The City of Beautiful Nonsense

by E. Temple Thurston

"I'm going to put him out of reach of the indignity. He's never going to the chapel of unredemption any more."

"What are you going to do?"

"Give him to you. You are the only person I know of, who has the gift of understanding poverty."

"To me?" Instinctively her fingers tightened round him. "To me?" she repeated.

He smiled and bent his head. "He seals our friendship," said he.

This was his way of telling her that he knew she understood. The perfect nonsense of the gift--a figure in brass that cost seven' shillings and had been pledged and redeemed for six, times out of number--this had little or nothing to do with it. Everything in this world is nonsense; the whole of life is a plethora of ludicrous absurdities, one more fanciful than another. The setting upon the head of a man a fantastic piece of metal and calling in a loud voice that he is king--the holding aloft of another piece of metal, crossed in shape, studded with precious stones, and exhorting those who behold it to fall upon their knees--the placing on the finger of a little circular band--of metal too--and thereby binding irrevocably the lives and freedom of two living beings in an indissoluble bondage, all these things are nonsense, childish, inconsequent nonsense, but for their symbolism and the inner meaning that they hold.

The crown is nothing, the cross is nothing, the ring is nothing, too. A goldsmith, a silversmith, a worker in brass, these men can turn them out under the hammer or upon the lathe; they can scatter the earth with them and have done so. From the crown in finest gold and rarest jewels to the crown in paper gilt, the difference can only be in value, not in truth. From the great cross in Westminster Cathedral to the little nickel toy that hangs from the cheapest of rosary beads, the difference is only the same. From the massive ring that the Pope must wear to the tinsel thing that the cracker hides in its gaudy wrappings at Christmas-time, the difference is just the same. Each would serve the other's purpose. Each would mean nothing but nonsense and empty foolishness except to the eyes which behold the symbolism that they bear.

Yet they, because of their meanings, dominate the world. Little pieces of metal of the earth's reluctant yield--for the highest symbolism always takes form in metal--they govern and command with a despotism that is all part of the chaos of nonsense in which we live.

Only one form of metal there is, which is a meaning in itself; before which, without nonsense and without symbolism, a man must bow his head--the sword. The only thing in this world of ours in which nonsense plays no part; the only thing in this world of ours which needs no symbolism to give it power. Yet in times of peace, it lies idly in the scabbard and there are few to bring it reverence.

For the present, nonsense must content us then. The greatest intellects must admit that it is still in the nature of them to sprawl upon the floor of the nursery, making belief with crowns, with crosses and with rings--making belief that in these fanciful toys lies all the vast business of life.