Proem.
Adam, according to tradition, was created in full King-Beaverhood, and, burgeoning amid the bougainvillea and borage of the Garden of Eden, the Beard, throughout the centuries, has bloomed and faded, resurged, again faded, then blossomed anew that, in the fullness of time, the Beard-Bearer might be crowned with the honourable title of Beaver. “The soft susurrus of his silken stride” brings joy to the heart of man, perhaps also “game, set, match,” and the shape, the colour, the texture of his adornment provoke a fastidious scrutiny akin to that of a connoisseur appraising a Crown Derby figurine. For many years the auburn-haired hero who grew a beard was not, ipso facto, a person of any importance. A dignitary of the Church, whose venerable features were complemented or obscured by a snowy, a grizzled or a brindled beard of majestic length, was not, inherently, remarkable. Behold them now, a Red-King and an Ecclesiastical King, cynosures, orchids upon the unlovely tree-trunk of our common life. As the poet might have written:—
Beaver, beaver, burning bright,
In what forest of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy xanthine symmetry?