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I shall quote a paragraph only; it does him more credit than many of his rather lengthy pages of analysis:

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A youth plucks, in books, the flowers of human sentiment. . . . He is like his child-brother who, picking flowers to play at being a gardener, plants them in a heap of sand, thinking that he has thus created a real garden. At noon, he leaves it bright and perfumed; but in the evening, returning, he finds the blossoms faded and he weeps, for he is but a child and does not know that flowers need roots. . . . The youth likewise is ignorant of the law which imposes certain conditions to the growth of sentiment. He does not know that ecstatic moments are rare and that one must become worthy of them, worthy of love, worthy to feel, I was going to say, worthy to suffer."

M. Jules Lemaître, that prince of critics, that most charming of writers, was elected in 1896. Those who expected intellectual fireworks from the witty polemist were disappointed. His task was to praise the historian and professor, Victor Duruy, and he accomplished that task with all the earnestness and dignity of which he was capable. He remembered that he, also, had had the honor of wearing the professor's robe. Of this oration, I shall quote only a portrait of Napoleon III which has, I think, never been equaled:

"The epic poem of his uncle's life, the marvelous strangeness of his own, acted upon him as a sort of opium, all the more that circumstances had greatly come to his aid, and that he had known the extremities of fortune without being in any sense a man of action. With halfshut eyes, he dreamed confusedly of the enfranchisement of nationalities, of the establishment of a slightly socialistic and yet Cæsarian democracy, of the historical completion of the Revolution: vast projects; how they were to be accomplished remained vague in the gentle fatalist's imagination, dazzled as he was by a prodigious destiny, of which he had been the toy and of which he thought

himself the hero."

To close this long enumeration, which is yet too short to give an idea of the infinite variety of talents sheltered by the big dome, let us take a poet dear to all of us who love winged verse - Edmond Rostand. His discourse was almost too pretty, too sparkling, too poetic. Let us pick up a dainty bit here and there, and thus take leave of the Académie Française.

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M. Rostand succeeded, in 1903, to Bornier, the author of the Fille de Roland; the Vicomte de Bornier was a small man, almost a dwarf, and he always chose gigantic subjects. M. Rostand said,— Gentlemen, I have looked over innumerable green pamphlets, on which we see Minerva portrayed. I come too late to shorten the preliminary humility, too late to find some original way of being overwhelmed. . . . Let me say, if you will, that when you were called upon to choose a successor to the author of La Fille de Roland, I happened to be the poet, who, in the course of a journey, was nearest to Roncevaux.

"I only met M. de Bornier two of three times, and I see in my mind's eye a romantic little old gentleman, sprightly and kind, with a pink face half covered with a silver beard, eyes that recalled clear water, tiny hands eternally in motion and often hidden by his big cuffs, and I know not what awkward grace which made of him a sort of hobgoblin of tragedy. . . .

"When he reached Paris, the Vicomte de Bornier gave lessons so as not to starve; the Vicomte published a volume of poems. . . . A superb waiting for glory began, and lasted twenty years, without discouragement on the poet's part. He took up his abode on Rue du Bac; he only had the bridge to cross to have his manuscripts refused at the Comédie Française: but, on his way home, he saw his star twinkle in Mme. de Staël's beloved gutter. . . . Nothing could shake the optimism of this intrepid idealist. . . .

"I shall speak only of the effect produced by the Fille de Roland. When it was known that Gerald was the victor, the

whole house rose to its feet. It was a moment of thrilling emotion when were uttered the dear words, 'Oh, France! Sweet France!' It seemed as if, for the first time since her defeat, France heard herself thus invoked, and thus she wept,

as weep convalescents who, on recognizing their name, understand that they are saved!"

Thus does a poet speak of a poet; thus, a Frenchman of one who honored France.

46

THE MUSES IN THE BACK STREET

BY ROLLIN LYNDE HARTT

WHEN those old-maid tabbies, the Muses," took residence in East Gissing Street, there was doubtless much laughter among the gods. For while that thoroughfare begins grandly, with rows of stately, bow-windowed lodging-houses, and here and there a basement restaurant displaying the legend, "Twentyone-Meal Tickets, Gents $4, Ladies $3.50," it soon shades off into tenements, ancient beyond the ken of building inspectors, though each tenement-house has a smart new front of variegated brick, with decorative fire-escapes, and an ultra-modern date, done in sheet-iron painted to look like stone.

There was laughter, too, among the old-maid tabbies. Some fairly uproarious humors developed as they set about acquainting East Gissing Street with the pleasures of intellect and taste. But Muses, when they laugh, keep a genial spirit, - here especially, since it was no prankish impulse that sent them hither. Rather was it a prompting not unnatural to the spinsterly heart, - the temptation to turn social settler. However amusing their experiment, they yearned, every tabby of them, to deserve from each bitterly deprived human soul in the vicinage a response which, albeit in phrases more suited to Chimmie Fadden than to Ovid, should say, or strive to say, "Thanks, Muse, to thee! Thou art a respite from care, thou art a medicine for woe!"

Now, single ladies from Pieria are set in their ways, and high praise is due the Sisters Nine for remodeling their programme so that certain refined activities not accredited to Muses in the Classical Dictionary should receive attention. With most obliging adaptability, they now preside over Mr. Aaron Silverman's bookshop, the metaphysical exploits of the Princess Fatima, the waxen effigies in the Chamber of Horrors, young Terence McSweeney's recitals on the mouthorgan, and the caperings and carolings of "amatuers" at the home of burlesque." In a word, they assume a gracious tutelage over literature, philosophy, art, music, and the stage. When pressed to tell which Muse attends to which, it is my custom to lead the inquirer through the quarter, show him how the work is faring, and bid him decide for himself. I begin by turning his steps toward Mr. Silverman's.

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Before that temple of belles-lettres stand several representatives of our reading public, consuming literature through glass. In Mr. Silverman's window, amid monuments of chewing-tobacco, ink-botles, apples, fortune-telling cards, clay pipes, and exceedingly durable confectionery, you detect three outspread periodicals. One of those charming weeklies exists to reduce swollen fortunes by negotiating loans in return for "pleasant paragraphs," or for the surcease of “unpleasant paragraphs." It affords the

humble those glimpses of aristocratic imperfections which make socialists of some and contented even enthusiastic pariahs of others. The next depicts the delicate eccentricities of our stage, particularly its abhorrence of propriety in dress. The third, on rose-tinted paper, has a full-length portrait of Mr. Kid Muldoon, nude to the belt, and doubling up both fists in a most deterrent and alarming manner, while the opposite page bears a tasteful woodcut, in which six Vassar undergraduates are slaughtering a policeman. So this, one might fancy, explains what has become of our banished wood-engravers. Rosy as was their past, their present seems still more so. However, I had once the sorrow of meeting an artist who served that pinky journal, and from him I learned of countless aged woodcuts corded up in its cellar, and fetched out seriatim to scare a quaking world.

Conspicuous there in the window are these pearls of contemporary journalism. Are they equally conspicuous in the intellectual life of East Gissing Street? By no means! At ten cents the copy, they find devotees, not in the tenements, but in the barber shops of our happy country, - which informs you why Puritans shave themselves, martyring their chins in cure of their souls.

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In quest of the literature dear, unutterably dear, to the hearts of the people, step within and present yourself to Mr. Aaron Silverman, poet and scholar. To curry favor, confess that many a time have you seen his Yiddish verses belauded in the press, as is true, since reporters not learned in linguistic lore have prepared numerous Sunday "specials by interviewing" the sweet singer of East Gissing Street," and plagiarizing his opinion of his epics. Rely, too, upon his disdain for the books he purveys. A reader of Tolstoi, Zola, and Tourgenieff, and regarding his present establishment as a stepping-stone toward eminence, a stage in the progress between peddling shoestrings on the curb and writing Sil

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verman & Company in gigantic gold letters over a warehouse twelve stories high, - his point of view is sufficiently akin to your own. With infinite merriment, he will show you that finely typical example of literature for the lowly, the " Diamond Series of Popular Novels."

You have heard, I dare say, of a certain modesty to be noticed in publishers. Rarely does that virtue find more dignified expression than in the announcement, "A purchase of two or three of these books will make you a firm believer that no line of fiction can touch the Diamond Series. It is plainly the line most desired by the American public. As regards literary reputation, its authors are the leading men and women of our time." Obviously; for the "line" includes, among other incontestable masterpieces, Kidnapped on her Wedding-Journey, by Eppie Angeline Roden; Should She Have Shot Him? by Dorothy Clay Perkins; Death before Dishonor, by Captain E. Sawyer Smith; Queenie Delmar's Love-Test, by Mrs. Georgie Brown; and For His Sister's Honor, by Thomasina Q. Bangs.

Perusing these exquisite romances, one at first marvels why Mr. Marion Crawford has escaped enrollment among "the leading men and women of our time." Later, the mystery clears. It is because of his frugality. Whereas a single mistaken identity, a single dark secret, and a single awful suspense, followed by a single hair's-breadth escape, will suffice for a Crawford thriller, "the leading men of our time" will have got that far by the end of their first chapter. Besides, consider the economic problem. Why expend fifteen dollars for ten mollified melodramas by Mr. Marion Crawford, when a like total of jumps and shudders comes at ten cents in the Diamond Series, and complete in one volume?

Moreover, Mr. Crawford is distressingly deficient in the arts of mise-enscène. How refreshing, after his subdued coloring and overscrupulous attention to values, to open a Diamond "liner” and

read: "For in truth the young girl was so surrounded with obsequious hand-maidens, tremulous attendants, and bowing pages, who anticipated her every whim, foresaw her every lightest wish, and sprang to offer her homage as to an empress, that it was natural that her army of adoring servitors should believe that this workaday world of ours was created for her boudoir and tiring-room!"

Or again: "For months before the grand garden-party, Faunwold seethed with excited preparations. A superb marquee was erected upon the lawn,

not the ordinary marquee. which is at best but a flimsy and unsubstantial affair, but a veritable palace, within whose marble recesses glowed all the gorgeous colors of the Orient, with a rich profusion of rare and fragrant exotics; with a hundred plashing fountains, each dropping its purling waters upon groups of costly statuary in bronze and porphyry and glistening silver; with priceless rugs strewn at random upon mosaics gleaming with jewels and gold; and with innumerable palms that even now nodded as if in anticipation of the voluptuous strains of music to be furnished by an orchestra that was to comprise the most expensive virtuosos of Europe and America. Seven additional stables had been erected in the rear of the Sigismund residence. At the neighboring fashionable hotel, Clarice had bought up all the rooms in advance, that she might dispense royal, even imperial, hospitality to those of her guests who would be obliged to remain after the brief evening's princely delights."

There's romance for you! Little Nora Burke, reading those enchanting pages in her tenement bedroom, has eyes like saucers, and chews furiously at her spearmint. Poor child! well might she cry, "Thanks, Muse, to thee; thou art a respite from care, thou art a medicine for woe." Happily, the Diamond Series and its many collateral "lines" represent so inexhaustible a treasury that Mr. Silverman might spare Kipling and Stevenson

the indignity of paper covers, worn types, and unblushing misprints. Indeed, I count it a sin to proffer them thus, especially when the neighborhood infinitely prefers Bertha M. Clay, Charles Garvice, and Mrs. Georgie Sheldon. And as for the translated romances at that modest bookshop, - Sapho, bookshop, Sapho, The Clemenceau Case, or Twenty Years After, — they bear a taint unknown in works by "the leading men and women of our time." Who read them? Not honest young folk, mainly. Mainly they are purchased by those woeful outcasts who, though the toys of the prosperous, are quartered among the poor, till to the burden of want is added the undeserved burden of shame.

Hard by Mr. Silverman's one finds the East Gissing Street branch of our municipal library. A beneficent institution, whether viewed from the military standpoint, or the prophylactic, or the domiciliary, or the educational. It serves primarily as a court of arbitration, preventing bloodshed. Hostilities open, let us say, between Tom and Jerry at McSorley's saloon across the way, the question at issue being, "What was Queen Victoria's last name?" " Consort," shouts Jerry; "did n't she marry Prince Consort?" Tom demurs, adding frightful aspersions upon Jerry's intelligence. Jerry seizes a bottle by the neck, and is for slaying Tom outright. Then rises up McSorley, who takes pride in "keeping a respectable place," and moreover, numbers Jerry among the least dispensable of his adherents. Hold on, gents!" cries he. "Step over to the library, and look it up!" This they do, coming forth both wiser and sadder, since Tom, vaguely remembering a name on a vaudeville poster, erred as widely as his comrade, having called her late Majesty " Victoria Vesta."

Prophylactically, the library constitutes a bulwark against pneumonia, bronchitis, laryngitis, and the chills. Rain and cold send thither the umbrellaless, the overcoatless, and them that have

holes in their boots. And even on fine warm days it offers an agreeable idlingplace for veterans of the Civil War. The ingratitude of our republic sadly limits those scarred and withered warriors, giving pensions just big enough to provide lodging and sustenance without providing space wherein to stretch one's legs, and take one's ease. The city does better. In fact, by thus combining the courtesies extended by the national and municipal governments, one makes out a quite tolerable existence, — which accounts for that modern phenomenon, the growth of creative memory. Whereas all the branch library's old soldiers read Civil War literature exclusively, one finds among them those who thereby seek to offset the deprivation of retaining no first-hand impressions of the affair.

Educationally, the institution is perhaps not all that one might wish. Mr. Alonzo Graves, of number 18 East Gissing Street, has consumed The Ring and the Book, In Memoriam, Sartor Resartus, and nine plays of Shakespeare; he has devoured Tyndall, Huxley, and Spencer; hearing that Blackstone was good for the brain, he left not a crumb of him; yet he remains an elevator boy, though now above forty. Mr. Edward Sykes, of number 36, has traversed the entire Encyclopædia Britannica, and half of it the second time." Would you believe it?" he exclaimed the other day, " actually I keep striking facts I don't at all remember from the first reading!" Mr. Sidney Dill, of number 67, is still more severe in his tastes; for three years he has confined his studies to the city Directory. Nevertheless, when you pass Derby Place and come to the stately, bow-windowed lodging-houses, you encounter readers of some grasp and insight, who carry home books that not only extend their culture, but hasten their professional advancement. For instance, Miss Katharine Dyer. The dawn of the present century found Miss Dyer barely capable of transcribing, "Yrs recd. In reply wd say, have shipped goods." To-day, thanks to

the branch library, she takes dictation at double the salary from a distinguished novelist, whose vocabulary is the despair of type-setters, and the anguish of readers.

But what were a branch library without its daily newspapers? Certain of its patrons come solely to search the press, with eyes keen for their own names. It is the clipping-bureau instinct the other end to. Whereas vanity yearns to see its deeds reported in extenso, these modest souls hope to see theirs beneficently omitted. If you ever tapped a till, you can sympathize.

A various homage, then, is that paid to letters by East Gissing Street,

a vari

ous, yet ever a sincere; so we need expe rience no shock when informed that the neighborhood writes. Ah, yes! At least nine of its younger set have contributed, to the People's Column of the Sunday Star, little essays discussing postagestamp flirtation, the ethics of spanking. the good-night kiss, the propriety of receiving the attentions of a married man, the comparative constancy of blondes and brunettes, and the folly of measur ing a man's worth by the height of his collar, with now and then a valiant paragraph in defense of poesy, arguing the merits of "The Maniac's Tear,” “The Gypsy's Warning," and "He Carved His Mother's Name upon the Tree." Sometimes writing takes a graver tone, in "Editorials by the People." Mr. Harvey Dempsey, of number 33, will sit by his gas-stove in his hall-bedroom and dauntlessly attack the proudest empires. His onslaughts upon Great Britain have been especially daring, and the more alarming because signed always with an impenetrable (and therefore awesome and creepy) pseudonym. Further to baffle the foe, Mr. Dempsey keeps changing his nom-de-guerre. One day he is "Veri"the next, "Q. E. D;" the third, Semper Vigilans." An empire never knows which way to shoot.

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But to reading and writing the vici nage prefers the oral method. In winter it crowds the People's Forum on Sunday

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