The Emblems of Fidelity: A Comedy in Letters

by James Lane Allen

THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY

EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS

King Alfred's Wood,
Warwickshire, England,
May 1, 1910.

MY DEAR MR. SANDS:

I have just read to the end of your latest novel and under the outdoor influence of that Kentucky story have sat here at my windows with my eyes on the English landscape of the first of May: on as much of the landscape, at least, as lies within the grey, ivy-tumbled, rose-besprinkled wall of a companionable old Warwickshire garden.

You may or you may not know that I, too, am a novelist. The fact, however negligible otherwise, may help to disarm you of some very natural hostility at the approach of this letter from a stranger; for you probably agree with me that the writing of novels—not, of course, the mere odious manufacture of novels—results in the making of friendly, brotherly men across the barriers of nations, and that we may often do as fellow-craftsmen what we could do less well or not do at all as fellow-creatures.

I shall not loiter at the threshold of this letter to fatigue your ear with particulars regarding the several parts of your story most enjoyed, though I do pause there long enough to say that no admirable human being has ever yet succeeded in wearying my own ears by any such desirable procedure. In England, and I presume in the United States, novelists have long noses for incense [poets, too, though of course only in their inferior way]. I repeat that we English novelists are a species of greyhound for running down on the most distant horizon any scampering, half-terrified rabbit of a compliment. But I freely confess that nature loaded me beyond the tendency of being a mere greyhound. I am a veritable elephant in the matter, being marvelously equipped with a huge, flexible proboscis which is not only adapted to admit praise but is quite capable of actively reaching around in every direction to procure it. Even the greyhound cannot run forever; but an elephant, if he once possess it, will wave such a proboscis till he dies.

There are likely to be in any very readable book a few pages which the reader feels tempted to tear out for the contrary reason, perhaps, that he cannot tear them out of his tenderness. Some haunting picture of the book-gallery that he would cut from the frame. Should you be displeased by the discrimination, I shall trust that you may be pleased nevertheless by the avowal that there is a scene in your novel which has peculiarly ensnared my affections.

At this point I think I can see you throw down my letter with more insight into human nature than patience with its foibles. You toss it aside and exclaim: "What does this Englishman drive at? Why does he not at once say what he wants?" You are right. My letter is perhaps no better than strangers' letters commonly are: coins, one side of which is stamped with your image and the other side with their image, especially theirs.

I might as well, therefore, present to you my side of the coin with the selfish image. Or, in terms of your blue-grass country life, you are the horse in an open pasture and I am the stableman who schemes to catch you: to do this, I approach, calling to you affectionately and shaking a bundle of oats behind which is coiled a halter. You are thinking that if I once clutch you by the mane you will get no oats. But, my dear sir, you have from the very first word of this letter already been nibbling the oats. And now you are my animal!

There is, then, in your novel a remarkable description of a noonday woodland scene somewhere on your enchanted Kentucky uplands—a cool, moist forest spot. Into this scene you introduced some rare, beautiful Kentucky ferns. I can see the ferns! I can see the sunlight striking through the waving treetops down upon them! Now, as it happens, in the old garden under my windows, loving the shade and moisture of its trees and its wall, I have a bank of ferns. They are a marvelous company, in their way as good as Wordsworth's flock of daffodils; for they have been collected out of England's best and from other countries.

Here, then, is literally the root of this letter: Will you send me the root-stocks of some of those Kentucky ferns to grow and wave on my Warwickshire fern bank?

Do not suppose that my garden is on a small scale a public park or exhibition, made as we have created Kensington Gardens. Everything in it is, on the contrary, enriched with some personal association. I began it when a young man in the following way:

At that period I was much under the influence of the Barbizon painters, and I sometimes entertained myself in the forests where masters of that school had worked by hunting up what I supposed were the scenes of some of Corot's masterpieces.

Corot, if my eyes tell me the truth, painted trees as though he were looking at enormous ferns. His ferns spring out of the soil and some rise higher than others as trees; his trees descend through the air and are lost lower down as ferns. One day I dug up some Corot ferns for my good Warwickshire loam. Another winter Christine Nilsson was singing at Covent Garden. I spent several evenings with her. When I bade her good-bye, I asked her to send me some ferns from Norway in memory of Balzac and Seraphita. Yet another winter, being still a young man and he, alas! a much older one, I passed an evening in Paris with Turgenieff. I would persist in talking about his novels and I remember quoting these lines from one of them: "It was a splendid clear morning; tiny mottled cloudlets hung like snipe in the clear pale azure; a fine dew was sprinkled on the leaves and grass and glistened like silver on the spiders' webs; the moist dark earth seemed still to retain the rosy traces of the dawn; the songs of larks showered down from all over the sky."

He sat looking at me in surprised, touched silence.

"But you left out something!" I suggested, with the bumptiousness of a beginner in letters. He laughed slightly to himself—and perhaps more at me—as he replied: "I must have left out a great deal"—he, fiction's greatest master of compression. After a moment he inquired with a kind of vast patient condescension: "What is it that you definitely missed?" "Ferns," I replied. "Ferns were growing thereabouts." He smiled reminiscently. "So there were," he replied, smiling reminiscently. "If I knew where the spot was," I said, "I should travel to it for some ferns." A mystical look came into his eyes as he muttered rather to himself than for my ear: "That spot! Where is that spot? That spot is all Russia!" In his exile, the whole of Russia was to him one scene, one fatherland, one pain, one passion. Sometime afterwards there reached me at home a hamper of Russian fern-roots with Turgenieff's card.

I tell you all this as I make the request, which is the body of this letter and, I hope, its wings, in order that you may intimately understand. I desire the ferns not only because you have interested me in your Kentucky by making it a living, lovely reality, but because I have become interested in your art and in you. While I read your book I believed that I saw the hand of youth joyously at work, creating where no hand had created before; or if on its chosen scene it found a ruin, then joyously trying to re-create reality from that ruin. But to create where no hand has created before, or to create them again where human things lie in decay—that to me is the true energy of literature.

I should not omit to tell you that some of our most tight-islanded, hard-headed reviewers have been praising your work as of the best that reaches us from America. It was one such reviewer that first guided me to your latest book. Now I myself have written to some of our critics and have thrown my influence in favour of your fresh, beautiful art, which can only come from a fresh, beautiful nature.

Should you decide to bestow any notice upon this rather amazing letter, you will bear in mind of course that there will be pounds sterling for plants. Whatever character my deed or misdeed may later assume, it must first and at least have the nature of a transaction of the market-place.

So, turn out as it may, or not turn out at all,

I am,

Gratefully yours,
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE

Cathedral Heights, New York,
May 12, 1910.

MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE:

Your letter is as unreal to me as if I had, in some modern Æsop's Fables, read how a whale, at ease in the depths of the sea, had taken the trouble to turn entirely round to encourage a puffing young porpoise; or of how a black oak, majestic dome of a forest, had on some fine spring day looked down and complimented a small dogwood tree upon its size and the purity of its blossoms. And yet, while thus unreal, your letter is in its way the most encouragingly real thing that has ever come into my life. Before I go further I should like to say that I have read every book you have written and have bought your books and given them away with such zeal and zest that your American publishers should feel more interest in me than can possibly be felt by the gentlemen who publish mine.

It is too late to tell you this now. Too late, in bad taste. A man's praise of another may not follow upon that man's praise of him. Our virtues have their hour. If they do not act then, they are not like clocks which may be set forward but resemble fruits which lose their flavour when they pass into ripeness. Still, what I have said is honest. You may remember that I am yet moving amid life's uncertainties as a beginner, while you walk in quietness the world's highway of a great career. My praise could have borne little to you; yours brings everything to me. And you must reflect also that it is just a little easier for any Englishman to write to an American in this way. The American could but fear that his letter might seriously disturb the repose of a gentleman who was reclining with his head in Shakespeare's bosom; and Shakespeare's entire bosom in this regard, as you know, Mr. Blackthorne, does stay in England.

It will give me genuine pleasure to arrange for the shipment of the ferns. A good many years have passed since I lived in Kentucky and I am no longer in close touch with people and things down there. But without doubt the matter can be managed through correspondence and all that I await from you now is express instructions. The ferns described in my book are not known to me by name. I have procured and have mailed to you along with this, lest you may not have any, some illustrated catalogues of American ferns, Kentucky ferns included. You have but to send me a list of those you want. With that in hand I shall know exactly how to proceed.

You cannot possibly understand how happy I am that my work has the approval of the English reviews, which still remain the best in the world. To know that my Kentucky stories are liked in England—England which, remaining true to so many great traditions, holds fast to the classic tradition in her literature.

The putting forth of your own personal influence in my behalf is a source of joy and pride; and your wish to have Kentucky ferns growing in your garden in token of me is the most inspiring event yet to mark my life.

I am,

Sincerely yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS.

EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS

King Alfred's Wood,
Warwickshire, England,
May 22, 1910.

MY DEAR SANDS:

Your letter was brought out to me as I was hanging an old gate in a clover-field canopied with skylarks. When I cannot make headway against some obstruction in the development of a story, for instance, putting the hinges of the narrative where the reader will not see any hinges, I let the book alone and go out and do some piece of work, surrounded by the creatures which succeed in all they undertake through zest and joy. By the time I get back, the hinges of the book have usually hung themselves without my knowing when or how. Hence the paradox: we achieve the impossible by doing the possible; we climb our mountain of troubles by walking away from it.

It is splendid news that I am to get the Kentucky ferns. Thank you for the catalogues. A list of those I most covet is enclosed. The cost, shipping expenses included, will not, I fear, exceed five pounds. Of course it would be a pleasure to pay fifty guineas, but I suppose I must restrict myself to the despicable market price. Shamefully cheap many of the dearest things in this world are; and what exorbitant prices we pay for the worthless!

A draft will be forwarded in advance upon receipt of the American shipper's address. Or I could send it forthwith to you. Meantime from now on I shall be remembering with impatience how many miles it is across the Atlantic Ocean and at what a snail's pace American ferns travel. These will be awaited like guests whom one goes to the gate to meet.

You do not know the names of those you describe so wonderfully! I am glad. I abhor the names of my own. Of course, as they are bought, memoranda must be depended upon by which to buy them. These data, verified by catalogue, are inked on little wooden slabs as fern headstones. When each fern is planted, into the soil beside it is stuck its headstone, which, like that for a human being, tells the name, not the nature, of what it memorialises.

Hodge is the fellow who knows the ferns according to the slabs. It is time you should know Hodge by his slab. No such being can yet be found in the United States: your civilisation is too young. Hodge is my British-Empire gardener; and as he now looks out for every birthday much as for any total solar eclipse of the year—with a kind of growing solicitude lest the sun or the birthday should finally, as it passes, bowl him over for good—he announced to me with visible relief the other day that he had successfully passed another total natal eclipse; that he was fifty-eight. But Hodge is not fifty-eight years old. The battle of Hastings was fought in 1066 and Hodge without knowing it was beginning to be a well-grown lout then. For Hodge is English landscape gardening in human shape. He is the benevolent spirit of the English turf, a malign spirit to English weeds. He is wall ivy, a root, a bulb, a rake, a wheelbarrow of spring manure, a pile of autumn leaves, a crocus. In a distant future mythology of our English rural life he will perhaps rank where he belongs—as a luminary next in importance to the sun: a two-legged god be-earthed in old clothes, with a stiff back, a stiff temper, the jaw of the mastiff and the eye of a prophet.

It is Hodge who does the slabs. He would not allow anything to come into the garden without mastering that thing. For the sake of his own authority he must subdue as much of the Latin language as invades his territory along with the ferns. But I think nothing comparable to such a struggle against overwhelming odds—Hodge's brain pitted against the Latin names of the ferns—nothing comparable to the dull fury of that onset is to be found in the history of man unless it be England's war on Napoleon for twenty years. England did conquer Napoleon and finally shut him up in a desolate, rocky place; and Hodge has finally conquered the names of the ferns and shut them up in a desolate, rocky place—his skull, his personal promontory.

Nowadays you should see him meet me in a garden path when I come down early some morning. You should see him plant himself before me and, taking off his cap and scratching the back of his neck with the back of his muddy thumb, make this announcement: "The Asplenium filix-faemina put up two new shoots last night, sir. Bishop's crooks, I believe you calls 'em, sir." As though I were a farmer and my shepherd should notify me that one of the ewes had dropped twin lambs at three A.M. Hodge's tone implies more yet: the honour of the shoots—a questionable honour—goes to Hodge as their botanical sire!

When I receive visitors by reason of my books—and strangers do sometimes make pilgrimages to me on account of my grove of "Black Oaks"—if the day is pleasant, we have tea in the garden. While the strangers drink tea, I begin to wave the well-known proboscis over the company for any praise they may have brought along. Should this seem adequate, I later reward them with a stroll. That is Hodge's hour and opportunity. Unexpectedly, as it would appear, but invariably, he steps out from some bush and takes his place behind me as we move.

When we reach the fern bank, the visitors regularly begin to inquire: "What is the name of this fern?" I turn helplessly to Hodge much as a drum-major, if asked by a by-stander what the music was that the band had just been playing, might wheel in dismay to the nearest horn. Hodge steps forward: now comes the reward of all his toil. "That is the Polydactulum cruciato-cristatum, sir." "And what is this one?" "That is the Polypodium elegantissimum, mum." Then you would understand what it sometimes means to attain scholarship without Oxford or Cambridge; what upon occasion it is to be a Roman orator and a garden ass.

You will be wondering why I am telling you this about Hodge. For the very particular reason that Hodge will play a part, I know not what part, in the pleasant business that has come up between us. He looms as the danger between me and the American ferns after the ferns shall have arrived here. It is a fact that very few foreign ferns have ever done well in my garden, watch over them as closely as I may: especially those planted in more recent years. Could you believe it possible of human nature to refuse to water a fern, to deny a little earth to the root of a fern? Actually to scrape the soil away from it when there was nobody near to observe the deed, to jab at it with a sharp trowel? I shall not press the matter further, for I instinctively turn away from it. Perhaps each of us has within himself some incomprehensible little terrible spot and I feel that this is Hodge's spot. It is murder; Hodge is an assassin: he will kill what he hates, if he dares. I have been so aroused to defend his faithful character that I have devised two pleadings: first, Hodge is the essence of British parliaments, the sum total of British institutions; therefore he patriotically believes that things British should be good enough for the British—of course, their own ferns. At other times I am rather inclined to surmise that his malice and murderous resentment are due to his inability to take on any more Latin, least of all imported Latin. Hodge without doubt now defends himself against any more Latin as a man with his back to the wall fights for his life: the personal promontory will hold no more.

You have written me an irresistible letter, though frankly I made no effort to resist it. Your praise of my books instantly endeared you to me.

Since a first plunge into ferns, then, has already brought results so agreeable and surprising, I am resolved to be bolder and to plunge a second time and more deeply.

Is there—how could there help being!—a Mrs. Beverley Sands? Mrs. Blackthorne wishes to know. I read your letter to Mrs. Blackthorne. Mrs. Blackthorne was charmed with it. Mrs. Blackthorne is charmed with you. Mr. Blackthorne is charmed with you. And Mr. and Mrs. Blackthorne would like to know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands and, if so, whether she and you will not some time follow the ferns and come and take possession for a while of our English garden.

You and I can go off to ourselves and discuss our "dogwoods" and "black oaks"; and Mrs. Sands and Mrs. Blackthorne, at their tea across the garden, can exchange copies of their highly illuminated and privately circulated little masterpieces about their husbands. (The husbands should always edit the masterpieces!)

Both of you, will you come?

Finally, as to your generous propaganda in behalf of my books and as to the favourable reports which my publishers send me from time to time in the guise of New World royalties, you may think of the proboscis as now being leveled straight and rigid like a gun-barrel toward the shores of the United States, whence blow gales scented with so glorious a fragrance. I begin to feel that Columbus was not mistaken: America is turning out to be a place worth while.

Your deeply interested,
EDWARD BLACKTHORNE.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO TILLY SNOWDEN

June 3.

DEAR TILLY:

Crown me with some kind of chaplet—nothing classic, nothing sentimental, but something American and practical—say with twigs of Kentucky sassafras or, better, with the leaves of that forest favourite which in boyhood so fascinated me and lubricated me with its inner bark—entwine me, O Tilly, with a garland of slippery elm for the virtue of always making haste to share with you my slippery pleasures! I write at full speed now to empty into your lap, a wonderfully receptive lap, tidings of the fittest joy that has ever come to me as your favourite author—and favourite young husband to be.

The great English novelist Blackthorne, many of whose books we have read together (whenever you listened), recently stumbled over one of my obstructive tales; one of my awkwardly placed literary hurdles on the world's race-course of readers. As a result of his fall he got up, dusted himself thoroughly of his surprise, and actually despatched to me an acknowledgment of his thanks for the happy accident. I replied with a volley of my own thanks, with salvos of praise for him. Now he has written again, throwing wide open his house and his heart, both of which appear to be large and admirably suited to entertain suitable guests.

At this crisis place your careful hands over your careful heart—can you find where it is?—and draw "a deep, quivering breath," the novelist's conventional breath for the excited heroine. Mr. Blackthorne wishes to know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands. If there is, and he feels sure there must be, far-sighted man!—he invites her, invites us, Mrs. Blackthorne invites us, should we sometime be in England, to visit them at their beautiful, far-famed country-house in Warwickshire. If, then, our often postponed marriage, our despairingly postponed marriage, should be arranged to madden me and gladden the rest of mankind before next summer, we could, with our arms around one another's necks, be conveyed by steam and electricity on our wedding journey to the Blackthorne entrance and be there deposited, still oblivious of everything but ourselves.

Think what it would mean to you to be launched upon the rosy sea of English social life amid the orisons and benisons of such illustrious literary personages. Think of those lovely English lawns, raked and rolled for centuries, and of many-coloured fêtes on them; of the national tea and the national sandwiches; of national strawberries and clotted cream and clotted crumpets; of Thackeray's flunkies still flunkying and Queen Anne's fads yet fadding; of week-ends without end—as Mrs. Beverley Sands. Behold yourself growing more and more a celebrity, as the English mutton-chop or sirloined reviewers gradually brought into public appreciation the vague potentialities, not necessarily the bare actualities, of modest young Sands himself. Eventually, no doubt, there would be a day for you at Sandringham with the royal ladies. They would drive you over—I have not the least idea how great the distance is—to drink tea at Stonehenge. Imagine yourself, it having naturally turned into a rainy English afternoon, imagine yourself seated under a heavy black-silk English umbrella on a bare cromlech, the oldest throne in England, tearing at an Anglo-Saxon muffin of purest strain and surrounded by male and female admirers, all under heavy black-silk umbrellas—Spitalsfield, I suppose—as Mrs. Beverley Sands.

Remember, madam, or miss, that this foreign triumph, this career of glory, comes to you strictly from me. To you, of yourself, it is inaccessible. Look upon it as in part the property that I am to settle upon you at the time of our union—my honours. You have already understood from me that my entire estate, both my real estate and my unreal estate, consists of future honours. Those I have just described are an early payment on the marriage contract—foreign exchange!

What reply, then, in your behalf am I to send to the lofty and benevolent Blackthornes? As matters halt between us—he also loves who only writes and waits—I can merely inform Mr. Blackthorne that there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands, but that she persists in remaining a Miss Snowden. With this realisation of what you will lose as Miss Snowden and will gain as Mrs. Sands, do you not think it wise—and wise you are, Tilly—any longer to persist in your persistence? You once, in a moment of weakness, confessed to me—think of your having a moment of weakness!—you once confessed to me, though you may deny it now (Balzac defines woman as the angel or devil who denies everything when it suits her), you once confessed to me that you feared your life would be taken up with two protracted pleasures, each of which curtailed the other: the pleasure of being engaged to me a long time and the pleasure of being married to me a long time. Nerve yourself to shortening the first in order to enter upon the compensations of the second.

Yet remorse racks me even at the prospect of obliterating from the world one whom I first knew and loved in it as Tilly Snowden. Where will Tilly Snowden be when only Mrs. Beverley Sands is left? Where will be that wild rose in a snow bank—the rose which was truly wild, the snow bank which was not cold (or was it?)? I think I should easily become reconciled to your being known, say, as Madame Snowden, so that you might still stand out in your own right and wild-rose individuality. We could visit England as the rising American author, Beverley Sands, and his lovely risen wife, Madame Snowden. Everybody would then be asking who the mysterious Madame Snowden was, and I should relate that she was a retired opera singer—having retired before she advanced.

By the way, you confided to me some time ago that you were not very well. You always look well, mighty well to me, Tilly. Perfectly well to me. Can your indisposition be imaginary? Or is it merely fashionable? Or—is it something else? What of late has sickened me is an idea of yours that you might sometime consult Doctor G. M. Tilly! Tilly! If you knew the pains that rack me when I think of that charlatan's door being closed behind you as a patient of his!

Tell me it isn't true, and answer about the beautiful Blackthornes!

Your easy and your uneasy

BEVERLEY.

TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS

"Slippery Elm" Apartments,
June 4.

I am perfectly willing, Beverley, to crown you with slippery elm—you seem to think I keep it on hand, dwell in a bower of it—if it is the leaf you sigh for. But please do not try to crown me with a wig of your creative hair; that is, with your literary honours.

How wonderfully the impressions of childhood disappear from memory like breaths on a warm mirror, but long afterwards return to their shapes if the glass be coldly breathed upon! As I read your letter, at least as I read the very chilly Blackthorne parts of your letter, I remembered, probably for the first time in years, a friend of my mother's.

She had been inveigled to become the wife, that is, the legally installed life-assistant, of an exceedingly popular minister; and when I was a little girl, but not too little to understand—was I ever too little to understand?—she used to slip across the street to our house and in confidence to my mother pour out her sense of humour at the part assigned her by the hired wedding march and evangelical housekeeping. I recall one of those half-whispered, always half-whispered, confidences—for how often in life one feels guilty when telling the truth and innocent when lying!

On this particular morning she and my mother laughed till they were weary, while I danced round them with delight at the idea of having even the tip of my small but very active finger in any pie that savoured of mischief. She had been telling my mother that if, some Sunday, her husband accidentally preached a sermon which brought people into the church, she felt sure of soon receiving a turkey. If he made a rousing plea for foreign missions, she might possibly look out for a pair of ducks. Her destiny, as she viewed it, was to be merely a strip of worthless territory lying alongside the land of Canaan; people simply walked over her, tramped across her, on their way to Canaan, carrying all sorts of bountiful things to Canaan, her husband.

That childish nonsense comes back to me strangely, and yet not strangely as I think of your funny letter, your very, very funny letter, about the Blackthornes' invitation to me because I am not myself but am possibly a Mrs.—well, some Mrs. Sands. The English scenes you describe I see but too vividly: it is Canaan and his strip all over again—there on the English lawns; a great many heavy English people are tramping heavily over me on their way to Canaan. The fabulous tea at Sandringham would be Canaan's cup, and at Stonehenge it would be Canaan's muffin that at last choked to death the ill-fated Tilly Snowden.

In order to escape such a fate, Tilly Snowden, then, begs that you will thank the Blackthornes, Mr. and Mrs., as best you can for their invitation; as best she can she thanks you; but for the present, and for how much of the future she does not know, she prefers to remain what is very necessary to her independence and therefore to her happiness; and also what is quite pleasing to her ear—the wild rose in the snow bank (cold or not cold, according to the sun).

In other words, my dear Beverley, it is true that I have more than once postponed the date of our marriage. I have never said why; perhaps I myself have never known just why. But at least do not expect me to shorten the engagement in order that I may secure some share of your literary honours. As a little girl I always despised queens who were crowned with their husbands. It seemed to me that the queen was crowned with what was left over and was merely allowed to sit on the corner of the throne as the poor connection.

P.S.—Still, I would like to go to England. I mean, of course, I wish we could go on our wedding journey! If I got ready, could I rely upon you? I have always wished to visit England without being debarred from its social life. Seriously, the invitation of the Blackthornes looks to me like an opportunity and an advantage not to be thrown away. Wisdom never wastes, and you say I am wise!

It is true that I have not been feeling very well. And it is true that I have consulted Dr. Marigold and am now a patient of his. That dreaded door has closed behind me! I have been alone with him! The diagnosis at least was delightful. He made it appear like opening a golden door upon a charming landscape. I had but to step outdoors and look around with a pleasant smile and say: "Why, Health, my former friend, how do you do! Why did you go back on me?" He tells me my trouble is a mild form of auto-intoxication. I said to him that must be the disease; namely, that it was mild. Never in my life had I had anything that was mild! Disease from my birth up had attacked me only in its most virulent form: so had health. I had always enjoyed—and suffered from—virulent health. I am going to take the Bulgar bacillus.

Why do you dislike Dr. Marigold? Popular physicians are naturally hated by unpopular physicians. But how does he run against or run over you?

Which of your books was it the condescending Englishman liked? Suppose you send me a copy. Why not send me a copy of each of your books? Those you gave me as they came out seem to have disappeared.

The wild rose is now going to pour down her graceful stalk a tubeful of the Balkan bacillus.

More trouble with the Balkans!

TILLY

(auto-intoxicated, not otherwise
intoxicated! Thank Heaven at least
for that!).

BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE

June 3.

DEAR BEN:

A bolt of divine lightning has struck me out of the smiling blue, a benign fulmination from an Olympian.

To descend the long slope of Olympus to you. A few days ago I received a letter from the great English novelist, Edward Blackthorne, in praise of my work. The great Edward reads my books and the great Ben Doolittle doesn't—score heavily for the aforesaid illustrious Eddy.

Of course I have for years known that you do not cast your legal or illegal eyes on fiction, though not long ago I heard you admit that you had read "Ten Thousand a Year." On the ground, that it is a lawyer's novel: which is no ground at all, a mere mental bog. My own opinion of why you read it is that you were in search of information how to make the ten thousand! As a literary performance your reading "Ten Thousand a Year" may be likened to the movement of a land-turtle which has crossed to the opposite side of his dusty road to bite off a new kind of weed, waddling along his slow way under the impenetrable roof of his own back.

For, my dear Ben, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other human being in this world, do you know what I think of you as most truly being? The very finest possible specimen of the highest order of human land-turtle. A land-turtle is a creature that lives under a shovel turned upside down over it, called its back; and a human land-turtle is a fellow who thrives under the roof of the five senses and the practical. Never does a turtle get from under his carapace, and never does the man-turtle get beyond the shovel of his five senses. Of course you realise that not during our friendship have I paid you so extravagant a compliment. For the human race has to be largely made up of millions of land-turtles. They cause the world to go slowly, and it is the admirable stability of their lives neither to soar nor to sink. You are a land-turtle, Benjamin Doolittle, Esquire; you live under the shell of the practical; that is, you have no imagination; that is, you do not read fiction; that is, you do not read Me! Therefore I harbour no grievance against you, but cherish all the confidence and love in the world for you. But, mind you, only as an unparalleled creeping thing.

To get on with the business of this letter: the English novelist laid aside his enthusiasm for my work long enough to make a request: he asked me to send him some Kentucky ferns for his garden. Owing to my long absence from Kentucky I am no longer in touch with people and things down there. But you left that better land only a few years ago. I recollect that of old you manifested a weakness for sending flowers to womankind—another evidence, by the way, of lack of imagination. Such conduct shows a mere botanical estimate of the grand passion. The only true lovers, the only real lovers, that women ever have are men of imagination. Why should these men send a common florist's flowers! They grow and offer their own—the roses of Elysium!

To pass on, you must still have clinging to your memory, like bats to a darkened, disused wall, the addresses of various Louisville florists who, by daylight or candlelight and no light at all, were the former emissaries of your folly and your fickleness. Will you send me at once the address of a firm in whose hands I could safely entrust this very high-minded international piece of business?

Inasmuch as you are now a New York lawyer and inasmuch as New York lawyers charge for everything—concentration of mind, if they have any mind, tax on memory and tax on income, their powers of locomotion and of prevarication, club dues and death dues, time and tumult, strikes and strokes, and all other items of haste and waste, you are authorised to regard this letter a professional demand and to let me have a reasonable bill at a not too early date. Charge for whatever you will, but, I charge you, charge me not for your friendship. "Naught that makes life most worth while can be had for gold." (Rather elegant extract from one of my novels which you disdain to read!)

I shall be greatly obliged if you will let me have an immediate reply.

BEVERLEY.

How is the fair Polly Boles? Still pretending to quarrel? And do you still keep up the pretence?

Predestined magpies!

BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS

150 Broad Street,
June 5.

DEAR BEVERLEY:

Your highly complimentary and philosophical missive is before my eyes.

You understand French, not I. But I have accumulated a few quotations which I sometimes venture to use in writing, never in my proud oral delivery. If I pronounced to the French the French with which I am familiar, the French themselves would drive their own vernacular out of their land—over into Germany! Here is one of those fond inaudible phrases:

A chaque oiseau
Son nid est beau.

That is to say, in Greek, every Diogenes prefers his own tub.

The lines are a trophy captured at a college-club dinner the other night. One of the speakers launched the linguistic marvel on the blue cloud of smoke and it went bumping around the heads of the guests without finding any head to enter, like a cork bobbing about the edges of a pond, trying in vain to strike a place to land. But everybody cheered uproariously, made happy by the discovery that someone actually could say something at a New York dinner that nobody had heard before. One man next to the speaker (of course coached beforehand) passed a translation to his elbow neighbour. It made its way down the table to me at the other end and I, in the New York way, laid it up for future use at a dinner in some other city. Meantime I use it now on you.

It is true that I arrived in New York from Kentucky some years ago. It is likewise undeniable that for some years previous thereto I had dealings with Louisville florists. But I affirm now, and all these variegated gentlemen, if they are gentlemen, would gladly come on to New York as my witnesses and bear me out in the joyful affidavit, that whatever folly or recklessness or madness marked my behaviour, never once did I commit the futility, the imbecility, of trafficking in ferns.

A great English novelist—ferns! A rising young American novelist—ferns! Frogstools, mushrooms, fungi! Man alive, why don't you ship him a dray-load of Kentucky spiderwebs? Or if they should be too gross for his delicate soul, a birdcage containing a pair of warbling young bluegrass moonbeams?

I am a land-turtle, am I? If it be so, thank God! If I have no imagination, thank God! If I live and move and have my being under the shovel of the five senses and of the practical, thank God! But, my good fellow, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other man, if I am a turtle, do you know what I think of you as most truly being?

A poor, harmless tinker.

You, with your pastime of fabricating novels, dwell in a little workshop of the imagination; you tinker with what you are pleased to call human lives, reality, truth. On your shop door should hang a sign to catch the eye: "Tinkering done here. Noble, splendid tinkering. No matter who you are, what your past career or present extremity, come in and let the owner of this shop make your acquaintance and he will work you over into something finer than you have ever been or in this world will ever be. For he will make you into an unfallen original or into a perfected final. If you have never had a chance to do your best in life, he will give you that chance in a story. All unfortunates, all the broken-down, especially welcome. Everybody made over to be as everybody should be by Beverley Sands."

But, brother, the sole thing with which you, the tinker, do business is the sole thing with which I, the turtle, do not do business. I, as a lawyer, cannot tamper with human life, actuality, truth. During the years that I have been an attorney never have I had a case in court without first of all things looking for the element of imagination in it and trying to stamp that element out of the case and kick it out of the courtroom: that lurking scoundrel, that indefatigable mischief-maker, your beautiful and beloved patron power—imagination.

Going on to testify out of my experience as a land-turtle, I depose the following, having kissed the Bible, to wit: that during the turtle's travels he sooner or later crosses the tracks of most of the other animal creatures and gets to know them and their ways. But there is one path of one creature marked for unique renown among nose-bearing men: that of a graceful, agile, little black-and-white piece of soft-furred nocturnal innocence—surnamed the polecat.

Now the imagination, as long as it is favourably disposed, may in your profession be the harmless bird of paradise or whatever winged thing you will that soars innocently toward bright skies; but, once unkindly disposed, it is in my profession, and in every other, the polecat of the human faculties. When it has testified against you, it vanishes from the scene, but the whole atmosphere reeks with its testimony.

Hence it is that I go gunning first for this same little animal whose common den is the lawsuit. His abode is everywhere, though you never seem to have encountered him in your work and walks. If you should do so, if you should ever run into the polecat of a hostile imagination, oh, then, my dear fellow, may the land-turtle be able to crawl to you and stand by you in that hour!

But—the tinker to his work, the turtle to his! A chaque oiseau! Diogenes, your tub!

As to the fern business, I'll inquire of Polly. I paid for the flowers, she got them. Anybody can receive money for blossoms, but only a statesman and a Christian, I suppose, can fill an order for flowers with equity and fresh buds. Go ahead and try Phillips & Faulds. You could reasonably rely upon them to fill any order that you might place in their hands, however nonsensical-comical, billy-goatian-satirical it may be. They'd send your Englishman an opossum with a pouch full of blooming hyacinths if that would quiet his longing and make him happy. I should think it might.

We are, sir, your obliged counsel and turtle,

BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE.

How is the fair Tilly Snowden? Still cooing? Are you still cooing?

Uncertain doves!

BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES

150 Broad Street,
June 5.

DEAR POLLY:

I send you some red roses to go with your black hair and your black eyes, never so black as when black with temper. When may I come to see you? Why not to-morrow night?

Another matter, not so vital but still important: a few years before we left Louisville to seek our fortunes (and misfortunes) in New York, I at different times employed divers common carriers known as florists to convey to you inflammatory symbols of those emotions that could not be depicted in writing fluid. In other words, I hired those mercenaries to impress my infatuation upon you in terms of their costliest, most sensational merchandise. You should be prepared to say which of these florists struck you as the best business agent.

Would you send me the address of that man or of that firm? Immediately you will want to know why. Always suspicious! Let the suspicions be quieted; it is not I, it is Beverley. Some foggy-headed Englishman has besought him to ship him (the foggy one) some Kentucky vegetation all the way across the broad Atlantic to his wet domain—interlocking literary idiots! Beverley appeals to me, I to you, the highest court in everything.

Are you still enjoying the umbrageous society of that giraffe-headed jackass, Doctor Claude Mullen? Can you still tolerate his unimpassioned propinquity and futile gyrations? He a nerve specialist! The only nerve in his practice is his nerve. Doesn't my love satisfy you? Isn't there enough of it? Isn't it the right kind? Will it ever give out?

Your reply, then, will cover four points: to thank me for the red roses; to say when I may come to see you; to send me the address of the Louisville florist who became most favourably known to you through a reckless devotion; and to explain your patience with that unhappy fool.

Thy sworn and thy swain,

BEN DOOLITTLE.

POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE

The Franklin Flats,
June 6.

MY DEAR BEN:

Your writing to me for the name of a Louisville florist is one of your flimsiest subterfuges. What you wished to receive from me was a letter of reassurance. You were disagreeable on your last visit and you have since been concerned as to how I felt about it afterwards. Now you try to conciliate me by invoking my aid as indispensable. That is like you men! If one of you can but make a woman forget, if he can but lead her to forgive him, by flattering her with the idea that she is indispensable! And that is like woman! I see her figure standing on the long road of time: dumbly, patiently standing there, waiting for some male to pass along and permit her to accompany him as his indispensable fellow-traveller. I am now to be put in a good humour by being honoured with your request that I supply you with the name of a florist.

Well, you poor, uninformed Ben, I'll supply you. All the Louisville florists, as I thought at the time, carried out their instructions faithfully; that is, from each I occasionally received flowers not fresh. Did it occur to me to blame the florists? Never! I did what a woman always does: she thinks less of—well, she doesn't think less of the florist!

Be this as it may, Beverley might try Phillips & Faulds for whatever he is to export. As nearly as I now remember they sent the biggest boxes of whatever you ordered!

I have an appointment for to-morrow night, but I think I can arrange to divide the evening, giving you the later half. It shall be for you to say whether the best half was yours. That will depend upon you.

I still enjoy the "umbrageous society" of Dr. Claude Mullen because he loves me and I do not love him. The fascination of his presence lies in my indifference. Perhaps women are so seldom safe with the men who love them, that any one of us feels herself entitled to make the most of a rare chance! I am not only safe, I am entertained. As I go down into the parlour, I almost feel that I ought to buy a ticket to a performance in my own private theatre.

Ben, dear, are you going to commit the folly of being jealous? If I had to marry him, do you know what my first wifely present would be? A liberal transfusion of my own blood! As soon as I enter the room, what fascinates me are his lower eyelids, which hold little cupfuls of sentimental fluid. I am always expecting the little pools to run over: then there would be tears. The night he goes for good—perhaps they will be tears that night.

If you ask me how can I, if I feel thus about him, still encourage his visits, I have simply to say that I don't know. When it comes to what a woman will "receive" in such cases, the ground she walks on is very uncertain to her own feet. It may be that the one thing she forever craves and forever fears not to get is absolute certainty, certainty that some day love for her will not be over, everything be not ended she knows not why. Dr. Mullen's love is pitiful, and as long as a man's love is pitiful at least a woman can be sure of it. Therefore he is irresistible—as my guest!

The roses are glorious. I bury my face in them down to the thorns. And then I come over and sign my name as the indispensable

POLLY BOLES.

POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN

June 6.

DEAR TILLY:

I have had a note from Beverley, asking whether he could come this evening. I have written that I have an appointment, but I did not enlighten him as to the appointment being with you. Why not let him suffer awhile? I will explain afterwards. I told him that I could perhaps arrange to divide the evening; would you mind? And would you mind coming early? I will do as much for you some time, and I suspect I couldn't do more!

P.S.—Rather than come for the first half of the evening perhaps you would prefer to postpone your visit altogether. It would suit me just as well; better in fact. There really was something very particular, Tilly dear, that I wanted to talk to Ben about to-night.

I shall not look for you at all this evening, best of friends.

POLLY BOLES.

TILLY SNOWDEN TO POLLY BOLES

June 6.

DEAR POLLY:

The very particular something to talk to Ben about to-night is the identical something for every other night. And nothing could be more characteristic of you, as soon as you heard that my visit would clash with one of his, than your eagerness to push me partly out of the house in a hurried letter and then push me completely out in a quiet postscript. Being a woman, I understand your temptation and your tactics. I fully sympathise with you.

Continue in ease of mind, my most trusted intimate. I shall not drop in to interrupt you and Ben—both not so young as you once were and both getting stout—heavy Polly, heavy Ben—as you sit side by side in your little Franklin Flat parlour. That parlour always suggests to me an enormous turnip hollowed out square: with no windows; with a hole on one side to come in and a hole on the other side to go out; upholstered in enormous bunches of beets and horse-radish, and lighted with a wilted electric sunflower. There you two will sit to-night, heavy Polly, heavy Ben, suffocating for fresh air and murmuring to each other as you have murmured for years:

"I do! I do!"

"I do! I do!"

One sentence in your letter, Polly dear, takes your photograph like a camera; the result is a striking likeness. That sentence is this:

"Why not let him suffer awhile? I will explain afterwards."

That is exactly what you will do, what you would always do: explain afterwards. In other words, you plot to make Ben jealous but fear to make him too jealous lest he desert you. If on the evening of this visit you should forget "to explain," and if during the night you should remember, you would, if need were, walk barefoot through the streets in your nightgown and tap on his window-shutter, if you could reach it, and say: "Ben, that appointment wasn't with any other man; it was with Tilly. I could not sleep until I had told you!"

That is, you have already disposed of yourself, breath and soul, to Ben; and while you are waiting for the marriage ceremony, you have espoused in his behalf what you consider your best and strongest trait—loyalty. Under the goadings of this vampire trait you will, a few years after marriage, have devoured all there is of Ben alive and will have taken your seat beside what are virtually his bones. As the years pass, the more ravenously you will preside over the bones. Never shall the world say that Polly Boles was disloyal to whatever was left of her dear Ben Doolittle!

Your loyalty! I believe the first I saw of it was years ago one night in Louisville when you and I were planning to come to New York to live. Naturally we were much concerned by the difficulties of choosing our respective New York residences and we had written on and had received thumb-nailed libraries of romance about different places. As you looked over the recommendations of each, you came upon one called The Franklin Flats. The circular contained appropriate quotations from Poor Richard's Almanac. I remember how your face brightened as you said: "This ought to be the very thing." One of the quotations on the circular ran somewhat thus: "Beware of meat twice boiled"; and you said in consequence: "So they must have a good restaurant!"

In other words, you believed that a house named after Franklin could but resemble Franklin. A building put up in New York by a Tammany contractor, if named after Benjamin Franklin and advertised with quotations from Franklin's works, would embody the traits of that remote national hero! To your mind—not to your imagination, for you haven't any—to your mind, and you have a great deal of mind, the bell-boys, the superintendent, the scrub woman, the chambermaids, the flunkied knave who stands at the front door—all these were loyally congregated as about a beloved mausoleum. You are still in the Franklin Flats! I know what you have long suffered there; but move away! Not Polly Boles. She will be loyal to the building as long as the building stands by the contractor and the contractor stands by profits and losses.

While on the subject of loyalty, not your loyalty but woman's loyalty, I mean to finish with it. And I shall go on to say that occasionally I have sat behind a plate-glass window in some Fifth Avenue shop and have studied woman's organised loyalty, unionised loyalty, standardised loyalty. This takes effect in those processions that now and then sweep up the Avenue as though they were Crusaders to the Holy Sepulchre. The marchers try first not to look self-conscious; all try, secondly, to look devoted to "the cause." But beneath all other expressions and differences of expression I have always seen one reigning look as plainly as though it were printed in enormous letters on a banner flying over their heads:

"Strictly Monogamous Women."

At such times I have felt a wild desire, when I should hear of the next parade, to organise a company of unenthralled young girls who with unfettered natures and unfettered features should tramp up the Avenue under their own colours. If the women before them—those loyal ones—would actually carry, as they should, a banner with the legend I have described, then my company of girls should unfurl to the breeze their flag with the truth blazoned on it:

"Not Necessarily Monogamous!"

The honest human crowd, watching and applauding us, would pack the Avenue from sidewalks to roofs.

Between you and me everything seems to be summed up in one difference: all my life I have wanted to go barefoot and all your life, no matter what the weather, you have been solicitous to put on goloshes.

My very nature is rooted in rebellion that in a world alive and running over with irresistible people, a woman must be doomed to find her chief happiness in just one! The heart going out to so many in succession, and the hand held by one; year after year your hand held by the first man who impulsively got possession of it. Every instinct of my nature would be to jerk my hand away and be free! To give it again and again.

This subject weighs crushingly on me as I struggle with this letter because I have tidings for you about myself. I am to write words which I have long doubted I should ever write, life's most iron-bound words. Polly, I suppose I am going to be married at last. Of course it is Beverley. Not without waverings, not without misgivings. But I'd feel those, be the man whoever he might. Why I feel thus I do not know, but I know I feel. I tell you this first because it was you who brought Beverley and me together, who have always believed in his career. (Though I think that of late you have believed more in him and less in me.) I, too, am beginning to believe in his career. He has lately ascertained that his work is making a splendid impression in England. If he succeeds in England, he will succeed in this country. He has received an invitation to visit some delightful and very influential people in England and "to bring me along!" Think of anybody bringing me along! If we should be entertained by these people [they are the Blackthornes], such is English social life, that we should also get to know the white Thornes and the red Thornes—the whole social forest. The iron rule of my childhood was economy; and the influence of that iron rule over me is inexorable still: I cannot even contemplate such prodigal wastage in life as not to accept this invitation and gather in its wealth of consequences.

More news of me, very, very important: at last I have made the acquaintance of George Marigold. I have become one of his patients.

Beverley is furious. I enclose a letter from him. You need not return it. I shall not answer it. I shall leave things to his imagination and his imagination will give him no rest.

If Ben hurled at you a jealous letter about Dr. Mullen, you would immediately write to remove his jealousy. You would even ridicule Dr. Mullen to win greater favour in Ben's eyes. That is, you would do an abominable thing, never doubting that Ben would admire you the more. And you would be right; for as Ben observed you tear Dr. Mullen to pieces to feed his vanity, he would lean back in his chair and chuckle within himself: "Glorious, staunch old Polly!"

And what you would do in this instance you will do all your life: you will practise disloyalty to every other human being, as in this letter you have practised it with me, for the sake of loyalty to Ben: your most pronounced, most horrible trait.

TILLY SNOWDEN.

POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN

June 7.

DEAR TILLY:

I return Beverley's letter. Without comment, since I did not read it. You know how I love Beverley, respect him, believe in him. I have a feeling for him unlike that for any other human being, not even Ben; I look upon him as set apart and sacred because he has genius and belongs to the world.

As for his faults, those that I have not already noticed I prefer to find out for myself. I have never cared to discover any human being's failings through a third person. Instead of getting acquainted with the pardonable traits of the abused, I might really be introduced to the abominable traits of the abuser.

Once more, you think you are going to marry Beverley! I shall reserve my congratulations for the event itself.

Thank you for surrendering your claim on my friendship and society last night. Ben and I had a most satisfactory evening, and when not suffocating we murmured "I do" to our hearts' content.

Next time, should your visits clash, I'll push him out. Yet I feel in honour bound to say that this is only my present state of mind. I might weaken at the last moment—even in the Franklin Flats.

As to some things in your letter, I have long since learned not to bestow too much attention upon anything you say. You court a kind of irresponsibility in language. With your inborn and over-indulged willfulness you love to break through the actual and to revel in the imaginary. I have become rather used to this as one of your growing traits and I am therefore not surprised that in this letter you say things which, if seriously spoken, would insult your sex and would make them recoil from you—or make them wish to burn you at the stake. When you march up Fifth Avenue with your company of girls in that kind of procession, there will not be any Fifth Avenue: you will be tramping through the slums where you belong.

All this, I repeat, is merely your way—to take things out in talking. But we can make words our playthings in life's shallows until words wreck us as their playthings in life's deeps.

Still, in return for your compliments to me, which, of course, you really mean, I paid you one the other night when thinking of you quite by myself. It was this: nature seems to leave something out of each of us, but we presently discover that she perversely put it where it does not belong.

What she left out of you, my dear, was the domestic tea-kettle. There isn't even any place for one. But she made up for lack of the kettle by rather overdoing the stove!

Your discreet friend,
POLLY BOLES.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO PHILLIPS & FAULDS

Cathedral Heights, New York,
June 7, 1900.

GENTLEMEN:

A former customer of yours, Mr. Benjamin Doolittle, has suggested your firm as reliable agents to carry out an important commission, which I herewith describe:

I enclose a list of Kentucky ferns. I desire you to make a collection of these ferns and to ship them, expenses prepaid, to Edward Blackthorne, Esquire, King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, England. The cost is not to exceed twenty-five dollars. To furnish you the needed guarantee, as well as to avoid unnecessary correspondence, I herewith enclose, payable to your order, my check for that amount.

Will you let me have a prompt reply, stating whether you will undertake this commission and see it through?

Very truly yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS.

PHILLIPS & FAULDS TO BEVERLEY SANDS

Louisville, Ky.,
June 10, 1900.

DEAR SIR:

Your valued letter with check for $25 received. We handle most of the ferns on the list, and know the others and can easily get them.

You may rely upon your valued order receiving the best attention. Thanking you for the same,

Yours very truly,
PHILLIPS & FAULDS.

BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE

Cathedral Heights, New York,
June 15, 1910.

MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE:

Your second letter came into the port of my life like an argosy from a rich land. I think you must have sent it with some remembrance of your own youth, or out of your mature knowledge of youth itself; how too often it walks the shore of its rocky world, cutting its bare feet on sharp stones, as it strains its eyes toward things far beyond its horizon but not beyond its faith and hope. Some day its ship comes in and it sets sail toward the distant ideal. How much the opening of the door of your friendship, of your life, means to me! A new consecration envelops the world that I am to be the guest of a great man. If words do not say more, it is because words say so little.

Delay has been unavoidable in any mere formal acknowledgment of your letter. You spoke in it of the hinges of a book. My silence has been due to the arrangement of hinges for the shipment of the ferns. I wished to insure their safe transoceanic passage and some inquiries had to be made in Kentucky.

You may rely upon it that the matter will receive the best attention. In good time the ferns, having reached the end of their journey, will find themselves put down in your garden as helpless immigrants. From what outlook I can obtain upon the scene of their reception, they should lack only hands to reach confidingly to you and lack only feet to run with all their might away from Hodge.

I acknowledge—with the utmost thanks—the unusual and beautiful courtesy of Mrs. Blackthorne's and your invitation to my wife, if I have one, and to me. It is the dilemma of my life, at the age of twenty-seven, to be obliged to say that such a being as Mrs. Sands exists, but that nevertheless there is no such person.

Can you imagine a man's stretching out his hand to pluck a peach and just before he touched the peach, finding only the bough of the tree? Then, as from disappointment he was about to break off the offensive bough, seeing again the dangling peach? Can you imagine this situation to be of long continuance, during which he could neither take hold of the peach nor let go of the tree—nor go away? If you can, you will understand what I mean when I say that my bride persists in remaining unwed and I persist in wooing. I do not know why; she protests that she does not know; but we do know that life is short, love shorter, that time flies, and we are not husband and wife.

If she remains undecided when Summer returns, I hope Mrs. Blackthorne and you will let me come alone.

Thus I can thank you with certainty for one with the hope that I may yet thank you for two.

I am,

Sincerely yours,
BEVERLEY SANDS.

P.S.—Can you pardon the informality of a postscript?

As far as I can see clearly into a cloudy situation, marriage is denied me on account of the whole unhappy history of woman—which is pretty hard. But a good many American ladies—the one I woo among them—are indignant just now that they are being crowded out of their destinies by husbands—or even possibly by bachelors. These ladies deliver lectures to one another with discontented eloquence and rouse their auditresses to feministic frenzy by reminding them that for ages woman has walked in the shadow of man and that the time has come for the worm [the woman] to turn on the shadow or to crawl out of it.

My dear Mr. Blackthorne, I need hardly say that the only two shadows I could ever think of casting on the woman I married would be that of my umbrella whenever it rained, and that of her parasol whenever the sun shone. But I do maintain that if there is not enough sunshine for the men and women in the world, if there has to be some casting of shadows in the competition and the crowding, I do maintain that the casting of the shadow would better be left to the man. He has had long training, terrific experience, in this mortal business of casting the shadow, has learned how to moderate it and to hold it steady! The woman at least knows where it is to be found, should she wish to avail herself of it. But what would be the state of a man in his need of his spouse's penumbra? He would be out of breath with running to keep up with the penumbra or to find where it was for the time being!

I have seen some of these husbands who live—or have gradually died out—in the shadow of their wives; they are nature's subdued farewell to men and gentlemen.

DIARY OF BEVERLEY SANDS

June 16.

A remarkable thing has lately happened to me.

One of my Kentucky novels, upon being republished in London some months ago, fell into the hands of a sympathetic reviewer. This critic's praise later made its way to the stately library of Edward Blackthorne. What especially induced the latter to read the book, I infer, were lines quoted by the reviewer from my description of a woodland scene with ferns in it: the mighty novelist, as it happens, is himself interested in ferns. He consequently wrote to some other English authors and critics, calling attention to my work, and he sent a letter to me, asking for some ferns for his garden.

This recognition in England hilariously affected my friends over here. Tilly, whose mind suggests to me a delicately poised pair of golden balances for weighing delight against delight (always her most vital affair), when this honour for me fell into the scales, found them inclined in my favour. If it be true, as I have often thought, that she has long been holding on to me merely until she could take sure hold of someone else of more splendid worldly consequence, she suddenly at least tightened her temporary grasp. Polly, good, solid Polly, wholesome and dependable as a well-browned whole-wheat baker's loaf weighing a hundred and sixty pounds, when she heard of it, gave me a Bohemian supper in her Franklin Flat parlour, inviting only a few undersized people, inasmuch as she and Ben, the chief personages of the entertainment, took up most of the room. We were so packed in, that literally it was a night in Bohemia aux sardines.

Since the good news from England came over, Ben, with his big, round, clean-shaven, ruddy face and short, reddish curly hair, which makes him look like a thirty-five-year-old Bacchus who had never drunk a drop—even Ben has beamed on me like a mellower orb. He is as ashamed as ever of my books, but is beginning to feel proud that so many more people are being fooled by them. Several times lately I have caught his eyes resting on me with an expression of affectionate doubt as to whether after all he might be mistaken in not having thought more of me. But he dies hard. My publisher, who is a human refrigerator containing a mental thermometer, which rises or falls toward like or dislike over a background for book-sales, got wind of the matter and promptly invited me to one of his thermometric club-lunches—always an occasion for acute gastritis.

Rumour of my fame has permeated my club, where, of course, the leading English reviews are kept on file. Some of the members must have seen the favourable criticisms. One night I became aware as I passed through the rooms that club heroes seated here and there threw glances of fresh interest toward me and exchanged auspicious words. The president—who for so long a time has styled himself the Nestor of the club that he now believes it is the members who do this, the garrulous old president, whose weaknesses have made holes in him through which his virtues sometimes leak out and get away, met me under the main chandelier and congratulated me in tones so intentionally audible that they violated the rules but were not punishable under his personal privileges.

There was a sinister incident: two members whom Ben and I wish to kick because they have had the audacity to make the acquaintance of Tilly and Polly, and whom we despise also because they are fashionable charlatans in their profession—these two with dark looks saw the president congratulate me.

More good fortune yet to come! The ferns which I am sending Mr. Blackthorne will soon be growing in his garden. The illustrious man has many visitors; he leads them, if he likes, to his fern bank. "These," he will some day say, "came from Christine Nilsson. These are from Barbizon in memory of Corot. These were sent me by Turgenieff. And these," he will add, turning to his guests, "these came from a young American novelist, a Kentuckian, whose work I greatly respect: you must read his books." The guests separate to their homes to pursue the subject. Spreading fame—may it spread! Last of all, the stirring effect of this on me, who now run toward glory as Anacreon said Cupid ran toward Venus—with both feet and wings.

The ironic fact about all this commotion affecting so many solid, substantial people—the ironic fact is this:

There was no woodland scene and there were no ferns.

Here I reach the curious part of my story.

When I was a country lad of some seventeen years in Kentucky, one August afternoon I was on my way home from a tramp of several miles. My course lay through patches of woods—last scant vestiges of the primeval forest—and through fields garnered of summer grain or green with the crops of coming autumn. Now and then I climbed a fence and crossed an old woods-pasture where stock grazed.

The August sky was clear and the sun beat down with terrific heat. I had been walking for hours and parching thirst came upon me.

This led me to remember how once these rich uplands had been the vast rolling forest that stretched from far-off eastern mountains to far-off western rivers, and how under its shade, out of the rock, everywhere bubbled crystal springs. A land of swift forest streams diamond bright, drinking places of the bold game.

The sun beat down on me in the treeless open field. My feet struck into a path. It, too, became a reminder: it had once been a trail of the wild animals of that verdurous wilderness. I followed its windings—a sort of gully—down a long, gentle slope. The windings had no meaning now: the path could better have been straight; it was devious because the feet that first marked it off had threaded their way crookedly hither and thither past the thick-set trees.

I reached the spring—a dry spot under the hot sun; no tree overshadowing it, no vegetation around it, not a blade of grass; only dust in which were footprints of the stock which could not break the habit of coming to it but quenched their thirst elsewhere. The bulged front of some limestone rock showed where the ancient mouth of the spring had been. Enough moisture still trickled forth to wet a few clods. Hovering over these, rising and sinking, a little quivering jet of gold, a flock of butterflies. The grey stalk of a single dead weed projected across the choked orifice of the fountain and one long, brown grasshopper—spirit of summer dryness—had crawled out to the edge and sat motionless.

A few yards away a young sycamore had sprung up from some wind-carried seed. Its grey-green leaves threw a thin scarred shadow on the dry grass and I went over and lay down under it to rest—my eyes fixed on the forest ruin.

Years followed with their changes. I being in New York with my heart set on building whatever share I could of American literature upon Kentucky foundations, I at work on a novel, remembered that hot August afternoon, the dry spring, and in imagination restored the scene as it had been in the Kentucky of the pioneers.

I now await with eagerness all further felicities that may originate in a woodland scene that did not exist. What else will grow for me out of ferns that never grew?