How does Elaine answer as an ideal? Almost as well as the Sleeping Beauty. Ignorance absolute; instant surrender to the first man appearing; no shadow of inquiry as to his being married or single; much less as to his morals. Then the apotheosis of the tidy-making instinct—embroidering a cover for a steel shield! a thing meant to bear the hardest kind of blows, made for that purpose, and she so afraid it will get "rust or soilure" that she constructs this decorated case for it.
Then the going forth to nurse her wounded hero, and the ingenuous proposal, when he offers to requite her.
Being refused, what then? Any thought of her duty in the world? Of her two good brothers? Of her aged father—very fond of her too, that old father? Not the slightest. Not even a glimmer of purpose to live on—if her love was so wonderful, and be of some use to the great man, by and by.
Nothing but herself. "I want something! I can't have it! I will die!"—and die she did, of set purpose, by a sort of flabby suicide; making the most careful arrangements for a spectacular funeral barge, and a letter that should wring the heart of the obdurate man.
Well, I can remember when I cried over it—at about thirteen. It does appeal to girls; but is it therefore an ideal to be held up as a High Source and followed?
It is time and more than time for us to recognize that marriage is for men and women, not girls and boys; that "love" is not a rosy dream but a responsible undertaking, with consequences; that no true ideals of love can be formed without full recognition of its purpose.
*
A thin small book of verse, a booklet, called "Philemon's Verses," from
The Evergreen Press, Montrose, Pa., has been sent me for review.
Now I have a theory of my own in regard to what we are pleased to call "minor poets"; namely, that poetry is a natural form of expression to most human beings, and should be used as such.
Why do we imagine that the best method of ensuring our output of poetry is to have a few huge monoliths of poets—and no more? Is the great poet surer of recognition, safer in his unparalleled superiority because there is nothing between him and the unpoetical? Is a vast audience of the dumb and verseless, who do not care enough for poetry to write any of it, the best for the great poet?