The flask that Wood-Alcohol Maurice, if I may so call him, held so long to our lips in the years before 1914, produced the usual effects of joy first, and then blindness and coma. I speak from experience. I took some myself and was poisoned, and I knew other cases. But it poisoned poor Maeterlinck more—I may say, most of all—for he had taken his own medicine honorably as fast as he mixed it. Owing to this imprudence, he found himself, in 1914, in such a deep coma it almost killed him to come out of it. His anger at having to wake up and face things was loud. He found himself compelled to live for a while in the midst of hard facts, and his comments upon them were scathing; as all dreamers' are.
Since then he has gone part-way back to the land of romance, and if he will stay there I shall not prefer charges against him. He is one of the masters of fancy. He can mine fairy gold. But any time he comes to this world we're now learning to live in, or offers us any more mail-order lessons in sweetness, I think we should urge him to go and stay where he belongs.
There is a poem by Joaquin Miller about Columbus that describes his long voyage. It consists, as I remember, entirely of groans by the sailors, who keep asking Columbus whether he will please let them turn back. But Columbus never has but one answer, and that is "Sail on." He says "Sail on, sail on," over and over again, at the end of each stanza. I grant you it must have been monotonous enough to the crew, who after the first week or two probably knew it by heart; but never mind, it sounds well to us. It's especially good when declaimed. I don't suppose Columbus himself climbed the poop and declaimed it; he merely stopped shaving, stuck his head out of the chart-room and screeched it,—suitably mixed with whatever profanities his day could command. But Time, which softens all homely history, has beautified this. All the boy Columbuses I ever heard recite it, when I was at school, had as noble a way as one could ask of telling their crews to sail on.
I did not mean to make so long a digression. To get back to Maeterlinck. We ought to provide him with a beautiful baby-blue ship. Odd, charming allegorical figures should sit on the decks, and fenders should hang from the sides to ward off bumps of truth. Astern he might tow a small wife-boat, as a mariner should, with its passenger capacity carefully stamped on the bottom. And instead of Columbus, a honey-fed spirit of dream should stand in his prow and adjure him to sail on, to dreamland. "Dream on, dream on, dream on," she should patter, each time he grew restless. I could not take a turn in the prow myself, it would be too much honor; but I should be glad to take my stand in the gentleman's rear, and do all I could to accelerate his progress from thence.
In His Baby Blue Ship