Into this little book were packed some charming whimsicalities, together with some graver thoughts—though not too grave—and some fancies full tender. It had, however, sufficient resemblance to Omar Khayyám to bring it under a Philistine indictment, though its point of view was in reality very different. It was a clever bit of ruminating upon the Where and How and Why and Whence, without attempting to arrive at these mysteries, but rather to laugh at those who did. Mr. Torrence is so artistic as to know that only the masters may go upon the road in search of the Secret, and that the average wayfarer may not
hope to overtake it, but rather to suggest it by a hint now and then. The philosophy of The House of a Hundred Lights is in the main of the jocular sort; and Bidpai of indefinite memory may well chuckle to himself in some remote celestial corner that any couplet of his should have been so potent as to produce it.
Mr. Torrence has not, that I can see, filched the fire from Omar’s altar to kindle his hundred lights; this, for illustration, is pure whimsicality, not fatalistic philosophy, as a similar thought would be in Omar:
“Doubt everything,” the Thinker said,
When I was parch’d with Reason’s drought.
Said he, “Trust me, I’ve probed these things;
Have utter faith in me,—and doubt!”
Though the sky reel and Day dissolve,
And though a myriad suns fade out,
One thing of earth seems permanent