Unbuckled all from top to toes,
How swift the poem becometh prose!
And when I cast mine eyes and see
Those arctics flopping each way free,
Oh, how that flopping floppeth me!
[p 162]
]“We are all in the dark together,” says Anatole France; “the only difference is, the savant keeps knocking at the wall, while the ignoramus stays quietly in the middle of the room.” We used to be intensely interested in the knocking of the savants, but as nothing ever came of it, we have become satisfied with the middle of the room.
A GOOD MOTTO.
I was conversing with Mr. Carlton the Librarian, and he quoted from memory a line from Catulle Mendès that seemed to me uncommonly felicitous: “La vie est un jour de Mi-Carême. Quelques-uns se masquent; moi, je ris.”
In his declining years M. France has associated himself with the bunch called “Clarté,” a conscious group organized by Barbusse, the object of which is the “union of all partisans of the true right and the true liberty.” How wittily the Abbé Coignard would have discussed “Clarté,” and how wisely M. Bergeret would have considered it! Alas! it is sad to lose one’s hair, but it is a tragedy to lose one’s unbeliefs.
Chicago, as has been intimated, rather broadly, is a jay town; but it is coming on. A department store advertises “cigarette cases and [p 163] />]holders for the gay sub-deb and her great-grandmother,” also “a diary for ‘her’ if she leads an exciting life.”