I saw many myriads of spectral kitten forms, and unsubstantial egg shapes rushing towards me through the air. Instinctively I ran indoors and gripped the umbrella from its corner, and stood on guard.
Then I heard someone chuckling quite close to me, chuckling softly, but unmistakably. And the booing hushed, and the gloom lightened, and the garden-roller glimmered faintly in the moonlit summer night, and inside the lawn-mower lay the God of the Period crying with uncontrollable laughter.
"When the time comes," he said, "when mankind gets weary of Paraded Pessimism, and the Big Scandinavian Boom has burst, then I will conjure forth the Great Guffaw; and then it will be time for all Dyspeptic Decadents to get under their umbrellas—just as you did awhile ago, for mankind will have recovered its sense of humour, and will decline to take them seriously. But you had much better leave off bothering your head about that lost backbone, for you won't be happy when they get it!"
And while I was taking off my goloshes indoors, I heard again the sound of snapping celery sticks, as the Period-God rolled on the bed in ecstasies of stifled merriment, and I wondered at intervals what it was all about.
For Outward Application.—"'A man may change his skies,' as the Roman poet puts it," quoth the Daily Telegraph, "but he does not so easily change his habits." The Academy is about to open. The pictures will soon be hung. Varnishing day comes, with last chance for alteration. Then comes in Latin poetic proverb, "A man may change his skies, but, do what he will, he cannot alter that peculiar style that marks the work as his, and nobody else's."
New Proverb.—All "problem" and no "play" makes drama a dull joy.