what he said
    about it. Although likely it was Madame de Stael.
    We took her up once and it developed that she had
    said a most surprising number of things like that
    things, you know, that would be quite quotable if
    you could only remember them.

    Isn't memory a wonderful facility, though?

    I've always intended to go in for developing mine
    systematically and scientifically.

    But I've never done it because I always forget
    whether I should order the book-shop people to
    send home a work on numismatics or a work on
    mnemonics. One of them is about money, you
    know, and the other is about memory. And once
    when I was shopping and thought I had it right it
    turned out — the book did, when I got it home — to
    be all about air and things. Pneumatics, you know!
    Wasn't it perfectly ridiculous?

    But, of course, one learns by one's mistakes.

    Have you seen dear Nijinsky?

    We were discussing him last evening — our little
    group, you know — and decided that while he has
    more Personality than Mordkin he has less
    Temperament, if you get what I mean.

    One of the girls said last evening, "Mordkin is
    more exotic, but Nijinsky is more esoteric."

    And another said, "One of them shows intellect
    obviously mingled with spirit, but the other shows
    spirit occultly mingled with intellect."

    Fothergil Finch said, "They are alike in their
    differences, but subtly differentiated in their
    likenesses, n'est-cd pas?"

    Fothy has a simply delightful faculty of summing
    a thing up in a sentence like that, but it makes him
    very vain if you show you think so; so I put him
    in his place and closed the discussion with one remark:

    "It is all," I said, "it is ALL a question of Interpretation."

    And, quite seriously, when you come to think
    about it, it usually is, isn't it?




    A SPIRITUAL DIALOGUE



    Last night I met Hermione,
    And eagerly she said to me:
    "Thoughts from the ambient everywhere
    Electrify our worldly air."

    "My soul," I said, "grabs off such hints
    As butter, whether pats or prints,
    Receives and holds all unaware
    Small strands of drifting, golden hair.
    But have YOU thought, O Maiden fair,
    O, have you thought profoundly of
    The psychic consciousness in crows?
    Or why the Malay when in love
    Wears rubber earrings on his toes?"

    The lady shook her lovely head —
    'Twas coiffed divinely — and she said:
    "Have you reflected on the part
    Primeval instinct plays in Art?
    It's simply wonderful the way
    Old things grow new from day to day!"

    "That's true," I said, "I often ape
    The Ape to get my Art in shape —
    And with the Simian going strong,
     Behold, another Rennysawng!"

    "Perhaps," she said, "across the verge
    Of darkness, from the Cosmic Urge,
    The Light is speeding in bright waves,
    E'en now to show the way to slaves!"

    "The thought," I said, "is cheerful — but
    These Swamis WILL chew betel-nut!"

    "Alas!" she said, "alas! too true!
    But oh! it's wonderful of you
    To sympathize and understand —"
    (She gestured with a jeweled hand) —
    "The joy of being understood!"

    "Our talk," I said, "has done me good."




    WILL THE BEST PEOPLE RECEIVE THE SUPERMAN SOCIALLY?



    WE'VE been taking up Metabolism lately —
    our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you
    know — and it's wonderful; just simply
    WONDERFUL!

    I really don't know how I got along for so many
    years without it — it opens up such new vistas,
    doesn't it?

    I can never think in the same way again about
    even the most trivial things since I have learned
    all about Protoplasm and — and — well, all these
    marvelous scientific things, you know.

    Isn't Science DELIGHTFUL!

    There's the Cosmos, for instance. It had always
    been there, you know. But nobody knew much
    about it until Scientists took it up in a serious way.

    And now I, for one, feel that I couldn't do
    without it!

    Although, of course, one feels one's responsibilities
    toward it too, and that is apt to be rather
    trying at times unless one has a truly earnest nature
    and is prepared to make sacrifices.

    If the Cosmos is to be improved, what is there
    that can improve it except Evolution?

    And unless we who are serious thinkers give
    Evolution a mark to reach, how can we be sure that
    Evolution will Evolve in the right direction?

    I have worried myself half to death at times
    over the Superman!

    You know I feel personally responsible, to a
    certain extent, about what he will be like when he
    gets here. If he isn't what he should be, you know,
    it will be the fault of those of us who are the
    leaders in thought today — it will be because we
    haven't started him right, you know.
    Mamma — poor dear Mamma is SO unadvanced,
    you know! — has an idea that when the Superman
    does get here he won't be at all the sort of person
    that one would care to receive socially.

    "Hermione," she said to me only the other day,
    "no Superman shall EVER come into MY house!"

    She heard some of my friends, you know, talking
    about the Superman and Eugenics, and she has
    an idea that he will be horribly improper.

    "I consider that the Superman would be a DANGEROUS
    influence in the life of a young woman," said Mamma.

    "Mamma," I told her, you are FRIGHTFULLY behind
    the times! There isn't a doubt in the world that
    when the Superman does come he will be taken
    up by the Best People. Anarchists and Socialists
    go everywhere now, and dress just like other people,
    and ;you can hardly tell them, and it will be
    the same way with the Superman."

    What Mamma lacks is contact. Contact with —
    with — well, she lacks Contact, if you get what I
    mean.

    So many of the elder generation DO lack Contact,
    don't you think?

    Although, of course, it would be very hard to
    have Contact and Background at the same time.

    And if one must choose between Contact and
    Background, the choice is apt to be puzzling at
    times.

    Although, of course, it is useless to reason too
    much on things like that. Intuition often succeeds
    where reason fails, especially if one is at all Psychic.

    Well, I must go. I must hurry to my costumer's.

    I'm have a special costume made, you know.
    We've been taking up Spiritualism again — our little
    group, you know. And I'm going to give a Spirit
    Fete, and of course it will take a great deal of
    dressing and arranging and decoration.

    Papa says it will be a Ghost Dance, but he is so
    terribly frivolous and irreverent at times.

    Don't you just simply LOATHE frivolity?





    THE PARASITE WOMAN MUST GO!



    THE Parasite Woman must go!

    Our Little Group of Serious Thinkers
    took up the Parasite Woman last night in
    quite a thorough way. One of the most interesting
    women you ever listened to gave us a little talk
    about the Parasite Woman, you know.

    And we decided that the Parasite Woman has
    NOTHING to Contribute to the Next Generation.

    Oh, these Parasite Women! It just simply makes
    my blood boil to her about them! I don't know
    when I have been so indignant!

    With the world so full of work to be done for
    the Cause — for ALL the Causes, you know — they
    just sit around selfishly at home all wrapped up
    in their own families, or children, if they're married,
    and do nothing at all for the Evolution of
    the Ego and the Development of the Race, and the
    Conscious Guidance of the Next Generation, or
    anything like that.

    Thank goodness I could never be a Parasite Woman!

    And, yet, I PITY them, too.

    I'm thinking quite seriously of starting a little
    Mission of my own for the purpose of appealing
    to and reforming the Parasite Women among my
    acquaintances.

    Of course it will take organization, and that
    means I will have money to start it and
    keep it going.

    But Papa will give me the money all right. That
    is one thing about poor, dear Papa — he doesn't
    understand the new movements at all, but he WILL
    give me money. And he never asks what I do
    with it.

    Now and then, of course, he scolds me a little — he
    told me the other day that I cost him nearly as much
    as a war. But I can always jolly him, you know,
    when he gets that way. Men are so easily managed
    and flattered.

    I suppose my Mission will take quite a LOT of
    money, too. But it is my DUTY, and I am willing to
    make ANY sacrifice — we modern thinkers are used
    to making sacrifices for our Cause!

    And it is worth a lot of sacrifice to make the
    Parasite Woman over into an Awakened and
    Enlightened Member of Society, independent of the
    Man-Made System that has shackled her for so long.

    What is nobler than Emancipation?

    Of course, I'll have to have a Secretary, And
    to get one especially training in organizing the
    Mission will cost quite a bit, probably.

    But Papa will never miss it.

    And I think I'll have a MAN for a Secretary.
    One that is quite presentable socially, you
    know. For the Secretary will have to attend to a
    lot of the details. I will give some teas and
    entertainments and things, just to get the Parasite
    Women I know interested.

    And there's nothing like the right sort of a man
    to get women to cooperate in some Cause that aims
    for Woman's Liberty.

    And I suppose, really, TWO Secretaries would be
    better. And they will have to be men who can
    dance the new dances well, too. That counts a
    lot nowadays in getting girls to come to places.

    I feel that I have Found my Work! One's work
    lies at one's hand, if one could but see it, always.
    And mine is to Save the Parasite Women I know
    from Themselves and their Frivolity.

    I will coax the first cheque out of Papa this very
    evening! It may take some management and
    jollying, but—well, Papa is EASY!



    THE HOUSE BEAUTIFUL



    WE'RE taking up the House Beautiful — our
    Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you
    know — for we've decided that Environment
    has more effect on personality than Heredity.

    Interior decoration is the greatest of the arts —
    don't you think? — because it furnishes the proper
    setting for the spirit.

    The loveliest woman gave us a talk on interior
    decoration the other night — she wears these slinky,
    Greek things, you know, with straw sandals, when
    the weather permits — and I engaged her to do the
    house over.

    But right away a problem presented itself —
    whether to have the house done to fit my personality
    or whether to have the house done to fit the thing
    I want my personality to evolve into, and trust the
    environment to help in the evolution.

    Modern thought complicates LIFE immensely,
    doesn't it?

    But I always feel that it is my duty to give the
    best in myself to these problems.

    Someone must help Evolution evolve. Someone
    must be unselfish enough to give the cosmos new
    marks to come up to.

    And who but the serious thinkers are willing to
    sacrifice themselves?

    Well, we finally decided to do every room in
    the house differently — each one to fit a mood, you
    know.

    There's one room now I call "Aspiration," where
    I go for my little spiritual examinations.

    And the next room beyond that is "Resolve."

    And then there's a room I call "Brotherly Love,"
    where I go to think out how to help the masses.

    For of course I haven't lost my interest in
    sociological problems.

    In fact I'm having some new dresses made —
    simple, quiet looking things, you know — for the
    express purpose of visiting the very poor in and
    asking them questions about themselves.

    Though I must admit that since helping the war
    sufferers came into fashion friendly visiting has
    rather gone out.




    MAMA IS SO MID-VICTORIAN



    WE'VE been taking ;up Hedonism lately —
    our Little Group of Modern Thinkers,
    you know — and it's wonderful, just
    simply WONDERFUL!

    Though Mamma — poor dear Mamma is so
    hopelessly old fashioned; — has entirely the
    wrong idea about it.

    "Hermione," she said to me the other evening,
    after the little talk, "WHAT did the lecturer call
    himself?"

    "He's a Hedonist," I said.

    "Indeed!" she said, "and what sort of modern
    impropriety is Hedonism? Is it something about
    Sex, or is it something about Psychics?"

    I simply couldn't speak.

    I just gave her a look and walked out of the
    room. It is absolutely useless to attempt to explain
    anything to Mamma.

    She is so Mid-Victorian!

    And Mid-Victorianism has quite gone out, you
    know. Really. The loveliest man gave us a talk
    on the Mid-Victorian recently, and when he was
    done there wasn't a one of us that didn't go and
    hide our Tennysons and Ruskins.

    Although I always WILL like "Come into the Garden, Maud."

    But he did it with such HUMOR, you know. Isn't
    a sense of humor a perfectly WONDERFUL thing?

    A sense of humor is a sense of proportion, you
    know — he brought that out so cleverly, the
    anti-Mid-Victorian man did.

    Though so many people who have a sense of
    humor are so — so, well so QUEER about it, if you
    get what I mean. That is, if you know they have
    one, of course you're naturally watching for them
    to say humorous things; and they're forever saying
    the sort of things that puzzle you, because you have
    never heard those things before in just that way,
    and if you DO laugh they're so apt to act as if you
    were laughing in the WRONG place!

    And one doesn't dare NOT to laugh, does one?
    It's really quite unfair and unkind sometimes!
    Don't you think so?

    We took up a volume on The Analysis of Humor
    one winter — our Little Group of Serious Thinkers,
    you know — and read it completely through, and
    before the winter was over it got so there wasn't
    a one of us that dared NOT to laugh at anything
    any other one said and — well, it got rather ghastly
    before spring. Because even if someone wanted to
    know if a person needed an umbrella someone else
    would laugh.

    Well, I must be going now. I have a committee
    meeting at three this afternoon. We're going in
    for this one-day Women's Strike, you know — our
    little group is.




    VOKE EASELEY AND HIS NEW ART



    FOR my acquaintance with Voke Easeley — —

    (Hermione's reporter, and not Hermione
    herself, is speaking now.) — —

    For my acquaintance with Voke Easeley and his
    new art, I am indebted to Fothergil Finch.

    Fothergil is a kind of genius hound. He scurries
    sleuthing around the town ever on the scent of
    something queer and caviar. He is well trained and
    never kills what he catches himself; he takes it to
    Hermione; and after Hermione has tired of it I
    am at liberty to do what I please with it.

    The most remarkable thing about Voke Easeley
    at a casual glance is his Adam's apple. It is not
    only the largest Adam's apple I have ever seen, and
    the hardest looking one, and the most active one,
    but it is also the most intelligent looking one. Voke
    Easeley's face expresses very little. His eyes are
    small and full and green. His mouth, while large,
    misses significance. His nose, indeed, is big; but
    it is mild; it is a tame nose; one feels no more
    character in it than in a false nose. His chin
    and forehead retreat ingloriously from the battle
    of life.

    But all the personality which his eyes should
    show, all the force which should dwell in his
    nose, all the temperamental qualities that should
    reveal themselves in his mouth and chin, all the
    genius which should illumine his brow — these dwell
    within his Adam's apple. The man has run entirely
    to that feature; his moods, his emotions, his
    thoughts, his passions, his appetites, his beliefs, his
    doubts, his hopes, his fears, his resolves, his
    despairs, his defeats, his exaltations — all, all make
    themselves known subtly in the eccentric motions
    of that unusual Adam's apple.

    When I saw him first in action I did not at once
    get it. He stood stiffly erect in the center of
    Hermione's drawing-room, surrounded by the serious
    thinkers, with his head thrown back and his Adam's
    apple thrust forward, and gave vent to a series of
    strange noises. Beside him stood a very slender
    lady, all dressed in apple green, with a long green
    wand in her hand, and on the end of the wand
    was an artificial apple blossom. This she waved
    jerkily in front of Voke Easeley's eyes, and his
    Adam's apple moved as the wand moved, and from
    his mouth came the wild sounds in response to it.

    Soon I realized that she was conducting him as
    if he were an orchestra.

    But still I did not get it. For it was not words,
    it was nothing so articulate as speech, that Voke
    Easeley uttered. Nor was it, to my ear, song. And
    yet, as I listened, I began to see that a wild rhythm
    pervaded the utterance; the Adam;'s apple leapt,
    danced, swung round, twinkled, bounded, slid and
    leapt again in time with a certain rough barbaric
    measure; the sounds themselves were all discords,
    but discords with a purpose; discords that took each
    other by the hand and kicked and stamped their
    brutal way together toward some objective point.

    I led Fothergil into a corner.

    "What is it?" I whispered. It is always well, at
    one of Hermione's soul fights, to get your cue
    before the conversation officially starts. If you don't
    know what is going to be talked about before the
    talk starts the chances are that you never will know
    from the talk itself.

    "A New Art!" said Fothergil. And then he led
    me into the hall and explained.

    What Gertrude Stein has done for prose, what
    the wilder vers libre bards are doing for poetry,
    what cubists and futurists are doing for painting
    and sculpture, that Voke Easeley is doing for
    vocal music.

    "He is painting sound portraits with his larynx
    now," said Fothergil. "And the beautiful part of
    it is that he is absolutely tone deaf! He doesn't
    know a thing about music. He tried for years to
    learn and couldn't. The only way he knows when
    you strike a chord on the piano is because he doesn't
    like chords near as well as he does discords. He
    has gone right back to the dog, the wolf, the cave
    man, the tiger, the bear, the wind, the rock slide,
    the thunder and the earthquake for his language.
    He interprets life in the terms of natural sounds,
    which are discords nearly always; but he has added
    brains to them and made them all the moods of
    the human soul!"

    "And the lady in green?"

    "That is his wife — he can do nothing without
    her. There is the most complete psychic accord
    between them. It is beautiful! Beautiful!"

    When we returned the lady in green was
    announcing:

    "The next selection is a Voke Easeley impression
    of the Soul of Wagner gazing at the sunrise from
    the peak of the Jungfrau."

    The wand waved; the Adam's Apple leapt, and
    they were off. What followed cannot be indicated
    typographically. But if a cat were a sawmill, and
    a dog were a gigantic cart full of tin cans bouncing
    through a stone-paved street, and that dog and
    that cat hated each other and were telling each
    other so, it would sound much like it.

    It was well received. Except by Ravenswood Wimble.
    He always has to have his little critical fling.

    "The peak of the Jungfrau!" he grumbled.
    "Jungfrau indeed! It was Mont Blanc! It was very
    wonderfully and subtly Mont Blanc! But the
    Jungfrau — never!"

    "Hermione," I said, "what do you think of the
    New Art?"

    "It's wonderful!" she breathed, "just simply
    wonderful! So esoteric, and yet so simple! But
    there is one thing I am going to speak to Mrs. Voke
    Easely about — one improvement I am going to
    suggest. His ears, you know — don't you think they
    are too large? Or too red, at least, for their size?
    They catch the eye too much — they take away from
    the effect. Before he sings here again I will have
    Mrs. Easeley bob them off a little."




    HERMIONE ON SUPERFICIALITY



    AREN'T you just crazy about the Moral Uplift?

    It's coming into every department of life
    now and one just simply HAS to keep up with it in
    order to talk intelligently these days.

    Not that one can talk too freely about it in mixed
    company, you know.

    There are getting to be the awfullest lot of moral
    subjects that one can't talk about generally, aren't
    there?

    Eugenics and sex hygiene and all these plays and
    books with a moral purpose, you know.

    Of course lots of people DO talk about them
    generally. I did myself for quite a while. And then
    another girl and I got some books and studied up
    what the things we had been talking of really were
    and it shocked us horribly!

    Mamma has been trying to get me to give up the
    moral uplift entirely, but you've just simply GOT to
    talk it or be out of date.

    Of course the whole thing depends upon whether
    you are a serious thinker — if you're sincere, REALLY
    sincere, you can take up anything and get good out of it.

    The loveliest man talked to us last night — to our
    Little Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know.

    He said the curse of the age and the country was
    superficiality. People aren't thorough, you know.

    I've noticed that myself and I agree with him.
    If one is going to take things up and show a serious
    interest in them one must not limit one's self to a
    few phases.

    One must be broad. One must be thorough.
    One must cover the whole field of thought.

    Our little group this winter has been trying to
    do that. So far we've take up Bergson, socialism,
    psychology, Rabindranath Tagore, the meaning of
    welfare work, culinary science, the new movements
    in art — and ever so many more things I can't re-
    member now.

    For the rest of Lent we're going to take up the
    Cosmic Consciousness.

    One of the girls thought it would be a nice sort
    of thing to take up during Lent — a quiet kind of
    thing, you know; not like feminism or chemistry.

    Have you seen any of the new parti-colored boots
    yet?

    Isn't it an absurd idea?

    And yet, you know — if it made for Beauty!

    That is what one must always say to one's self
    must one not? I mean: Does it make for Beauty?

    That's the reason I left the Suffrage Party, you
    know. They wanted me to wear one of those hor-
    rid yellow sashes. And my complexion can't stand
    yellow. So I quit the Suffrage Party right there.




    ISIS, THE ASTROLOGIST



    WE'RE taking up astrology quiet seriously —
    our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you
    know — and we've hired the loveliest lady
    astrologer to cast our horoscopes and give
    us a talk and get us started right.

    She wrote a letter to me—the most perfectly
    fascinating letter — and I told her to call, and we
    looked her over. She wore a beautiful sky-blue
    gown with gold stars on it — one of those Greek
    ones, you know, like poor, dear Isadora Duncan
    wore — and a gold star in the middle of her
    forehead.

    It makes her look like a unicorn, that star,"
    Ravenswood Wimble said. But then nobody ever
    pleases Ravenswood Wimble completely. He is
    so — if you get me.

    "If a unicorn, then a celestial unicorn," Fothy
    Finch said. Fothy is too dear for anything; he is
    always hunting for the good in people, like Apollo,
    or Euripides — which was it? — when they gave him
    the basket full of wheat and chaff, and he separated
    them. Or maybe it was Diogenes.

    She has six sisters, and they are all astrologers,
    and they call them the Pleiades.

    Although Voke Easeley, in his horrid slangy way,
    said: "Pleiades? She's a Bear!"

    Don't you just utterly loathe slang?

    Bit I was going to tell you about the lovely letter
    she wrote — that's what attracted me to her at the
    first.

    "Have you never asked yourself," it began
    "'Why was I born?'"

    Fancy knowing that about one! If there is one
    question I have asked myself thousands and
    thousands of times it is, "Why was I born?"

    And then the letter went on to talk about
    horoscopes and the Inevitable.

    "We may not overcome the inevitable," it said,
    "but it is ours to see that the Inevitable does not
    overcome us."

    Oh, the Inevitable! The Inevitable!

    How often I have thought of the Inevitable with
    despair!

    And it has never occurred to me before that one
    could take it and use it as one pleased. But it seems
    one can if one knows about it beforehand. It is
    like Destiny that way. If one is ignorant of one's
    Destiny, it comes upon one with a surprise. But
    if one knows beforehand what one's Destiny is to
    be, one can make onself the master of it. That is
    where the horoscope comes in handy, you know.

    After dipping into Astrology I will never again
    be afraid of the Inevitable.

    As the Letter says: "Every woman with her
    horoscope before her, and her Soul back of her,
    should be able to solve any problem and meet any
    situation that may occur in her life."

    Ravenswood Wimble wanted to know, when he
    met the lady — did I tell you that her professional
    name is Isis? — what would happen if her Soul was
    before her and her horoscope back of her. But Isis
    just simply froze him with a look.

    Don't you think that levity is horrid in the midst
    of vital affairs like that?

    But I suppose every little group has someone in
    it that thinks he or she has to be quippy and
    facetious at times.

    Not but what I have a sense of humor myself.

    I think a sense of humor is the saving grace, if
    you get what I mean.

    But no one should try to use it unless he is
    perfectly sure that everyone understands he is being
    humorous.

    We are going to take up the sense of humor —
    our Little Group of Thinkers, you know — in a
    serious way soon.

    But the Swami doesn't like Isis. Poor, dear
    Swami! She is a charlatan, he says. And she
    doesn't like him. "My dear," she said to me, "are
    you SURE he really goes into the Silences? Or does
    he just PRETEND to?"

    Isn't it awful about geniuses that way — how jealous
    they ARE of each other? Especially psychics!
    We had two mediums the same evening a year or
    two ago who actually quarreled over which one of
    them a certain spirit control belonged to.




    THE SIMPLE HOME FESTIVALS



    DON'T you just love the simple old festivals,
    like Thanksgiving Day and Christmas?

    That's is one thing that Papa and Mamma
    and I agree about. And this year we had a very
    simple sort of Thanksgiving Day.

    Of course, it's rather a bore if you have to invite
    a lot of relations.

    But one must always sacrifice something to gain
    the worth-while things, mustn't one?

    And what is more worth while than simplicity?

    Simplicity! Simplicity! Isn't it truly WONDERFUL!

    Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself:
    "have I been simple and genuine today? Or have
    I FAILED?

    Papa always has two maiden aunts to Thanks-
    giving dinner. Dear old souls, I suppose, but
    frumps, you know.

    And Fothergil Finch was there, too. I asked
    poor dear Fothy, because otherwise he would have
    had to eat in some restaurant.

    I tried to be agreeable to Papa's aunts — of
    course. I suppose they are my great-aunts, but I
    never felt REALLY related to them — but how could he
    know how terribly unadvanced they are?

    Fothy's only real interests center about Art, you
    know. And if he had talked of Art it would have
    been better.

    But, as he told me later, he thought he should
    try to meet my people on their own ground and
    talk of something practical.

    Something with a direct bearing on life, you know.

    So he asked Aunt Evelyn what she thought of
    Trial Marriages.

    She didn't know exactly what he meant at first,
    but Aunt Fanny whispered something to her and
    she turned white and said, "Mercy!"

    Poor dear Fothy saw he must be on the wrong
    track, so he changed the subject and began to tell
    Aunt Fanny the plot of a new problem play. One
    of the sex ones, you know.

    "Heavens," said Aunt Fanny, and began to tremble.

    And they drew their chairs nearer together and
    each one took a bottle of smelling salts out of a
    little black bag, and they sat and trembled and
    smelled their salts and stared at him perfectly
    fascinated.

    This embarrassed Fothy, but he though his mistake
    had been in talking about anything artistic,
    like a play, so he changed the subject again. He
    told me afterward that he felt if he could get onto
    a really PRACTICAL subject all would go well.

    So he asked Aunt Evelyn what she thought about Genetics.

    "What are they?" asked Aunt Evelyn, her teeth chattering.

    "Why, Eugenics," said Fothy. And then he had
    to explain all about Eugenics.

    They sat perfectly still and stared at him, and he
    felt sure he had them interested at last, and he
    talked on and on about Eugenics and the Future
    Race, you know, and that led him back to Trial
    Marriages, and then he go onto the Twilight Sleep.

    And, as he said himself afterward, what could
    be more practical?

    But, you know, commonplace people never
    appreciate the efforts that serious thinkers make for
    them, and Aunt Evelyn refused to come to the
    table at all when dinner was announced. She said
    she had lost her appetite and felt faint.

    But Aunt Emmy came. She asked the blessing.
    Papa always has her do that on Thanksgiving Day
    and Christmas and New Year's. And she made a
    regular prayer out of it — prayed for Fothy, you
    know, right before him; and prayed for me too. It
    was awful.

    And afterward poor dear Fothy said he wished
    he had talked about Art.

    "It's safe," I said; "then people can't get
    offended, for nobody knows what you mean at all."

    "Oh," said Fothy, "nobody does?" And he went
    away quite melancholy and injured.




    CITRONELLA AND STEGOMYIA



    WE were talking about famous love affairs
    the other evening, and Fothergil Finch
    said he was thinking of writing a ballad
    about Citronella and Stegomyia.

    And, of course, everybody pretended they knew
    who Citronella and Stegomyia were. Mrs. Voke
    Easeley — You've heard about Voke Easeley and his
    New Art, Haven't you? — Mrs. Voke Easeley said:

    "But don't you think those old Italian love affairs
    have been done to death?"

    "Italian?" said Fothy, raising his eyebrows at
    Mrs. Voke Easeley.

    You know, really, there wasn't a one of them
    knew who Citronella and Stegomyia were; but they
    were all pretending, and they saw Mrs. Voke Easeley
    was in bad. And she saw it, too, and tried to
    save herself.

    "Of course," she said, "Citronella and Stegomyia
    weren't Italian lovers THEMSELVES. But so many of
    the old Italian poets have written about them that
    I always think of them as glowing stars in that
    wonderful, wonderful galaxy of Italian romance!"

    Fothy can be very mean when he wants to. So he said:

    "I don't read Italian, Mrs. Easeley. I have been
    forced to get all my information about Citronella
    and Stegomyia from English writers. Maybe you
    would be good enough to tell me what Italian poet
    it is who has turned out the most recent version of
    Citronella and Stegomyia?"

    Mrs. Voke Easeley answered without a moment's
    hesitation: "Why, D'Annunzio, of course."

    That made everybody waver again. And Aurelia
    Dart said — she's that girl with the beautiful arms,
    you know, who plays the harp and always has a
    man or two to carry it about wherever she goes —
    somebody else's husband, if she can manage it —
    Aurelia said:

    "D'Annunzio, of course! Passages of it have
    been set to music."

    "Won't you play some of it?" asked Fothy, very
    politely.

    "It has never been arranged for the harp," said
    Aurelia. "But if Mrs. Easely can remember some
    of the lines, and will be good enough to repeat them,
    I will improvise for it."

    That put it up to Mrs. Easeley again, you know.
    She hates Aurelia, and Aurelia knows it. Voke
    Easeley carried Aurelia's harp around almost all
    last winter. And the only way Mrs. Easeley could
    break Voke of it was to bring their little girl along
    the one that has convulsions so easily, you know.
    And then when Voke was getting Aurelia's harp
    ready for her the little girl would have a convulsion,
    and Mrs. Easeley would turn her over to Voke,
    and Voke would have to take the little girl home,
    and Mrs. Easeley would stay and say what a family
    man and what a devoted husband Voke was, for an
    artist.

    Well, Mrs. Easeley wasn't stumped at all. She
    got up and repeated something. I took up Italian
    poetry one winter, and we made a special study of
    D'Annunzio; but I didn't remember what Mrs.
    Easeley recited. But Aurelia harped to it.
    Improvising is one of the best things she does.

    And everybody said how lovely it was and how
    much soul there was in it, and, "Poor Stegomyia!
    Poor Citronella!"

    The Swami said it reminded him of some passages
    in Tagore that hadn't been translated into
    English yet.

    Voke Easeley said: "The plaint of Citronella is
    full of a passion of dream that only the Italian
    poets have found the language for."

    Fothy winked at me and I made an excuse and
    slipped into the library and looked them up — and,
    well, would you believe it! — they weren't lovers at
    all! And I might have known it from the first, for
    I always use citronella for mosquitoes in the country.

    They were still pretending when I got back, all
    of them, and Aurelia was saying: "Citronella differs
    psychologically from Juliet — she is more like
    poor, dear Francesca in her feeling of the cosmic
    inevitability of tragedy. But stegomyia had a strain
    of Hamlet in him."

    "Yes, a strain of Hamlet," said Voke Easeley.
    "A strain of Hamlet in his nature, Aurelia — and
    more than a strain of Tristram!"

    "It is a thing that Maeterlinck should have written,
    in his earlier manner," said Mrs. Voke Easeley.

    "The story has its Irish counterpart, too," said
    Leila Brown, who rather specializes, you know, on
    all those lovely Lady Gregory things. "I have always
    wondered why Yeats or Synge hasn't used it."

    "The essential story is older than Ireland," said
    the Swami. "It is older than Buddha. There are
    three versions of it in Sanskrit, and the young men
    sing it to this day in Benares."

    Affectation! Affectation! Oh, how I abhor
    affectation!

    It was perfectly HORRID of Fothy just the same.

    ANYONE might have been fooled.

    I might have been myself, if I were not too
    intellectually honest, and Fothy hadn't tipped me
    the wink.




    HERMIONE'S SALON OPENS



       I

    Perchance last night you felt the world careen,
    Leap in its orbit like a punished pup
    Which hath a hornet on his burning bean?
    Last night, last night — historic yestere'en! —
    Hermione's Salon was opened up!

       II

    Without, the night was cold. But Thought, within,
    Roared through the rooms as red and hot as Sin.
    Without, the night was calm; within, the surge
    And snap of Thought kept up a crackling din
    As if in sport the well-known Cosmic Urge
    with Psychic Slapsticks whacked the dome and Shin
    Of Swami, Serious Thinker, Ghost and Goat.
    From soup to nuts, from Nut to Super Freak,
    From clams to coffee, all the Clans were there.
    The groggy Soul Mate groping for its Twin,
    The burgling free verse Blear, the Hobo Pote,

    Clairvoyant, Cubist bug and Burlapped Greek,
    Souse Socialists and queens with bright green hair,
    Ginks leading barbered Art Dogs trimmed and Sleek,
    The Greenwich Stable Dwellers, Mule and Mare,
    Pal Anarchs, tamed and wrapped in evening duds,
    Philosophers who go wherever suds
    Flow free, musicians hunting after eats,
    And sandaled dames who hang from either ear
    Strange lumps — "art jools" — the size of pickled beets,
    Writers that write not, hunting Atmosphere,
    Painters and sculptors that ne'er paint nor sculp,
    Reformers taking notes on Brainstorm Slum,
    Cave Men in Windsor Ties, all gauche and glum,
    With strong iron jaws that crush their food to Pulp,
    And bright Boy Cynics playing paradox,
    And th' inevitable She that knitteth Belgian socks —
    A score of little groups ! — all bees that hum
    About the futile blooms of Piffledom.

       III

    A wan Erotic Rotter told me that
    The World could not be Saved except through Sin;
    A she eugenist, sexless, flabby, fat,
    With burst veins winding through unhealthy skin,
    With loose, uncertain lips preached Purity;
    A Preacher blasphemed just to show he dared;
    A dame praised Unconventionality
    In words her secretary had prepared;
    A bare-legg'd painter garbed in Leopard hide
    Quarreled with a Chinese lyre and scared the dogs;
    A slithering Dancer slunk from side to side
    In weird, ungodly, Oriental togs;
    A pale, anemic, frail Divinity
    Confided that she thought the great Blond Beast
    Himself was Art's own true Affinity;
    An Anarch gloomed; "The Mummy at the Feast
    Gets all the pleasure from the festive board!"
    I know not what they meant; I only wunk
    Within myself, and praised the great god Bunk.
    A Yogi sought the Silences and snored.

       IV

    But 'twas Hermione that Got the Hand!
    Ah, yes, she talked! Of Purpose, and of Soul,
    And how Life's parts are equal to its Whole.
    And Thought — and do the Masses Understand?
    She lightly touched on Life and Love and Death,
    And Cosmic Consciousness, and on Unrest,
    Substance and Shadow, Solid Things and Breath,
    The New Art movements her sweet voice caressed,
    Philanthropy, Genetics, Social Duty,
    The Mother-Teacher claimed a passing smile,
    And she made clear we all must worship Beauty
    And Concentrate on Things that are Worth While.
    "Each night," she said, "each night ere I retire
    Into the Depths I peer, and I inquire,
    "Have I today some Worth-while Summit scaled?
    Or have I failed to climb? Oh, have I failed?
    These little talks between the Self and Soul —
    Oh, don't you think? — still help us toward the Goal;
    They help us shape the Universal Laws
    In sweet accordance with our glorious Cause!"
    "Hermione," said I, "they do! They do!"
    "Thank you," said she, "I KNEW you'd understand!"
    I said to her, the while I pressed her hand,
    "All, all, my interest I owe to you!"

    And then I left, and following my feet
    Soon found that they had led me to the street.

       V

    And there I found a burly Garbage Man
    Who through bleak winter nights from can to can
    Goes on his ashy way, sans rest or pause,
    Goes on his way, still faithful to his Cause.

    "Tell me," said I, "if now across the verge
    Of night should come the kindly Cosmic Urge,
    Strong-armed and virile, full of vim and help,
    And offer you with thee here cans to help,
    Would you accept the Cosmic Urge's aid,
    Or would you rise up free and unafraid
    And say, 'My restless Personality
    Bids me return a negative to thee!'"

    "Old scout," says he, "I've never really brought
    My intellects to bear on that there though!
    I gets no help, I asks no help from none —
    But I have noticed, bo, that one by one,
    And soon or late, and gradual, day by day,
    Most things in life eventual comes my way!
    Into the Ashes Can the whole world goes,
    Old hats, old papers, toys and styles and clo'es,
    Eventual they dump "em down the bay!"

       VI

    Symbolic Garbage Man! Sans rest or pause,
    In steadfast faith work for thy Sacred Cause!
    Some time, perhaps, all piles of twisted bunk,
    All half-baked faddists, heaps of mental junk,
    Unto the waiting Scow we'll cart away
    Eventual to dump 'em down the bay!




    THE PERFUME CONCERT



    THE Loveliest man gave us a talk the other
    evening — our Little Group of Serious
    Thinkers, you know — on the Art of the
    Future.

    And what do you think it is to be? You'd never
    guess! Never!

    The entertainment of the future will be a
    Perfume concert!

    Every scent, if you get what I mean, corresponds
    to some color, and ever color corresponds to some
    sound, and every sound corresponds to some
    emotion.

    And the truly esthetic person — the one who is
    Sensitized, if you get what I mean — will hear a
    tone on the violin, and see a color, and think
    passionately of the One he Loves, all at the same
    time, just through smelling a Rose.

    Only, of course, it must be the RIGHT KIND of a rose.

    Papa — poor der Papa is so coarse and crude
    sometimes in his attempts to be witty — Papa says it
    would be a fine idea to lead the man who talked to
    us into a boiled cabbage foundry and then watch
    him die of the noise. Papa is not Sensitized; he
    doesn't understand that the esthete really WOULD die —
    Papa resists the vibrations of the esthetic environment
    with which I have striven to surround him,
    if you get what I mean.

    Oh, to be Sensitized! To be Sensitized! To vibrate
    like a reed in the wind! To thrill like a petal
    in the sun!

    I'm having a study of my aura made. You
    know, one's soul gives off certain colors, and if
    one's individuality is to be in tune with the Cosmic
    All, one must take care that the colors about out
    do not jar with one's own Psychic Hue.

    And after one has found one's soul color, one can
    find the scent to match that color, if you get what I
    mean.

    I am going to have the house re-decorated, with
    a sweet subtle blending of perfumes in every room!

    I have always been good at matching things,
    anyhow — I perceive affinities at a glance. Psychic
    people do.

    When I was quite a small child Mamma always
    used to take me with her to the shops if there were
    ribbons or anything like that to be matched.

    I just loved it, even as a baby! And I think
    it is the greatest fun yet.

    Often I go through half a dozen shops, not because
    I want to buy anything, but just to match colors,
    you know. It gives me a thrill that nothing else does.

    Some of us are like that — some of us truly Sensitized
    Souls — we function, I mean, quite without
    being able to stop it — I hope you follow me. Isn't
    it wonderful to be in touch with the Universe in
    that way! Not, of course, that the shop girls who
    show you the fabrics and things are always understanding.

    The working classes are so often ungrateful to
    us advanced thinkers. Sometimes I am almost provoked
    to the point of giving up my Social Betterment work
    when I think HOW ungrateful they are.
    But some of us, in every age, must suffer at the
    hands of the masses for the sake of the masses, if
    you know what I mean.




    ON BEING OTHER-WORLDLY



    IT is not enough to be merely unworldly.

    One must be OTHER-WORLDLY as well, if you
    get what I mean.

    For what does all Modern Thought amount
    to if it does not minister to the Beautiful and the
    Spiritual?

    Isn't Materialism simply FRIGHTFUL?

    For the undisciplined mind, I mean. Of course,
    the right sort of mind will get good even out of
    Materialism, and the wrong sort will get harm out
    of it.

    Every time before I take up anything new I ask
    myself, "Is it OTHER-worldly? Or is it not OTHER-Worldly?''

    We were going to take up Malthusianism and
    Mendelism — our Little Group of Serious Thinkers,
    you know — and give a whole evening to them, but
    one of the girls said, "Oh let's NOT take them up.
    They sound frightfully chemical, somehow!"

    I said, "The question, my dear, is not whether
    they are chemical or un-chemical. The question is,
    Are they worldly? Or are they OTHER-Worldly?"

    That is the Touchstone. One can apply it to
    everything, simply EVERYTHING!"

    Should teachers be mothers, for instance — that
    question came up for discussion the other evening.
    And I settled the whole matter at once, with one
    question: "Is it worldly? Or is it OTHER-worldly
    for Teachers to be Mothers? Or is it merely Un-Worldly?"

    Have you seen the latest models? Some of them
    are wonderful, simply WONDERFUL! You know I
    always dress to my temperament — and I'm having
    the loveliest gown made — the skirt is ecru lace, you
    know; a double tiered effect, falling from a straight
    bodice, and the color scheme is silver and blue.




    PARENTS AND THEIR INFLUENCE



    MAMA is unadvanced enough, goodness
    knows.

    But poor, dear Papa!

    "Papa," I said to him the other day, " all conservatives
    worth listening to were radicals in their
    youth." The loveliest man told us that the other
    night — our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you
    know — and it struck me as being profound.

    And isn't profundity fascinating?

    But Papa only glowered and said, "Umph!"

    Papa, you know, is an obstructionist.

    "Papa," I said to him, "what is stubbornness in
    you has become will power in me. You will never
    dominate me — NEVER! You should study heredity;
    it's wonderful, simply WONDERFUL!

    Papa scowled and said, "Umph!"

    But you know, Parents are Doomed.

    Our little group listened to a talk the other evening
    about Parents. Mothers, particularly.

    "The menace of the Mother," it was called. I
    always make note of titles.

    This man said — he was a regular savant — I wish
    you could have heard him — my, if I weren't such
    an advanced thinker, I would be a savant ——

    Anyhow, he said, this savant, that Mothers held
    back Civilization through Selfishness — they teach
    the Child, you know, that is — er, well, you know,
    they lose sight of Ulterior Ethics and Race Morality
    while inculcating Individual Self-Improvement.

    It's frightful to think about, isn't it? Simply FRIGHTFUL!

    Then and there I resolved that if I were ever a Mother
    I would turn over the up-bringing of my children to experts
    and savants and specialists like that.

    "Papa," I said, "you allowed poor, dear Mamma
    to make me selfish — you know you did! What
    have you to say for yourself? What right had you
    to make me a Self-Indulgent Individualist?

    And, you know, I have struggled and struggled
    to get rid of the selfishness my parents trained into
    me. How I strive for Harmony and Humility!
    Nearly every night before I go to bed I say to my-
    self: "Have I been HUMBLE today? Truly humble?
    Or have I FAILED?"

    Children are not nearly SIMPLE enough these days.

    Oh, for more Simplicity! That is what we all need.

    Though I will say this for Mamma — that it
    would have been hard to train Simplicity into me
    even if she had known how.

    I had such a high-strung, sensitive, nervous organism
    as a child, you know.

    At a very early age my temperament began to show.

    And one CANNOT hide one's temperament.

    Especially if one is at all psychic, and I am, VERY.

    But if I ever have Children — well, I will take no
    chances with them.

    To begin with, I will Select their Father.

    Mamma said, when I told her that: "Hermione,
    you are HORRID!"

    Poor dear Mamma! She's SO stupid! "Mamma,"
    I said to her, of course I DON'T mean free love.
    I'm not that advanced, I hope! Though some VERY
    Nice People have written of it — it's quite respectable,
    as a theory. But you're hopelessly old-fashioned.
    I WILL select the parent of my Off-spring;
    YOU were selected."

    Mamma only groaned and said: "Anything but
    a Cave-man, Hermione."

    But I am not sure. It comes back to me again
    and again how Primitive I am in some ways.

    And to wander barefoot in the dew!

    Not really quite barefoot, of course — but with
    some of the new sandals on.




    FOTHERGIL FINCH TELLS OF HIS REVOLT AGAINST ORGANIZED SOCIETY



    BERTIE GRIGGS — you know Ethelbert
    Griggs, don't you? He does the text for
    the Paris fashions for a woman's magazine,
    and on the side he writes the most impassioned
    verse. All about Serpents and Woman, and Lillith
    and Phryne, you know.

    Bertie said to me only the other day, "Fothy, you
    are too Radical. It will keep you down in the
    world."

    "Bertie," I said, "I know I am, but can I help
    it? I spurn the world! A truly virile poet must."

    "Some day, Fothy," he said, "you will come into
    contact with the law."

    I only laughed. Bitterly, I suppose, for Bertie
    looked at me quite shocked.

    "Bertie," I said, "I expect persecution. I welcome
    it. All great souls do. I look for it. On
    one pretext or another, I will be flung into prison
    when my next volume, "Clamor, Cries and Curses'
    comes out."

    And I will, too, if I ever find a publisher who
    dares to bring it out. But they are all too cowardly!

    "Fothy," he said, "you Revolutionists are always
    talking — but what do you ever do?

    I arose with dignity. "Bertie," I said, "I am
    ready to suffer for the Cause." I turned and left
    him. I must have been pale with resolve, for he
    ran after me and caught me by the wrist. But I
    shook him off.

    I was in a desperate mood.

    "Curses upon all their Conventions!" I said, as I
    turned up the street toward Central Park. "Curses
    upon all organized society!"

    I stopped in front of Columbus's statue, at
    Columbus Circle.

    "Fool," I muttered bitterly, "to discover a new
    world"

    I shook my fist at the statue and went on.

    I wandered over to the place where they keep
    the animals, and stopped in front of one of the
    monkey cages.

    Dear, unconventional little beasts! They always
    charm my blacker moods away from me! So free,
    so untrammeled, so primitive!

    I smiled at a monkey. He smiled at me. I held
    up a peanut. He reached out his hand for it.

    I was about to fling it to him when I saw a sign
    that read:

    "Visitors are warned not to feed the animals
    under the penalty of the law."

    Always their laws! Always their restrictions!
    Always their damnable shackles! Always this
    denial of the rights of the individual!

    For a moment I stood there with the peanut in
    my hand just simply too angry for anything!

    And then I cried out, quite loudly: "Curses upon
    organized society! I will break its laws! I will
    feed the animals!"

    Always in times of great crisis I see myself quite
    plainly as if I were some other person; poets often
    do, you know; and I could not help thinking of the
    pose of Ajax defying the lightning.

    "I WILL break the law!" I cried. "So there!"

    And with that I flung the peanut right into the
    cage with all my might, and ran away, laughing
    mockingly as I ran.

    I felt that I had crossed the Rubicon, and that
    night I sat down and wrote my revolutionary poem,
    "The Defiance."

    What the Cause needs is men with Vision to see
    and Courage to perform! This is the age of Virility!




    THE EXOTIC AND THE UNEMPLOYED



    WE'VE been taking up the Exotic this week
    in poetry and painting, you know, and
    all that sort of thing — and its influence
    on our civilization.

    Really, it's wonderful — simply WONDERFUL! Quite
    different from the Erotic, you know, and from the
    Esoteric, too — though they'll all mixed up with it
    sometimes.

    Odd, isn't it, how all these new movements seem
    to be connected with one another?

    One of the chief differences between the Exotic in
    art and other things — such as the Esoteric, for
    instance — is that nearly everything Exotic seems to
    have crept into our art from abroad.

    Don't you think some of those foreign ideas are
    apt to be — well, dangerous? That is, to the
    untrained mind?

    You can carry them too far, you know — and if
    you do they work into your subconsciousness.

    One of the girls — she belongs to the same Little
    Group of Advanced Thinkers that I do — has been so
    taken with the Exotic that she wears orchids all the
    time and just simply CRAVES Chinese food. "My
    love," she said to me only yesterday, "I feel that I
    must have chop suey or I'll DIE! The Exotic has
    worked into her subliminal being, you know.

    She has an intense and passionate nature, and
    I'm sure I don't know what would become of her
    if it were not for the spiritual discipline she gets
    out of modern thought.

    Next week we're taking up Syndicalism — it's
    frightfully interesting, they say, and awfully
    advanced.

    I suppose it's a new kind of philosophy or socialism,
    or maybe anarchy — or something like that.
    [Most of these new things that come along nowadays
    ARE something like that, aren't they.

    I'm sure the world owes a debt to its advanced
    thinking which it can never repay for always
    keeping abreast of topics like that.

    Not that I've lost my interest in any of the older
    forms of sociology, you know, just because I am
    keeping up with the newer phases of it.

    Only yesterday I rode about town in the car and
    had the chauffeur stop a while every place where
    they were shoveling snow.

    The nicest man was with me — he is connected
    with a settlement, and has given his life to sociology
    and all that sort of thing.

    "Just think," I said to him, "how much real practical
    sociology we have right here before us — all
    these men shoveling snow — and how little they realize,
    most of them, that their work is taking them
    into sociology at all."

    He didn't say anything, but he seemed impressed.

    And I'm not sure the unemployed should be grateful
    to the serious thinkers for the careful study we
    give them. Don't you think so?




    SOULS AND TOES



    I went to a Soul Fight at Hermione's

    And nothing normal can describe it . . .

    It was beyond rhyme, reason, rum, rhubarb or rhythm . . .

    Therefore, Vers Libre Muse, help me!

    Imagist outcast with the bleary eyes,

    My psychic Pup, my polyrhythmic hound, lift up
       Your voice and help me howl!

    Tenth Muse, doggerel muse, slink hither, brute,

    And lick your master's hand . . . I've need of
       Thee . . .

    Come catercornered on three legs with doubtful tail
       And eager eyes . . .

    Tomorrow I may bash you in the ribald ribs again

    And publicly disown you;

    But oh! Today I've need of thee . . .

    Winged mongrel, mutt divine, come here and help
       Me bay the piebald moon!



    It was a Soul Fight at Hermione's . . .

    A fat Terpsichore with polished toes . . . a barefoot she Soul

    With ten Achaian toes . . . and each toe had a separate soul, she said . . .

    Was there . . . not only there, but IT.

    She sat upon a couch and lectured . . . not with words,

    But with her toes, her eloquent, her temperamental toes . . .

    Her topes that had trod (so she said) the paths of beauty

    Since Hector was a pup at Troy . . .

    She sat upon a couch . . . bards, swamis and Hermione,

    Gilt souls and purple, melomaniacs, yellow souls
       And blue,

    Souse socialists and other cognac-scented cognoscenti,

    Post-cubist chicles that would ne'er jell into gum . . .

    All, all the little groups from all the brainstorm Slums . . .

    Why specify? . . . we know our little groups!
       . . . where there . . .

    Were there to worship at those feet . . . to vibrate
        and change color with the moods of those unusual feet. . . .

    "This toe," she said, "is Beauty . . . this is Art . . .

    This toe is Italy, and this is Greece." . . .

    A poet, quite beside himself with inspiration,

    Suddenly arose and cried:
       "This little pig went to market,
          This little pig stayed home
       This little pig was Greece,
          This little pig was Rome!"

    But they chilled him . . . he went Into the Silences . . .

    And Terpischore resumed:

    "My ten toes are: Beauty, Art, Italy, Greece,
       Life, Music, Psyche, Color, Motion, Liberty!
    Put yourself into a receptive attitude now, and
       Beauty will speak to you!"
    And while a satellite ran rosy fingers down a lute,
       she moved the toe named Beauty to and fro . . .

    A hush fell on the assembled nuts, as Beauty moved . . .
    As Beauty spoke to them . . .
    "I see," murmured Hermione to Fothergil Finch,
       "I see,
    As that toe moves . . . the Isles of Greece . . .
       And Aphrodite rising
    From the Acropolis." . . . "You mean," said Fothergil, "from the Aegean!"
    "It is all one," said Hermione, "the point is that
       I see her rising!"

    Then Color spoke to them . . .
    "As that toe moves," said Ravenswood Wimble, "I
       see the heavens
    Turned into one vast Kaleidoscope . . . all the stars
       and moons
    Dance through my soul like flakes of colored glass!"
    Then waved the toe called Life, and as with one
       accord each of the company
    Leapt gasping to his or her feet, as the case might be,
    And cried: "I feel! I feel! I feel! I feel the Cosmic Urge!"

    Then moved the toe called Italy,
    And Fothergil Finch remarked: "Roses . . .
       roses . . . roses . . .
    Onions and roses . . . roses are onions, and onions pigs . . .
    And pigs are beautiful" . . .
    And then the serious thinkers cried as one:
    "Ah! Pigs are Beautiful!"
    "Ah, Italy; oh, Italy!" cried Fothy Finch,
    "Oh, never cease to move . . . Italy . . .
    garlic . . . Venice . . .
    Oh, bind my brows with garlic, lovely land, and
       turn me loose!"
    And as the toe called Italy still moved
    The little groups made it into a chant, and sang:
    "Oh, bind my brows with garlic, love, and turn me loose!"

           * * *

    "Hermione," I asked her afterward,
    "Did you really see and feel anything when those
       educated toes wiggled?"
    "How can you ask?" she said, very up-stagey.
    "Hermione," I said, "we are old enough friends by
       this time, so we can deal frankly with one
       another. Tell me on the square . . . did you
       get it?"
    "You are blaspheming at the shrink of Art!" she said.
    "Hermione! You are dodging!"
    "Did you notice," she said irrelevantly, "the nail
       polish she was using?
    "It's QUITE the latest thing! For finger nails, too,
       you know. That delicate rose pink, with just
       the touch of creaminess in it! It's the creamy
       tint that's new, you know. Isn't it simply
       wonderful?"




    KULTUR, AND THINGS



    Do you know, Kultur isn't the same thing at
    all as culture . . . FANCY!

    When we took it up — Kultur, I mean yes, —
    we took it up in quite a serious way the other
    evening — our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you
    know — and threshed it out thoroughly — we hadn't
    the slightest idea that it would lead us straight to
    Nietzsche and — and, well, all those people like that,
    if you get what I mean. Though, of course, as the
    man who spoke to us — he was the LOVELIEST person!
     — spoke in German, we may have missed some of
    the finer shades.

    Oh, yes, I had German in high school . . . really,
    I was quite proficient . . . although, of course,
    it's such a GUTTURAL kind of language — don't you
    think? — that one wonders how they EVER sing it.
    And then, the verbs! . . . but I had Latin verbs
    about the same time, you know . . . and really,
    isn't it surprising how some of those foreign languages
    seem to RUN to verbs, if you get what I mean?

    It seems it was the Germans who invented the
    Superman . . . and I suppose we must be grateful
    to them for that, no matter what they may have
    done with him after they invented him. . . .

    I used to be quite taken with the Superman, you
    know. . . . Really, I didn't recognize how
    dangerous he might become. . . .

    I didn't know he was German at all when we
    took him up. . . .

    Have you read anything about the Blond Beast?

    I felt rather attracted toward him for a long
    time myself . . . until lately. . . . But the attraction
    passed. . . . I'm not brunette, you know, at
    all. . . . Likely that's why I lost interest in
    him. . . .

    Aren't affinities between people of different
    complexion simply WONDERFUL!

    It makes me wonder if the Eugenists can be right
    after all!

    Fothergil Finch says that's where the Eugenists
    fall down. . . . He says they don't take account
    of Affinities at all.

    Sometimes one finds it very puzzling — doesn't
    one? — the way these modern causes and movements
    seem to contradict one another!

    But if one is in tune with the Cosmic All these
    little inconsistencies don't matter.

    The Cosmic All! . . . WHAT would we do without it?

    How do you suppose people ever got along a
    generation or two ago before the Cosmos and all
    that sort of thing was discovered?

    I've often thought about it . . . and of what life
    must have been like in those days! As Emerson
    . . . or WAS it Emerson? . . . says in one of his
    poems: "Better a year of Europe than a cycle of
    Cathay!"

    That's what Fothy Finch says he always feels
    about Brooklyn . . . though I WILL say this for
    Brooklyn — the first girl I saw with courage enough
    to wear one of those ankle watches on the street
    lived in Brooklyn.

    But don't you think Brooklyn people are rather
    LIKE that . . . go to the latest things in dress, you
    know, in an EXTREME sort of way, so that people
    won't suspect they live in Brooklyn?




    THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS



    ISN'T the Christmas festival just simply WONDERFUL?

    For days beforehand I feel so uplifted — so
    well, OTHER-WORLDLY — if you know what I mean.

    Isn't it just dreadful that any MATERIAL
    considerations have to spoil such a sacred time?

    It does seem to me that somehow we might free
    ourselves of WORLDLINESS and GREEDINESS and just
    rise to the spiritual significance of the day. If only
    we could!

    And what a blessing it would be to the poor, tired
    shop girls if we could!

    Though, of course, they, the shop girls, I mean,
    must be upheld even in their weariest moments by
    the thought that they are helping on the beautiful
    impulse of giving!

    When they reflect that every article they sell is
    to be a gift from one thoughtful and loving heart
    to another they must forget the mere fatigue of the
    flesh and just feel the stimulus, the inspiration, the
    vibration!

    There are gifts, I admit, that haven't the divine
    spark of love to hallow them, but after all there
    aren't so many of that sort. Love one another is
    the spirit of Christmas — and it prevails, whatever
    the skeptics say to the contrary. And though
    it's a pity there has to be a MATERIAL side to
    Christmas at all, it's so comforting, so ennobling
    to realize that back of the material gifts is Brotherly
    Love.

    It quite reassures one about the state of the world;
    it certainly isn't getting worse with Brotherly Love
    and the Spirit of Giving animating everybody.

    Of course, Christmas giving IS a problem sometimes.
    It is SO embarrassing when somebody you'd
    forgotten entirely sends you a present.

    I always buy several extra things just for that
    emergency. Then, when an unexpected gift arrives,
    I can rush off a return gift so promptly that
    nobody'd ever DREAM I hadn't meant to send it all
    along.

    And I always buy things I'd like to have myself,
    so that if they aren't needed for unexpected people
    they're still not wasted.

    With all my spirituality, I have a practical side,
    you see.

    All well BALANCED natures have both the spiritual
    and the practical side. It's so essential, nowadays,
    to be well balanced, and it's a great relief to me to
    find I CAN be practical. It saves me a lot of trouble,
    too, especially about this problem of Christmas giving.

    I know the value of material things, for instance.
    And I never waste money giving more expensive
    presents to my friends than I receive from them.
    That's one of the advantages of having a well
    balanced nature, a PRACTICAL side.

    And, anyway, the value of a gift is not in the
    COST of it. Quite cheap things, when they represent
    true thought and affection, are above rubies.

    Mamma and Papa are going to get me a pearl
    necklace, just to circle the throat, but beautifully
    matched pearl. I wouldn't care for an
    ostentatiously long string of pearls anyway.

    Poor, dear Papa says he really can't afford it —
    with times so hard, and those dear, pathetic
    Europeans on everybody's hands, you know — but
    Mamma made him understand how necessary BEAUTY is
    to me, and he finally gave in.

    Isn't it just WONDERFUL how love rules us all at
    Christmas time?





    POOR DEAR MAMA AND FOTHERGIL FINCH


           (Hermione's Boswell Loquitur)

    HERMIONE'S mother, who has figured so
    often as "Poor dear Mama" in these
    pages, has come out definitely for Suffrage.

    Someone told her that there was an alliance between
    the liquor interests and the anti-Suffagists and she
    believed it, and it shocked her.

    Since the activities of her daughter have brought
    her into contact with Modern Though her life has
    been chiefly passed in one or another of three
    phases: She has been shocked, she is being
    shocked, or she fears that she is about to be shocked.

    She is nearing fifty and rather stout, though her
    figure is still not bad. She has an abundance of
    chestnut hair, all her own, and naturally wave; her
    hands are pretty, her feet are pretty, her face is pretty.
    Her mouth is very small, almost disproportionately so,
    and her eyes are very large and blue and very wide
    open. She was intended for a placed
    woman, but Hermione and Modern Thought
    have made complete placidity impossible. She has
    a fondness for rich brocades and pretty fans are
    chocolate candy and big bowls of roses and comfortable
    chairs. When she was Hermione's age
    she used to do water color sketches; the outlines
    were penciled in by her drawing teacher, and she
    washed on the color very smoothly and neatly; but
    she heard a great many stories concerning the
    dissolute lives that artists lead and she gave it up.
    Nevertheless, she sometimes says: "Hermione
    comes by her interest in Art quite naturally."

    Fothergil Finch and I called recently. Hermione
    was not in, and her mother suggested that we wait
    for her. Hermione's mother looks upon all of
    Hermione's friends with more or less suspicion,
    and she would not permit Fothergil in particular to
    be about the place for a moment if she were not
    obliged to; but she does not have the requisite stern-
    ness of character to resist her daughter. Fothergil,
    knowing that he is not approved of, scarcely does
    himself justice when Hermione's mother is present;
    although he endeavors to avoid offending her.

    "Have you seen the play, 'Young America'?"
    asked Fothergil, searching for a safe topic of
    conversation.

    A little ripple of alarm immediately ruffled the
    lakeblue innocence of her eyes.

    "If it is a Problem Play, I have not," she said,
    "I consider such things dangerous."

    "But it isn't, you know," said Fothergil eagerly.
    It's a — a — it's a perfectly NICE play.
    It's about a dog!"

    "About a dog!" Her eyebrows went up, and her
    mouth rounded itself with the conviction that no
    perfectly nice play could possibly be about a dog.
    "I think that is dreadfully Coarse!" she said.

    "But it isn't," protested Fothergil. "It's just the
    SORT of thing you'd like."

    "Indeed!" She felt slightly insulted at his assumption
    of what she would like, and dismissed
    the subject with a wave of her pretty hand. Fothergil
    tried again.

    "I hope," he said ingratiatingly, "that you haven't
    been bothered by mosquitoes." She looked
    a bit frightened, but said nothing, and he dashed on
    determinedly. "You know, this is a new variety
    of mosquitoes we've been having this year. Most
    of them have stripes on their legs, you know, but
    these have black legs this year. But maybe you
    haven't noticed — — "

    He stopped in midcareer. The preposterous idea
    that she could be interested in examining the legs
    of mosquitoes had too evidently outraged Hermione's
    mother. Fothergil, flushed and embarrassed, tried
    to make it better and made it worse.

    "Maybe you haven't noticed their — er — limbs,"
    said Fothergil.

    "I have not," she murmured.

    Fothergil desperately persevered.

    "We don't see so much as we used to of —
    of — — " (I am sure he didn't know he was
    going to finish the sentence when he began it, but
    he plunged ahead) — "of the Queen Anne style of
    architecture."

    With visible relief, and yet with a lurking suspicion,
    she assented. And Fothergil, feeling himself
    on safe ground at last, went on:

    "Don't you think she was one of the most interesting
    queens in English history — Queen Anne?
    Do you remember the anecdote — — ?

    But she checked him, frightened again:

    "I do not wish to hear it, Mr. Finch," she said.

    "But," said Fothergil, "She was a most unexceptional
    Queen — not like, er — not like — well,
    Cleopatra, you know, or any of those bad ones."

    Hermione's mother was silent, but it was apparent
    that she feared the talk was about to veer toward
    Cleopatra.

    "When I was a girl," she said, "the lives of
    queens were considered rather dangerous reading
    for young women. You need not go into details,
    please."

    I couldn't stand it any more myself. "If you'll
    just tell Hermione I called," I said, edging toward
    the door. Fothergil, however, stuck it out. In the
    frenzy of embarrassment he must have lost his
    head completely. For as I left I heard him be-
    ginning:

    "Did you read the story in the papers today of
    the man who killed his wife? Crimes of passion are
    becoming more and more frequent. . . ."




    PRISON REFORM AND POISE



    AREN'T you just crazy about prison reform?

    The most wonderful man talked to us — to
    our Little Group of Advanced Thinkers, you
    know — about it the other evening.

    It made me feel that I'd be willing to do anything,
    simply ANYTHING! — to help those poor, unfortunate
    convicts. Collect money, you know, or give talks,
    or read books about them, or make any other
    sacrifice.

    Even get them jobs. One ought to help them to
    start over again, you know.

    Though as for hiring one of them myself, or
    rather getting Papa to — well, really, you know,
    one must draw the line somewhere!

    But it's a perfectly fascinating subject to take up,
    prison reform is.

    It gives one such a sense of brotherhood — and of
    service — it's so broadening, don't you think? —
    taking up things like that?

    And one must be broad. I ask myself every night
    before I go to bed: "Have I been BROAD today?
    Or have I failed?"

    Though, of course, one can be TOO broad, don't you think?

    What I mean is, one must not be so broad that
    one loses one's poise in the midst of things.

    Poise! That is what this age needs!

    I suppose you've heard wide-brimmed hats are
    coming in again?




    AN EXAMPLE OF PSYCHIC POWER



    HAVE you thought deeply concerning the
    Persistence of Personal Identity?

    We took it up the other evening — our
    little group, you know — in quite a thorough way —
    devoted an entire evening to it.

    You see, there's a theory that after Evolution has
    evolved just as far as it possibly can, everything
    will go to smash, but then Evolution will start all
    over again. And everything that has happened be-
    fore will happen again.

    Only the question is whether the people to whom
    it is happening again will know whether they
    are the same people to whom it has happened
    before.

    That's where the question of Persistence of
    Personal Identity comes in. FRIGHTFULLY
    fascinating, isn't it?

    For my part I'd just as soon not be reincarnated
    as to be reincarnated and not know anything about
    it, wouldn't you?

    Of course, one's Subliminal Consciousness might
    know about it, and give one intimations.

    I've had intimations like that myself — really!

    I'm dreadfully psychic, you know.

    Sometimes I quite startle people with my psychic
    power.

    Fothergil Finch was here the other evening —
    you know fothergil Finch, the poet, don't you? —
    and I astounded him utterly by reading his inmost
    thoughts.

    He had just finished reading one of his poems —
    a vers libre poem, you know; all about Strength and
    Virility, and that sort of thing. Fothergil is just
    simply fascinated by Strength and Virility, though
    you never would think it to look at him — he is so —
    so — well, if you get what I mean you'd think to
    look at him that he'd be writing about violets instead
    of cave men.

    "Fothy," I said, when he had finished reading
    the poem, "I know what you are thinking — what
    you are feeling!"

    "What?" he said.

    "You're thinking," I said, 'how WONDERFUL a
    thing is the Cosmic Urge!"

    Thoughts come to me just like that — leap to me —
    right out of nowhere, so to speak.

    Fothy was staggered; he actually turned pale;
    for a minute or two he could scarcely speak. There
    had been scarcely a WORD about Cosmic Urge in
    the poem, you know; he'd hardly mentioned it.

    "It is wonderful," he said, when we got over the
    shock; "wonderful to be understood!" And you
    know, really — poor dear! — so many people don't
    understand Fothy at all. Nor what he writes,
    either.

    But the strangest thing was — I wish I could make
    you understand how positively EERIE it makes me
    feel — that just the instant before he said, "It is
    wonderful to be understood!" I knew he was going
    to say it. I got that psychically, too!

    "Fothy," I said, "It is absolutely WEIRD — I
    eavesdropped on your brain the second time!"

    "Wonderful!" he said, "but the still more
    wonderful thing would be — — "

    And before he could finish the sentence it happened
    the THIRD time! I interrupted and finished it
    for him.

    "The still more wonderful thing would be," I said,
    "if it were NOT so."

    "Heavens!" he cried, "this is getting positively ghostly."

    And you know, it almost was. Not that I'm superstitious
    at all, you know, in the vulgar way. But in the dim
    room — I always have just candlelight in
    the drawing-room — it fits in with my more reflective
    moods, somehow — I believe one must suit one's
    environment to one's mood, don't you? — in the dim
    room, all those thoughts flying back and forty between
    my brain and his gave me a positively creepy
    feeling. And Fothy was so shaken I had to give
    him a drink of Papa's Scotch before he went out
    into the night.




    SOME BEAUTIFUL THOUGHTS



    (Fothergil Finch, the Vers Libre Bard)


    OH, the Beautiful Mud! I always leave it on
    my boots. It is sacred to me. Because in
    it are the souls of lilies!

    The Hog should be a sacred beast. Hogs are
    Beautiful! They are close to the Mire! Oh, to be
    a Swine!

    What is more eloquent than a Sneeze? The
    Sneeze is the protest of the Free Spirit against the
    Smug Citizen who never exposes himself to a cold.
    Oh, Beautiful Sneezes! Oh, to make my life one
    loud explosive Sneeze in the face of Conventionality!

    What is so free, so untrammeled, so ungyved, so
    unconventional, as an Influenza Germ? From
    throat to throat it floats, full of the spirit of true
    democratic brotherhood, making the masses equal
    with the classes, careless, winged ungyved! Oh,
    the Beautiful Germ! Oh, to be an Influenza Germ!

    What is so naive as a Hiccough! Oh, to be ingenuous,
    unspoiled, beautiful, barbaric! Oh, the
    hiccoughs, the beautiful hiccoughs, the hiccoughs
    of Art uttered against the hurricane of time.

    Bugs are Beautiful! Oh, the beautiful, sleek
    slithery bugs. Oh, to be a water-bug of poesy skipping
    across the flood of oblivion! Oh, to be a Bug!

    I went down to the waterfront where they sell
    fish and there I saw a fisherman who had caught a
    Dogfish, and he cursed, but I said to him, "Do not
    curse the Dogfish! The Dogfish is Symbolical! The
    Dogfish is beautiful! Beautiful!"

    Oh, the lovely Garbage Scows! I went down the
    bay, and there I saw them dump the Garbage Scows!
    I said to the man who sailed my boat: "What does
    the Garbage Scow MEAN to you?" He was a
    Philistine; he was Bourgeois; he was Smug; he was
    Conventional, and he said: "A Garbage Scow means a
    Garbage Scow to me!" But I said to him: "You
    are Academic; you are Conservative! Garbage
    Scows are lovely Symbols! Oh, my Argosies of
    Dream! Oh, my beautiful Garbage Scows! Some
    day even the Philistines of Benighted America will
    see the Spiritual Significance of the Lovely Garbage
    Scow!"

    I found a Glue Factory, a Free Untrammeled
    Glue Factory! I was expressing itself. It was
    asserting its individuality. It was saying to the
    Blind Complacent Pillars of Polite Society: "My
    aroma is not your aroma, but my aroma is my
    own!" Oh, the Courageous Glue Factory, the Free,
    Unfettered Glue Factory! A thousand Glue Factories,
    from Main to Oregon, are thus rebuking Class
    Prejudice and Bourgeois Smugness. Like
    Poets, like Prophets of the New Art, they stand,
    Glue Factory after Glue Factory, expressing their
    Egos, Being Themselves, undaunted, unshackled,
    strong, independent, virile! Oh, to be the Poet of
    the Super Glue Factory!

    With violets in my hands I wandered to the
    wilds, and there I met a Buzzard. He was Being
    Himself! I wove a wreath of the violets and I
    crowned the Buzzard, and the Buzzard said, "Why
    do you crown me?" And I said, "Oh, Lovely Buzzard,
    are you not Being Yourself? Are you not
    rebuking the Trivial Conventionalities of our Organized
    Society? I know your Dream, O Buzzard!
    Accept this Crown of Violets from our little
    group!"

    Come with me to the zoo, and I will bare our
    Souls to the Hyena, and the Hyena will commune
    with us, and we will know the meaning of Life!
    Oh, the lovely Hyena.




    THE BOURGEOIS ELEMENT AND BACKGROUND



    ISN'T it simply wonderful about D'Annunzio
    enlisting as a common soldier and digging
    trenches along with the Due D'Abruzzi and
    those other Italian poets? Or was it D'Abruzzi?
    Anyhow, it was one of those poets that were
    always talking about the Superman.

    Although, I must say, one doesn't hear so much
    about the Superman these days, does one? The
    Superman is going out, you know.

    One of my friends — she's quite an advanced
    thinker, too, and belongs to our little group — told
    me a year or so ago, "Hermione, I will NEVER marry
    until I find a Superman!"

    "Of course, that is all right, my dear," I said
    to her, "but how about Genetics?"

    Because, you know, the slogan of our little group
     — that is, one of the slogans — is "Genetics or
    Spinsterhood!"

    It made her quite angry for some reason. She
    pursed her lips up and acted shocked.

    "It is all very well, Hermione," she said, "to
    discuss Genetics in the ABSTRACT. But to connect the
    discussion with the marriage of a FRIEND is not, to
    my mind, the proper thing at all!"

    Did you ever hear of anything more utterly in-
    consistent?

    Oh, Consistency! Consistency! Isn't Consist-
    ency perfectly wonderful!

    But that is always the way when it comes to
    a discussion of Sex. The Bourgeois Element are
    NEVER Fundamental and Thorough in their
    treatment of Sex, if you know what I mean.

    And, as Fothergil Finch says, in this country we
    are NEARLY all Bourgeois.

    We have not had enough Background for one thing.

    If all the little groups the country over would
    take up the matter of Background in a serious way,
    something might be done about it, don't you think?

    We must organize — we who are the intellectual
    leaders, you know — and start an effective propaganda
    for the purpose of obtaining more Background.





    TAKING UP THE LIQUOR PROBLEM



    WE'RE thinking of taking up the Liquor
    problem — our little group, you know, —
    in quite a serious way.

    The Working Classes would be so much better
    off without liquor. And we who are the leaders
    in thought should set them an example.

    So a number of us have decided to set our faces
    very sternly against drinking in public.

    Of course, a cocktail or two and an occasional
    stinger, is something no one can well avoid taking,
    if one is dining out or having supper after the
    theater with one's own particular crowd.

    But all the members of my own particular little
    group have entered into a solemn agreement not
    to take even so much as a cocktail or a glass of
    wine if any of the working classes happen to be
    about where they can see us and become corrupted
    by our example.

    The Best People owe those sacrifices to the
    Masses, don't you think?

    Of course, the waiters, and people like that,
    really belong to the working classes too, I suppose.

    But, as Fothergil Finch says, very often one
    wouldn't know it. And who could expect a waiter
    to be influenced one way or another by anything?
    And it's the home life of the working classes that
    counts, anyhow.

    When we took up Sociology — we gave several
    evenings to Sociological Discussion, you know,
    besides doing a lot of practical Welfare Work — it
    was impressed upon me very strongly that if one is to
    do anything at all for the Masses one must first
    SWEETEN their Home Life.

    Though Papa made me stop poking around into
    the horrid places where they live for fear I might
    catch some dreadful disease.

    And the people we visited weren't all that grateful.
    So VERY OFTEN the Masses are not.

    One dreadful woman, you know, claimed that
    she couldn't keep her rooms — she had two rooms,
    and she cooked and washed and slept and sewed
    in them and there were five in the family — claimed
    that she couldn't keep her rooms in any better shape
    because they were so out of repair and the plumbing
    was bad and the windows leaked and all that
    sort of thing, you know, and one of the rooms was
    ENTIRELY dark.

    I preached the doctrine of fresh air and sunshine
    and cleanliness to her, you know, and the imprudent
    thing told me Papa owned the building and
    it wasn't true at all — Papa only belonged to the
    company that owned the building. One can't do
    much for people who will not be truthful with one,
    can one?

    Besides, it is the Silent Influence that counts more
    than arguments and visiting.

    If one makes one's life what it should be Good
    will Radiate.

    Vibrations from one's Ego will permeate all
    classes of society.

    And that is the way we intend to make ourselves
    felt with regard to the Liquor Problem. We will
    inculcate abstemiousness by example.

    Abstemiousness, Fothy Finch says, should be our
    motto, rather than Abstinence. We shall be QUITE
    careful not to identify ourselves with the MORE
    VULGAR aspects of the propaganda.

    And of course at social functions in our private
    homes total abstinence is quite out of the question.

    The working classes wouldn't get any example
    from our homes, anyone; for of course we never
    come into contact with them there.

    But the working classes must be saved from
    themselves, even if all the employers of labor have
    to write out a list of just what they eat and
    drink and make them buy only those things. They
    simply MUST be saved.

    Not that they'll appreciate it. They never do. If
    I were not an incorrigible idealist I would be
    inclined to give them up.

    But someone must give up his life to leading them
    onward and upward. And who is there to do it if
    not we leaders of Modern Thought?




    THE JAPANESE ARE WONDERFUL, IF YOU GET WHAT I MEAN



    DON'T you just dote on the Japanese?

    They're so esoteric — and subtle and all that
    sort of thing, aren't they?

    Just look at Buddhism and Shintoism, for
    instance. Could anything be more subtle and
    esoteric?

    We've been taking them up — our Little Group
    of Serious Thinkers, you know — and they've
    wonderful, simply WONDERFUL!

    Not, of course, that one would BE a Buddhist or
    a Shintoist — but it's broadening to the mind, don't
    you think, to come in contact with the great
    thought of — of — well, really of people like Shinto,
    you know, and those other sages?

    And how wonderfully artistic they are — the
    Japanese!

    The new parasols are quite Japanese, you know.
    Haven't you seen them?

    I have three, for different costumes. One is
    covered with embroidered Japanese crepe, and an-
    other with martine silk.

    But the one, I think that express ME the most
    accurately — the one that represents my individuality,
    REALLY — is made with gold spokes covered with
    black Chantilly lace. Japanese shape, you know,
    and French workmanship.

    And one must strive to represent one's self if one
    is to be honest.

    One must put one's soul into one's environment.

    Although Environment isn't what it used to be.
    You don't hear Environment spoken of nearly as
    often as you did.

    Environment is going out.

    But besides being so esoteric and exotic and artistic,
    and all that sort of things, the Japanese are
    wonderfully up to date, too.

    Do you know, they actually have a battleship
    named The Tango!

    Have you thought deeply of Interstellar Communication?

    It promises to be one of the great new problems.

    The loveliest man talked to us about it the other
    evening. "Interstellar Communication in Its Relation
    to Recent Psychic Hypotheses" — that's the title;
    I wrote it down. I always take notes of a title like that.
    It helps one to get to the heart of the matter.

    Interstellar Communication is wonderful — simply WONDERFUL!

    We're going to take up Mars soon.

    Mamma said to me only yesterday: "Hermione,
    you SIMPLY MUST drop some of your serious subjects
    during the hot weather."

    "Mamma," I told her, "that was all very well in
    your day — to take things up and drop them at will.
    But people didn't have a Social Conscience in those
    times. We advanced thinkers owe a duty to the
    race. We must grapple with things. We are not
    content to frivol, I WILL take up Mars!"

    And, you know, I don't have the temperament to
    remain idle. My mind MUST be active. Sometimes
    when I think how active my mind is, I wonder my
    forehead isn't wrinkled.

    And of course that would be a loss — anything
    is a loss that destroys Beauty.

    For, after all, Beauty is what the world needs
    more than anything else. It's a serious thought —
    how far Use should be sacrificed to Beauty, and
    Beauty to Use, isn't it?

    You know that's why I can't join the suffragists.
    I am one, of course, but the suffragist yellow is
    such a HORRID color I simply CANNOT wear it.




    SHE REFUSES TO GIVE UP THE COSMOS



    WE'VE taken up Gertrude Stein — our Little
    Group of Serious Thinkers, you know —
    and she's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL.

    She Suggests the Inexpressible, you know.

    Of course, she is a Pioneer. And with all
    Pioneers — don't you think — the Reach is greater
    than the Grasp.

    Not that you can tell what she means.

    But in the New Art, one doesn't have to mean
    things, does one? One strikes the chords, and the
    chords vibrate.

    Aren't Vibrations just too perfectly lovely for
    anything?

    The loveliest man talked to us the other night
    about World Movements and Cosmic Vibrations.

    You see, every time the Cosmos vibrates it means
    a new World Movement.

    And the Souls that are in Tune with the Cosmos
    are benefitted by these World Movements. The
    other souls will get harm out of them.

    Frightfully interesting, isn't it? — the Cosmos, I mean.

    I have given so much thought to it! It has be-
    come almost an obsession to me.

    Only the other evening I was thinking about it.
    And without realizing that I spoke aloud I said,
    "I simply could NOT DO WITHOUT the Cosmos!"

    Mamma — poor Mamma! — she is so terribly
    unadvanced you know! — Mama said: "Hermione,
    I do not know what the Cosmos is. But this I
    do know — not another Sex Discussion or East
    Indian Swami will ever come into THIS house!"

    "Mamma," I said to her, "I will NOT give up the
    Cosmos. It means everything to me; simply EVERYTHING!"

    I am always firm with Mamma; it is kinder, in
    the long run, to be quite positive. But what I
    suffer at home from objections to the advanced
    movements nobody knows!

    Nobody but the Leaders of Thought can dream
    what Martyrdom is!

    Sacrifice! Sacrifice! That is the keynote of the
    Liberal Life!

    Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself:
    "Have I shown the Sacrificial Spirit to day?
    Or have I FAILED?"




    THE CAVE MAN



    DON'T you think the primitive is just simply
    too fascinating for anything? We've all
    got it in us, you know, and it seems like
    nowadays the more cultured and advanced one is the
    more likely the primitives is to break out on one.

    I have a strong strain of the primitive in me, you know.

    I wouldn't take anything for it — it's simply
    wonderful — wonderful!

    It comes over me so strong at times, the yearning
    for the primitive does, that I just sit with a dreamy
    look on my face and murmur to myself: "ALONE,
    ALONE — UNDER THE STARS! ALONE!"

    Mamma overheard me saying that the other day
    and thought I had gone crazy, and she said: "for
    Heaven's sake, Hermione, what are you thinking
    about, and what do you want?"

    "The stars," I murmured, scarcely knowing that
    I spoke aloud, "the stars and my Cave Man!"

    Mamma was shocked — she says for an unmarried
    woman to think of Cave Men is simply indelicate.

    Mamma is not at all advanced, you know.

    She's dear and sweet, but she doesn't believe in
    Trial Marriages at all.

    And I must admit they shocked me when I first
    heard about them. But that was before I had taken
    up these things seriously.

    "Mamma," I said to her, "it is no use for you to
    pretend to be shocked. I have a right to happiness.
    And happiness to me means being alone, under the
    stars, and walking barefoot and bareheaded in the
    dew."

    "Alone with a Cave Man!" she said. And then
    she cried.

    Tears! — that is so like the old-fashioned woman!

    "Mamma," I said, kindly, but firmly, "If it is my
    destiny to be kidnaped by a Cave Man and taken
    into the waste places, under the stars, can I avoid it?"

    She said I could at least be respectable, and that
    I was acting like I WANTED to be kidnaped.

    And, you know, at times I do feel as if that
    might be my fate, "really. I am so psychic, you
    know, and psychics feel their fate coming on quicker
    than most people.

    I told Mamma that I felt every woman had a
    right to choose the father of her own children, and
    she was shocked again. And then she wanted to
    know what being kidnaped by a Cave Man had
    to do with choosing the father of one's own children,
    and how did I know but these Cave Men
    kidnaped a different woman every year?

    But I settled her.

    "Mamma," I said, "you are NOT advanced, and
    so I cannot argue with you. You wouldn't understand.
    But if I AM primitive — and I feel that
    I am — whose fault is it? Who did I inherit it from?"

    She couldn't say anything to that. She didn't
    like to own that I inherited it from her. And she
    knew if she blamed it onto Papa I would ask her
    how she DARED to deny me a primitive man when
    she had married one herself.

    Finally she quit crying and said, pressing her
    lips together: "Hermione, do you KNOW any of
    those Cave Men?"

    But I refused to answer. I went to my room.

    Dissension disturb's the soul's harmony.

    One's subliminal consciousness must ever vibrate
    in harmony with the Cosmic All.

    I never fuss when a person disturbs me. I just
    go into the Silences and vibrate there.

    But I kept thinking: "DO I know any Cave Men?"

    I Think I do — one. He tries to conceal it. But
    it's his secret. I'm sure.

    He has the most luminous eyes!

    Like a wolf's, you know, when it gallops across
    the waste places — under the stars, alone!

    And the way he eats! I don't mean that he's
    noisy, you know. But the way he crunched a chicken
    bone the last time he dined with me was perfectly
    WONDERFUL — so nonchalant, you know, and loudly
    and — and — well, primitive! I'm SURE he's one!

    I wouldn't go autoing with him for anything —
    unless, of course, he gave me one of those compelling
    glances, like Cave Men do in the magazines, you know.
    Then I'd know it was destiny and useless to resist.




    THE LITTLE GROUP GIVES A PAGAN MASQUE



    The Little Group gave a party
       And all of the gods were there,
    From Thor to Miss Susan Astarte
       With doo-daddles gemming her hair,

    Bill Baldur and Jane Aphrodite,
       Dick Vishnu and Benny O'Baal,
    And Bacchus came on in a nightie
       With little pink snakes in the tail;

    Latin, Phoenician and Hindu
       Norse and Egyptian and Chink. . . .
    Castor was watching his Twin do
       Stunts, with a brotherly wink. . . .

    Persephone swearing by Hades. . . .
       A Norn and Sibylline Simp. . . .
    A Momus, who showed up to the ladies
       The latest Olympian limp.

    Was Hermione present? By Crikey!
       (This Crikey's a Whitechapel joss)

    Our Hermy attended as Psyche —
       She siked and she got it across

    And Fothergil Finch, rather gaumy
       With Cosmic cosmetics, was there,
    But the Swami went just as the Swami,
       After oiling the kinks in his hair.

    I said to Hermione: "Goddess!
       You're graceful, you're Greek, you're a rose,
    From the pinions that rise from your bodice
       To the raddle I note on your toes,

    "And Fothergil, here, with his censer,
       And his little cheeks crimson as beets,
    Your acolyte, perfume-dispenser,
       Is sweet as a page out of Keats,

    "But tell me, my Dea — my Psyche! —
       (With your wings outspread as to race
    With that swift and acephalous Nike
       Who lost her bean somewhere in Thrace) —

    "My Thea — my classical pigeon! —
       Is not your Sincerity shocked
    By this giddy revue of religion? . . .
       Are none of these gods being mocked? . . .

    "In the regions unknowable — Thea! —
       Where the noumenon chumbs with the Nous,
    Where the Idol gets hep to Idea,
       And pythagoras ogles a Goose,

    "In the heavens of Brahm and Osiris,
        Are they peeved with this revel, I ask? . . .
    Does Pluto like this, where his fire is? . . .
       What in hell do they think of this masque? . . .

    "Where the deities, avid of Is-ness,
       Resurge from the Flivvers that Were,
    While the wild Chaotical Whizness
       Gives place to a Cosmic Whir,

    "Do they relish this josh of the josses?
       Do they lamp not the same with a grouch?
    Are you stinging these gloomy Big Bosses
       To a keener, immortaler ouch?"

    Hermione murmured: "How eerie!
       You are voicing my own Inner Mood!
    Ah me! but the world is less dreary
       If one is but understood!

    "And I thank you, I thank you, for rising
       To my personal point of view. . . .
    I THANK you for SYMPATHIZING! . . .
       Dear man, how you always do!"




    SYMPATHY



    OF course we're out of town for the summer —
    EVERYBODY'S out of town, now — but
    I motor in once or twice a week to keep in
    touch with some of my committees.

    Sociological work, for instance, keeps right up
    the year around.

    Of course, it's not so interesting in the winter.
    You see more striking contrasts in the winter, don't
    you think?

    A couple of girl cousins of mine from Cincinnati
    have been here. They're interested in welfare work
    of all sorts.

    "Hermione," they said, "we want to see the
    bread line."

    "My dears," I said, "I don't mind showing it to
    you, but it's nothing much to see in summer. It's
    in the winter that it arouses one's deepest sympathies."

    And one must keep one's sympathies aroused.
    Often I say to myself at night: "Have I been
    sympathetic today, or have I FAILED?"

    Mamma often lacks sympathy. She objects to
    having me reopen my Salon this winter.

    "Hermione," she said, "I don't mind the subjects
    you take up — or the people you take up with — if
    you only take them up one at a time. And I am
    glad when your own little group meets here, be-
    cause it keeps you at home. But I will NOT have
    all the different kinds of freaks here at the SAME
    TIME, sitting around discussing free love and sex
    education."

    I was indignant. "Mamma," I said, "what right
    have you to say they would discuss that all the
    time?"

    "Because," she said, "I have noticed that no matter
    whether they start with sociology or psychology,
    they always get around to Sex in the end."

    Isn't it funny about pure-minded people? — in the
    generation before this anything that shocked a pure-
    minded person like Mamma was sure to be bad.

    But now its only the evil-minded people who
    ever get shocked at all, it seems.

    The really PUREST of the pure-minded people don't
    get shocked by anything at all these days.

    I think Mamma is either getting purer-minded all
    the time or is losing some of it — I can't tell which —
    for she isn't shocked as easily as she was a few
    months ago.

    But I got a shock myself recently.

    I found out that plants have Sex, you know.

    Just think of it — carrots, onion, turnips,
    potatoes, and everything!

    Isn't it frightful to think that this agitation has
    spread to the vegetable kingdom?

    I vowed I would never eat another potato as
    long as I lived!

    And, after all, what GOOD does it do — letting the
    vegetable kingdom have Sex, I mean?

    Even a good thing, you know, can be carried too far.

    "Mamma," I told her, "you are hopelessly behind
    the times. Sex is a Great Fact. Someone must
    discuss it. And who but the Leaders of Thought
    are worthy to?"

    I intend to say nothing more about it now — but
    when the time comes I WILL reopen my Salon.

    And as far as talking about Sex is concerned —
    the right sort of mind will get GOOD out of it, and
    the wrong sort will get HARM.

    I don't really LIKE discussions of Sex any more
    than Mamma does. No really nice girl does.

    But we advanced thinkers owe a duty to the race.

    Not that the race is grateful. Especially the
    lower classes.

    It was only last week that I was endeavoring to
    introduce the cook to some advanced ideas — for her
    own good, you know, and because one owes a spiritual
    duty to one's servants — and she got angry and gave notice.

    The servant problem is frightful. It will have to
    be taken seriously.




    BLOUSES, BURGARS AND BUTTERMILK



    SOME of us — Our Little Group of Advanced
    Thinkers, you know — are going in for Bulgarian
    buttermilk.

    It came in about the time the Bulgarian blouses
    did — there was a war over there somewhere, you
    know, before this big war, that made it fashionable.

    But the blouses went out, and the buttermilk
    stayed in.

    It seems there's a Bulgarian by the name of
    Metchnikoff in Paris who sits down and designs
    these things — the buttermilk, you know, not the
    blouses.

    Isn't science wonderful — simply WONDERFUL!

    We're going to take up Metchnikoff in a serious way.
    You know what he aims to do is to lengthen life.

    The question is: "Should life be lengthened?
    Or should it not?

    The Leaders of Thought will have to thresh that
    out soon.

    The question of old age is a subtle one, isn't it?

    And it's very typical of our times, don't you think,
    that we should discuss the problems of old age?

    Other epochs have done it, of course, but not
    optimistically.

    The question enters into everything — even millinery.

    I'm having the loveliest hat adapted from a
    French model — to wear with my lingerie costumes,
    you know — a wide-brimmed black lace with a black
    velvet crown.

    It's only recently that young women could afford
    to wear black, even when it was becoming. When
    Mamma was young it was a sign that youth was
    past.

    And nowadays, age doesn't matter so much one
    way or another. A person is the age one FEELS,
    you know.

    Have you thought deeply on Hypnagogic
    Illusions? We're planning to take them up.




    TWILIGHT SLEEP



    HAVE you read anything about the Twilight
    Sleep yet? It's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!

    The loveliest man told our little group all about
    it — just the other evening.

    "Hermione," said Mamma, "I will NOT have you
    taking up any more subjects of that Easy Indian
    character. No Swami shall ever enter this house
    again!"

    "Mamma," I said to her, "you are hopelessly
    unadvanced., It has nothing whatever to do with
    Going into the Silences or Swamis. It's entirely
    scientific and not psychic at all. And if it were
    psychic, what then?"

    "No Swami," said Mamma, even more stubborn-
    ly, "shall ever darken my door again!"

    Poor, dear, stupid Mamma! She gets things so
    mixed!

    "As far as Swamis are concerned," I told her,
    "the debt we owe to them in incalculable. Where,
    for instance, would we have ever heard of Karma
    if it had not been for the Swamis?"

    She couldn't answer; she just looked stubborn;
    unadvanced people always look stubborn and glare.

    "Where," I said, "did we get the Vedantas and
    Vegetarianism and Alternate Breathing from?"

    She couldn't say a word. She just pouted.

    "Who taught us," I said, "Transmigration of
    Souls and Vibrations?"

    She broke down and cried.

    "Hermione," she said, "I simply HATE howdahs
    and cobras and swastikas and all those Oriental
    things!"

    Mamma has no idea whatever of logic. She is a
    typical old-fashioned woman.

    "Mamma," I said, "cry as much as you like. You
    shall not disturb MY inner Harmony! I will not
    permit you to. And my mind is made up. I will
    take up the Twilight Sleep in a serious way!"

    That settled it, too.

    Have you noticed, there's been just a hint of
    autumn in the air these last few days?

    Have you seen the new styles for autumn? They
    are wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!




    INTUITION



    IN spite of all we've done for them — by we I
    mean the serious thinkers of the world — some
    people are so frightfully uncultured!

    A girl asked me the other day — and the surprising
    thing about it, too, is that she belonged to our
    own Little Group of Advanced Thinkers — she asked
    me: "Hermione, don't you just done on Rubaiyat's
    poetry?"

    For a moment I couldn't think who she meant at all.

    "He's not an American, is he?" I said.

    "Oh, no," she said, "he's some sort of an Oriental."

    "It isn't Rubaiyat you're thinking of, my dear,"
    I told her. It's Rabindranath. Rabindranath
    Something-or-other, that new man — he's wonderful,
     my dear, simply wonderful."

    And then she quoted some of it and — the idea
    is too absurd for anything, but what do you sup-
    pose it was?

    Omar Khayyam — imagine!

    And really, you know, it's been years since anybody
    quoted Omar Khayyam; he's QUITE gone out, you know!

    Even the question whether he was moral doesn't
    attract any attention any more. Although as far
    as that is concerned, the pure mind will get purity
    out of him and the impure mind will get impurity.
    Honi sit qui — what is the rest of it? Oh, you
    know — it's Latin — what the Romans used to say
    about Caesar's wife and her continual suspicions.

    My, how a suspicious wife can handicap a man!

    But, of course, as women get more and more
    advanced, and know about the lives men lead, they
    are finding out that the suspicions were justified.

    Their intuitions told them so all the time.

    I have a lot of intuition myself — the moment a
    man comes I judge him in spite of myself.

    First impressions always last with me, too.

    You know, I'm very psychic.

    Sometimes I am almost frightened when I think
    of the things my intuition would tell me if I al-
    lowed it to roam at will, so to speak, among my
    friends and acquaintances.

    But I restrain it. One must, you know. The
    loveliest man gave us such an interesting talk on
    self-restraint the other evening.

    And now I always ask myself the last thing be-
    fore I go to bed at night: "Have I restrained my-
    self today? Or have I failed?"

    There is no real culture without restraint, you know.

    That's where the English are so superior, don't
    you think?

    I met the loveliest Englishman the other evening.
    The moment I saw him I said to myself he
    was one of the aristocracy. Other people have
    noses like theirs, of course, but it is only the
    English aristocracy who can CARRY that kind of a nose.

    And my intuition was correct — there are only
    five lives between him and a title, and one of those
    is a polo player and another is at the front.

    Someone told me his family were paying him
    not to go home, but what they think the poor man
    would do if he were in England I don't know,
    because they don't duel there, you know. If they
    dueled there, of course, he might dispose of all
    five lives.

    Don't you think those old European families are
    so, so — well, so ROMANTIC somehow?




    STIMULATING INFLUENCES



    SCIENCE and philanthropy should go hand in
    hand — two hearts that beat as one, if you
    know what I mean, and all that sort of thing.

    And they do, too. We were discussing it the
    other evening — our Little Group of Serious
    Thinkers, you know — and we decided that what
    philanthropy owes to science is made up by what
    science owes to philanthropy.

    Isn't it wonderful how things balance like that?

    There's the Twilight Sleep and the Mother-
    Teacher Idea, for instance.

    Our little group are thinking of starting a
    propaganda to urge ALL Teachers to be Mothers.

    And, of course, a lot of them might object — but
    along comes the Twilight Sleep and takes away all
    POSSIBLE objections.

    And along comes Philanthropy to put the Twilight
    Sleep within the reach of all — at least, we
    hope it will — and we're going to take the matter up
    with some of the Philanthropists right away.

    Isn't it just simply WONDERFUL how Modern
    Thought brings subjects like that together?

    Of course, even Modern Thought couldn't do it,
    unless the subjects belonged together, anyhow, could
    it? Unless they were — er — er — —

    Well, you know, Affinities. Though I don't care
    much for the word.

    Affinities have quite gone out, you know. You
    don't hear much about Affinities this autumn.

    Nor Soul Mates, either, for that matter.

    Though I always will say there's an IDEA behind
    all the talk about them.

    Isn't it odd about things that way — how Ideas
    come and go, you know, and become quite old-
    fashioned, and yet all the time have a QUITE
    profound Idea back of them?

    There's Cubist and Futurist Art, for instance —
    one doesn't hear nearly so much about them now,
    though everyone admitted there was an Idea
    behind them.

    Of course, no one knew what the Idea MEANT.

    But it was stimulating.

    And why should an Idea have to MEAN anything
    if it is STIMULATING?

    Stimulation! Stimulation! That is the secret
    of Modern Life!

    One should be receptive to Stimulation — one
    should strive to Stimulate!

    One owes it to the Masses to Stimulate! It is
    the DUTY of the leaders of Advanced Thought!

    Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself,
    "Have I been a Stimulating Influence today?
    Or have I failed?"

    Fothergil Finch says I Stimulate HIM!

    Poor, dear man! — he's becoming quite — quite —
    well, er — er — TOO encouraged, if you know what I mean.

    Yes, that is the way with poets.

    I doubt if ANY poet ever understood a purely
    Platonic Friendship.

    I gave him a long, long look last evening and said,
    "Fothergil, CAN you keep on the Platonic Plane?"

    He only said, "Alas! The Platonic Plane!"

    I hope he can. I need him for my Salon.

    I'm having the entire ground floor of the house
    done over for that, you know, and I may reopen it
    any time now!




    POLITICS



    I'M thinking of taking up politics in a practical
    way.

    I've never been an active suffragist, you
    know, on account of that horrid yellow color on the
    banners and things.

    But one must sacrifice Ideals of Beauty to Ideals
    of Usefulness, mustn't one?

    And politics is fascinating; simply FASCINATING!

    Going about and organizing working girls, you
    know, and seeing Corrupt Bosses and enlisting them
    for Moral Causes, and making one's self felt as a
    Force — could one make one's self more Utile?

    More spiritually Utile?

    Utility! That is what our Leaders of Thought
    need to develop!

    Nearly every night before I go to bed I say to
    myself: "Have I been Utile today? Or have I
    FAILED?"

    Politics, practical politics, will be such an outlet
    for my personality, too.

    And when I reopen my Salon I can make it count
    for the Cause, too.

    We are going to give an evening soon — our
    Group of Advanced Thinkers, you know — to a serious
     and thorough study of political economy. They
    say it's simply wonderful.

    The loveliest woman talked to us the other evening.
    She's a poet. When women have charge of
    affairs, she said, Humanitarianism, Idealism and the
    Poetic Spirit will rule in public life.

    Won't that be lovely?

    But we must be practical, and get the Bosses on
    our side. They are simply horrid people socially
    and ethically, you know. But there's something
    frightfully fascinating about the idea of bearding
    them in their dens with petitions and things.

    Though how the idea of abolishing men altogether
    will work out I don't know.

    Some of the leaders of the Cause seem to want it.
    I have no doubt that it could be done. Some plants and
    insects have only the female sex, you know. And
    maybe the human race will be that way one day.

    Although, for my part, if they could only be
    reformed I'd favor retaining men.

    There's something about them so — so — well, so
    MASCULINE somehow, if you know what I mean.

    But I must hurry — I have to do some shopping.

    Clothes are a bore, aren't they?




    HERMIONE ON PSYCHICAL RESEARCH



    SPIRITUALISM is becoming quite the thing,
    isn't it?

    Dear Sir Oliver Lodge has been proving
    some more things quite recently, you know. How
    anyone could doubt a man with such a lovely head
    and face I can't imagine.

    Spiritualism and Spiritism are quite different, you
    know. It has been a long time, really, since
    Spiritualism was taken seriously.

    Except by superstitious people, of course.

    But Spiritism has come to stay. It has nothing
    to do with superstition at all. It's part of Advanced
    Thought — quite scientific, you know, while
    Spiritualism was just a fad.

    And Spiritualism is somehow more — well, er —
    VULGAR if you get what I mean. The sort of people
    one cares to know well have dropped Spiritualism
    for Spiritism.

    Though, of course, a ghost is a ghost, whether it
    is materialized by spiritualism or Spiritism.

    I have been often told that I am naturally very
    clairvoyant — if I were developed I would make a
    splendid medium. Mediums have seen shapes
    hovering around my head, and once when I was at
    school I did some automatic writing.

    It was the strangest, easiest thing! I had a pencil
     in my hand and without thinking of anything in
    particular at all I just scribbled away, and what I
    wrote was, "When in the course of human events
    it becomes necessary; When in the course of human
    events it becomes necessary," over and over again.

    I was quite startled, for the last thing I had been
    thinking of was an algebra examination, and not
    history at all. We had had our history examination
    days before.

    I felt as if an unseen hand had reached out of
    the Silences and grasped mine!

    Wasn't it weird?

    And I know who it was, too. A distant relative
    of Mamma's on her father's side, by marriage, was
    one of the men who signed the Constitution of the
    United States in Faneuil Hall, in Philadelphia, in
    1776, and it was HIS spirit that was trying to de-
    liver his message through me!

    And only last year I came across a very similar
    case. Only this was stranger than mine, if any-
    thing. For it happened on a typewriter — which
    proves that the veil between the two worlds must
    be very thin, doesn't it, if the spirits are taking up
    modern inventions?

    It happened to one of Papa's stenographers. I
    had her up to the house to take notes for a report
    I was making to one of the sociological committees
    I was on then.

    And she took the notes and put them into shape
    for me, but when she sent the report to me the back
    of one of the sheets was just full of one sentence
    written over and over again. She didn't know she'd
    included that sheet, of course.

    It was so curious I asked her about it.

    She looked a little queer and said that when she
    wasn't thinking of anything in particular, but just
    sitting before her typewriter and not working, she
    always wrote that sentence.

    "It just comes into my head," she said, "and I
    write it."

    "An occult force guides your fingers?" I asked.

    "Yes, ma'am, that's it," she said.

    Over and over and over again she had written,
    "Now is the time for all good men to come to the
    aid of the party."

    And here is the eerie part of it — it almost frightened
    me when I got it out of her! — her father had
    been some sort of politician; a district leader, or
    something like that. And he was dead, and she
    had had to go to work.

    But he was trying to deliver a message through her!

    Isn't Psychical Research simply wonderful!

    Not that I'd care to go in for any vulgar thing
    such as tin trumpets, you know, but — —

    Well, there's the Astral Body. That hasn't been
    vulgarized at all, if you get what I mean. Really,
    the Best People have them.




    ENVOY



    HERMIONE, THE DEATHLESS

    She will not die! — in Brainstorm Slum
       Fake, Nut and Freak Psychologist
    Eternally shall buzz and hum,
       And Spook and Swami keep their tryst
       with Thinkers in a Mental Mist.
    You threaten her with Night and Sorrow?
       Out of the Silences, I wist,
    More Little Groups will rise tomorrow!

    The lips of Patter ne'er are dumb,
       The Futile Mills shall grind their grist
    Of sand from now till Kingdom Come;
       The Winds of Bunk are never whist.
       You scowl and shake an honest fist —
    You threaten her with Night and Sorrow?
       Go slay one Pseudo-Scientist,
    More Little Groups will rise tomorrow!

    With Fudge to feed the Hungry Bum
       She plays the Girl Philanthropist —
    Each pinchbeck, boy Millenium
       She swings, a Bangle, at her wrist —
       Blithe Parrot and Pert Egoist,
    You threaten her with Night and Sorrow?
       Hermiones will aye persist!
    More Little Groups will rise tomorrow!

    She, whom Prince Platitude has kissed,
       You threaten her with Night and Sorrow?
    Slay her by thousands, friend — but list:
       More Little Groups will rise tomorrow!

    (I)