But to bring off a love scene properly, demands of course much more elaborate paraphernalia. The room, so far as general experience indicates, should be hung with green and rose; the author, whom a Nubian mute is fanning with swans' down, now is robed in sky blue, and wears a graven turquoise ring. Musicians are in attendance, preferably choristers, fiddlers and pipers. Upon the writer's head is a tiara of lapis lazuli and beryl, wreathed about with myrtle and roses: upon the auctorial breast a copper talisman opposes to the busied keys of the typewriter the mystic sign of Anael and the inscription AVEEVA VADELILITH....
I do not mean that in writing the Biography I myself have always in every detail followed these exact "methods" of composition. What with one thing and another, such as having small children in the house, a similar account at the bank, and the attendance within candid conversational range of one who holds at best the customary views as to what may be put up with in a husband,—with such deterrents about, these "methods" have sometimes, in some respects, been found inexpedient. And so I merely suggest them here as that ideal of conduct which should be aimed at by the creating romanticist, in absolute and strict logic. For he in reality is a sorcerer, and in consequence is amenable to the most ancient of rules.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] An American periodical of the day, designed to cure the habit of reading magazines.
III
MINIONS OF THE MOON
"Schiller's Räuber perverted the taste and imagination of all young men. The high-minded, metaphysical thief, its hero, was so warmly admired that many raw students abandoned their homes and betook themselves to the forests to levy contributions upon travellers. But they found that real, everyday robbers were unlike the banditti of the stage; and that three months in prison was very well to read about by their own firesides, but not agreeable to undergo in their own proper persons."
3.
Minions of the Moon
§ 25