THAT TRIOLET DRIVEL.
Will you can it or no?—
That Triolet drivel.
It irritates so.
Will you can it or no?
For the habit may grow,
And the thought makes me snivel.
Will you can it or no?—
That Triolet drivel.
Yes, we’ll can it or no,
As the notion may seize us.
If a thing is de trop,
Yes; we’ll can it—or no.
[p 95]
]For we always let go
When a thing doesn’t please us.
Yes, we’ll can it, or—no,
As the notion may seize us.
Sir Oliver Lodge has seen so many tables move and heard so many tambourines, that he now keeps an open mind on miracles. We hope he believes that the three angels appeared to Joan of Arc, as that is our favorite miracle. Had they appeared only once we might have doubted the apparition; but, as we remember the story, they appeared three times.
Sir Oliver may be interested in a case reported to us by L. J. S. His company had issued a tourist policy to a lady who lost her trunk on the way to Tulsa, Okla., and who put in a claim for $800. The adjuster at Dallas wrote:
“Assured is the famous mind reader, and one of her best stunts is answering questions in regard to the location of stolen property, but she was unable to be of any assistance to me.”
Some of the members of the Cosmopolitan club are about as cosmopolitan as the inhabitants of Cosmopolis, Mich.
At the request of a benedick we are rushing to the Cannery by parcel-post Jar 617: “Don’t they make a nice-looking couple!”
[p 96]
]ENGLISH AS SHE IS MURDERED.
Sir: After Pedagogicus’ class gets through with Senator Borah’s masterpiece, it might look over this legend which the Herald and Examiner has been carrying: “Buy bonds like the victors fought.” E. E. E.
The Illinois War Savings Bulletin speaks of “personal self-interest.” This means you!
“Graduation from the worst to the best stuff,” is Mr. W. L. George’s method of acquiring literary taste. Something can be said for the method, and Mr. George says it well, and we are sorry, in a manner of speaking, not to believe a word of it; unless, as is possible, we both believe the same thing fundamentally. Taste, in literature and music, and in other things, is, we are quite sure, natural. It can be trained, but this training is a matter of new discoveries. A taste that has to be led by steps from Owen Meredith to George Meredith, which could not recognize the worth of the latter before passing through the former, is no true taste. Graduation from the simple to the complex is compatible with a natural taste, but this simple may be first class, as much music and literature is. New forms of beauty may puzzle the possessor of natural taste, but not for long. He does not require preparation in inferior stuff.
[p 97]
]Speaking of George Meredith, we are told again (they dig the thing up every two or three years) that, when a reader for Chapman & Hall, he turned down “East Lynne,” “Erewhon,” and other books that afterward became celebrated. What of it? Meredith may not have known anything about literature, but he knew what he liked. Moreover, he was a marked and original writer, and as that tolerant soul, Jules Lemaitre, has noted, the most marked and original of writers are those who do not understand everything, nor feel everything, nor love everything, but those whose knowledge, intelligence, and tastes have definite limitations.