Easter
Easter! It is an assurance that death does not rule the world. We need it, viewing the wide welter of war. Those dead over there died for something beyond death and the life they so freely gave. They die that other men may live, that certain ideals, however dimly or distortedly conceived, may have assurance of persistence. They die, too, at the urge of mighty forces using them for ends we must believe are good. Do we not see that Life burns brighter for the mighty orgy of Death? Is there not sensible a spiritual quickening of men before the tragedy of the dozen nations sworn to slaughter? Is not Pity succeeding Rage, and Hate in its own futility engendering Love? When truly was the world more desirous of peace than now, when war has purged its spirit through its horrors? An old world is dying in blood. A new world is being born in cataclysmic travail. The old earth has come through many wars and to betterment. The race of man has learned through suffering. It has forgot and has had to learn again and more. Death perpetually renews Life. And Love wields both in interplay. The peoples will be nearer one another for this present madness. If we believe not this, the universe is a madhouse and the law of being is the emanation of an Infinite Idiot. The millennium is yet far off. There will be other wars, other purifications by fire and blood. A God, they say, died for us. We shall have to die often for the God within ourselves, till all but the God shall remain dead and then His kingdom come. There shall be myriads of Easters ere the agonies be done, if ever. And endless loveliness of recurring Springs "with that nameless pathos in the air" for all that die that Spring may come to be.
Marion William Reedy
Some Personal Recollections of Greenwich Village
By Euphemia M. Olcott
(I am indebted for this story to Mr. Henry Collins Brown, who gave me permission to extract it from his beautiful "Book of Old New York," printed by him privately for collectors.)
THE contact of our family with Greenwich Village dates back to the days of my great-grandfather, the Rev. John M. Mason, D.D., of the Presbyterian Church on Murray Street, who lived for some time at what became the corner of Eleventh Street and Sixth Avenue. I never saw him, but visited the house in my childhood, when it was occupied by an old Mr. Pringle, who was a friend of the family. My mother was born away out in the country, on Lovers' Lane on the Oothout Farm, where her grandfather had rented a house to take his family out of the reach of cholera, then prevalent in the city. She was born on the third of August, 1819 — a contemporary of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. Her birthplace was a frame house with hip roof. In after years a brick front was put on and the hip roof was straightened up with bricks. The house was divided into two, and became either 32 and 34 West Twentieth Street, or 34 and 36 — I am not sure which. Only a dozen years ago, when business made its inroads into that section, I discovered workmen razing the building, and the next one having been previously demolished, I could see the outline of the old roof and some of the original clapboards. Much to the amazement of the laborers I asked for and secured some pieces of these clapboards and distributed sections of them at our family dinner table on the next Thanksgiving Day. My mother grew up at the comer of Fulton and Nassau Streets, her father being the Rev. John Knox, D.D., whose pastorate of forty years was in the Collegiate Dutch Church. She often visited in Greenwich Village both at her grandfather's and at the home of Mr. Abraham Van Nest, which had been built and originally occupied by Sir Peter Warren. But she never thought of going so far for less than a week! There was a city conveyance for part of the way, and then the old Greenwich stage enabled them to complete the long journey. This ran several times a day, and when my mother committed her hymn,
"Hasten, sinner, to be wise
Ere this evening's stage be run,"
she told us that for some years it never occurred to her that it could mean anything in the world but the Greenwich stage. Mr. Van Nest's house was as dear to my young days as to those of my mother. It was a square frame house on a slight elevation in the midst of land bounded by Fourth and Bleecker, Charles and Perry Streets. It was the country residence of a gentleman, with flower and vegetable gardens, a stable, a cow, chickens, pigeons and a peacock, all dear to childish hearts. And likewise
"In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted hospitality."
From its doors many children had married and gone forth before my time came, and the mother I never knew. But old Mr. Van Nest, "a faithful elder in our church, one especially liberal in his ideas of what the ministers ought to receive, and his daughter, Miss Katherine Van Nest, made many young hearts happy, not only the returning grandchildren, but those who, like myself, could present only claims of friendship with kinship. A large hall ran through the house and a large mahogany table stood there, and this was always furnished with a large silver cake-basket full of delicious sponge cake, a batch of which must have been made every morning, I am sure, by the colored cook. And from this basket we were urged — no! We never needed urging — we were permitted to help ourselves — and we did. This was just for ordinary days, but yearly, at least, there was a children's party where mirth and jollity reigned and all old fashioned games were played and every child carried home a charming little gift. A party dress then was — I remember one such very distinctly from my pride in its acquisition — a red merino, short enough to show the white pantalettes which went down to our ankles, and over it a dotted Swiss muslin apron with straps over the shoulders. And we felt just as fine as the more bedizened little creatures of today — and I yield to no generations, before our days or since, in the good times we had.
It was in 1843 that my mother married, her father then being resident at the corner of Fourth and Mercer Streets. There I was born in 1844, and when I was two months old I was carried to her home; where I still reside. This is on Thirteenth Street, west of Sixth Avenue. There was a drug store, kept by Mrs. M. Giles, on the corner, and beyond that lot began a row of dwelling houses of which my father bought the fifth, but latterly business has absorbed four of these, so that we are now the first residence on the block. It was very far uptown in those days — there is a letter still extant which predicts that my mother will never see her old friends for they cannot go so far up — and it was thought very narrow, being only twenty feet wide. Oilcloth was in those days laid in the halls, but my grandfather advised against it, saying, "Throw down a strip of carpet, Helen: you won't stay here five years." She stayed sixty-five, until she was within two months of ninety years, when she went to her home above. Nine children were born there, one of whom made a brief stay in this world — but eight of us grew up, four boys and four girls, a natural, wholesome, noisy, merry set of youngsters, whose old fashioned ways would doubtless amaze the succeeding generations. Just to mention one thing — no Sunday paper has ever been delivered at our door.
The location, considered from a sanitary point of view, has always been excellent; in fact, it was a knowledge of this that determined its choice. The Croton water was in the house, and even a bathtub, but no stationary tubs for a good many years and well do I remember seeing the maids on Monday afternoon carrying out the round tubs and emptying them into the gutter, and great was our glee if the water soused a great black pig from its siesta — for these creatures roamed at large and were the only scavengers of any consequence.
Well do I remember also the introduction of gas and how we followed our father from room to room as he triumphantly lit each burner. It was a frolic after that on winter evenings to shuffle across the carpet and light the gas with an electric spark from the tips of our fingers, I being the one most usually successful in this feat.
(To be continued)
Passing Paris
April 1st, 1916
LA TRIENNALE. A selection from the leading art groups and limited to artists of French nationality furnishes a good, tangible object-lesson of what is to be expected of modern French art and serves as apology for a display at the present juncture. Naturally it is chiefly retrospective, not in its representatives, but in the works it summons together, most of these being already familiar to habitues of the annual shows. A judicious, deliberate eclecticism balances the most opposed schools one against the other: Matisse versus Bonnat; Harpignies versus Marquet; Mme. Marval versus Mlle. Dufau, etc. Besides the veteran Harpignies there are others: Degas, and Renoir, who here introduces himself as a sculptor — a young, debutant sculptor, nearly eighty years old by the way. Claude Monet is missing, but in his stead there are Signac, as president of the Independents, and Odilon Redon, who has dared, and quite exceptionally, to honour these walls, for he does not care to mingle in "mixed" society as a rule. And it is well for his companions, they being painters of varying degrees, high or low in the scale, but merely painters, and M. Redon on another plane, outside their zone of operations. The same criterion does not apply to them and to him. It is clear that they struggle for some technical supremacy, while he, possessing his technique, possessing it in the sense that the Japanese masters possessed theirs, aims and achieves, through an amazing mastery of his materials, the absolute liberation of the material element in painting. His art is not only art, but an art.
On all hands artists are making a stand against the war-deluge. Some yield prudently to the general turmoil by individual transformations and, realizing the vanity of practicing "fine" art at its finest just now, adapt their skill to more accessible forms, and we have painters and sculptors trying their hand at toys in response to a demand for the French and, especially, artistic idea. M. Poulbot, the draughtsman, had, years before the war, set an example with his gutter-snipe dolls. Mlle. Poupelet, our leading woman sculptor and one of our leading artists, irrespective of sex, was one of the next to make an attempt in this direction, and a group has gathered round her who model and carve and carpenter for the intended amusement of the young and the certain admiration of the old. Several exhibitions have already been held in Paris and New York, yielding success surpassing anticipation, though it is not to be supposed that the more remarkable qualities some of these little knick-knacks disguise under their more obvious purpose is particularly apparent to the general public.
Muriel Cielkovska
From "The Egoist" London
Come William et al
By Edgar Lee Masters
Come William, you are the author of "Currents of Destiny."
Come, Theodore, you wrote "Cowardly Shrinking from Duty."
Come; both of you, America needs you.
We have a problem.
It is called: "Neutrality, or The Freedom of the Seas."
We will make it into two problems,
For it would be a shame
To waste both of you on one problem.
One problem then is Neutrality,
And that's for you, William.
And one is The Freedom of the Seas,
That's for you, Theodore.
And first where do the Currents of Destiny take us,
O, William, in the handling of neutrality?
And if we do not shrink in a way too cowardly
May we have the freedom of the seas,
O, Theodore?
Ahem! There are difficulties!
For it is nice to stop the submarines,
But it would be nice to ship goods, wouldn't it,
To neutral countries?
But how can you do it
When certain foreign consuls at our ports
Won't let you?
And if they won't let you, where's your neutrality,
And your freedom of the seas?
Well, now, Theodore, how shall we not shrink
In a way cowardly or otherwise?
Ahem! we could drive these consuls from the custom houses.
And send battleships
To convey America's meat!
But if we did,
What would become of our precious Philippines
Which came to us on the currents of destiny
And through bravely doing our duty
And not cowardly shrinking from it
Ahem! You get the secret thought no doubt!
Come, William!
Come, Theodore!
What shall we do?
For you who piloted the Republic to such glory
Can certainly take us to the Islands of the Blest!
Via Reedy's St. Louis Mirror
Flasks and Flagons
By Francis S. Saltus
Water
I HEAR strange voices in the warm, swift rain,
That falls in tumult upon town and field;
It seems to tell a mystery unconcealed,
Yet hieroglyphic to a mortal's brain.
It sighs and moans as if in utter pain
Of some colossal sorrow, never healed;
It warns of awful secrets unrevealed,
And every drop repeats the sad refrain.
And then I think of the enormous sea
Fed by these drops, with drifting wrecks bestrewn,
And dimly, vaguely, like a far-off sound,
The meaning of their sorrow comes to me,
For they may be, oh rare, considerable boon,
Heaven's humble mourners for the unnumbered drowned.
Brandy
THY mighty power stirs up the sluggish blood
To craft and cunning and rejuvenate fire,
And fills again with raptures of desire
The failing sense that drowns in armour's flood.
The spirit's song, freed from our carnal mud,
Then soars supreme, and grandlier doth aspire.
And with new vigor that can never tire,
The flowers of fancy burst within the bud.
In nobler ways, even yet, thou prov'st thy might,
When soldiers, strengthened by thy drops of flame
Forget their gory wounds in frantic zeal.
And with high souls all thrilling for the fight,
Assault dread bastions for their country's fame,
And lead their flags thro' labyrinths of steel!
Chinese Letters
By Alan W. S. Lee, Wuhu, China
The Festival of Ba Yueh Dzieh
THIS is the night of perfect beauty, the night of worship, the Festival of the Moon — ba yueh dzieh. It is seven o'clock, and all through the land of the Middle Kingdom the Black Haired People turn their faces to the East. On every one of the little hills around about Wuhu (sedgy lake) stand groups of men, women and children, on every high place they stand in silhouette against the ever deepening light of the eastern sky. They stand with outstretched arms to welcome the Moon, waiting silently, patiently, until she shall appear.
Lights glow in the temple under the Pagoda on the hill, but they shine wan and faint against the bright glory behind it. Suddenly the silence is broken, the big bell in the temple of Gwo Yin and the bells from the pagoda boom across the fields of rice to the country across the river. Bells from the temple inside the city call back and forth to each other, gongs clang sharply, the thud of big drums and hollow wooden instruments mingle into one continuous sound, and under it all is the low murmur of many voices.
The figures on the highest hill are frantically waving their arms for they have seen the Moon, and now over the edge of the hill her great golden arc swings slowly up behind the Pagoda. It is a perfect night, and all the city is out to do worship to Her — Astarte, Diana, Ashtoreth.
All yesterday and today the streets of the city and all the country roads were crowded with men and women, bearing baskets full of incense. It was almost impossible to get along the Chang Giai, as no one was in a hurry, and every one wanted to stop and talk to every one else, for yesterday was also a holiday.
Now from every square, every yard and open place thick clouds of pale blue smoke rise to the Moon, and she is glad for on no other night of the year has she been so beautiful. This is not a religious festival, Confucians, Buddhists, Taoists, Shintoists and Mohammedans worship the Queen of Night together.
From my table goes up three streams of incense smoke, fragrant and sweet, from burners of brass, bronze and porcelain.
The Moon is well above the hills now, and by her light I can see a water buffalo lying half-submerged in the pool across the road. The air is full of whirling lights, and fireworks of many kinds. The gongs and bells and the fireworks will continue all night, and not until dawn will the weary people stop for sleep.
A Publishers' Club
"Look here, Scribner! Don't be downcast. The vogue of American literature in the United States may be only temporary."
With those consoling words, the obese Macmillan slapped the weeping Scribner on the back. The weeping Scribner was not consoled.
"It's all very well for you, Macmillan," he sighed. "You can spend your best years in New York on a list that is British and then give bold interviews to the newspapers about the encouragement you have given to American literature. But we Scribners live by beating the British drum."
He buried his Anglican countenance in a London pocket handkerchief.
"This procession is about to start!" roared Doubleday. "All banners must bear the portraits of American authors."
A quaint procession they formed as they sallied out of the Publishers' Club, trying hard to look as if they had ever done anything for American literature. Houghtonmifflin, in his capacity as the most Anglicized of them all, took the lead. Dodd, caught with the British goods on him. paraded side by side with Putnam, who carried a British flag painted over to resemble the stars and stripes.
"I'm afraid," sighed Harper, as they turned into Fifth Avenue, "we'll never bluff them with this sort of thing."
He looked dubiously at an Americanized list issued in a hurry to suggest that it wasn't made in London.
"You don't know Macmillan," murmured Holt. "He can disguise himself so cleverly that you'd read the map of London in his face with difficulty at first."
Just then the procession, with Appleton at the head of it, turned out of Fifth Avenue into a side street, halting in front of a private residence.
"Now, boys," yelled Doubleday, "give 'em Yankee Doodle."
They burst into a chorus of "Rule, Encyclopaedia Britannica!" As New York publishers, they thought the tunes interchangeable. They had not been singing very long, when a bedroom window above their heads flew open and the Reading Public appeared.
"Oh, I say!" cried Scribner, chipping a monocle to his eye. "Amewican literachach, ye know! We're for it. Henwy Jimes — that sort of thing, ye know."
"Bah Jove!" struck in Macmillan. "We're very American, what! Marion Crawford — er — ah! — Jack Lon'."
" 'Merican, s'elp me bob!" Holt was addressing the Reading Public now. "Poe, you know. Hawthorne. Ya'as, ya'as!"
"But," asked the Reading Public, suddenly, "why must you New York publishers wake me up out of my bed in the middle of the night to tell me you are friendly to American literature?"
All eyes were turned on Macmillan, but that Anglican was unable to bluff on the spur of the moment. Before they knew it a hose was turned on them, and as they fled back to the Publishers' Club, the dripping Scribner assured the soused Dodd that Macmillan had made a fool of them all again — what?
Alexander Harvey in his Weekly "The Bang"
Sonnet
I wandered in Scoglietto's green retreat.
The oranges on each o'erhanging spray
Burned as bright lamps of gold to shame the day;
Some startled bird with fluttering wings and fleet
Made snow of all the blossoms, at my feet
Like silver moons the pale narcissi lay.
And the curved waves that streaked the sapphire bay
Laughed i' the sun, and life seemed very sweet
Outside the young boy-priest passed singing clear,
"Jesus the Son of Mary has been slain,
O come and fill his sepulcher with flowers,"
Ah, God! Ah, God! those dear Hellenic hours
Had drowned all memory of thy bitter pain.
The Cross, the Crown, the Soldiers, and the Spear.
Oscar Wilde
Written in Holy Week at Genoa
Automobiles and Things
WE sat all day on a rock high above the sea, propped
against a solitary ragged cedar.
And the wind rising over the cliff blew drenching fogs
against as.
We sat quietly, not very far apart.
At last, stiff and dripping, we swashed thru the cranberry
swamp towards home — slowly, very, very
slowly.
That was a long, long time ago —
I wonder if we would call that fun now?
Tom Sleeper
Two Things by Cat's Paw
A Man Without Money
A MAN without money is a body without a soul — a walking death — a spectre that frightens every one. His countenance is sorrowful, and his conversation languishing and tedious. If he calls upon an acquaintance he never finds him at home, and if he opens his mouth to speak, he is interrupted every moment, so that he may not have a chance to finish his discourse, which it is feared may end with his asking for money. He is avoided like a person infected with disease, and is regarded as an incumbrance to the earth. Want wakes him up in the morning, and misery accompanies him to bed at night. The ladies discover that he is an awkward booby — landlords believe that he lives upon air, and if he wants any thing from a tradesman, he is asked for cash before delivery.
The Fortitude of a Pig
THE stoicism of a pig is enviable. The manner in which he receives the injuries heaped on him is no proof of it, certainly but his mode of bearing them after they are inflicted, is truly his own. No creature on earth can make more noise than he does to prevent himself from being hurt; but that is excellent policy. He seems to know the value of the old proverb, "It is better to prevent than to cure." But when he finds the thing is done, he is silent, and as patient as Job himself. Indeed, if Job had been allotted to bear what a pig bears we might be permitted to doubt his patience. The trials of swine are great.
In Our Village
BUT if we look back on the scenes of what we are accustomed to call the Village, back of the Square, west of Fifth Avenue and still more west of Sixth Avenue, our illusion vanishes. Back of the community which seems so unique with its worshipful reminiscences of the old, with its stately mansions, with its touch of cosmopolitan grandeur as it is voiced every night in the Brevoort, the Lafayette, in Mazzini's, in the Greenwich Village Inn, or in the studios of our our popular ones who harbor refugees from all belligerent countries:
Ragged children playing on sidewalks and thoroughfares, babies which rightfully should be in the arms of their mothers left in the care of older sisters or brothers, sitting on doorsteps or fighting for a place on one of the few benches of Washington Square. The illusion that we are living in a village, superior and extraordinary, vanishes quickly if we stroll around Bleecker street or, down Houston or Thompson and all the other tenement streets. We hardly think it possible that so few, time-worn, rickety, dirty old houses can serve as domiciles for so many thousands of families. Put together all the heart touching newspaper stories and reports of charitable associations about human misery in the big city as they appear before Christmas, make a mosaic of the most pitiful conditions humanity in a big city is subjected to . . . and you will have the painting, vivid in colors and naturalistic in conception, to which we of the Greenwich Village on Washington Square and on Fifth Avenue, created the much admired and talked-about frame.
We discarded our overcoats, the furs are properly stored away, we are thinking of our trip, of moving to the country; the trees are budding, soft green blades of grass peep bashfully out of the brown earth, the sparrows came forth from under their eaves repairing their summer residences in trees and bushes.
The sun did it. The sun with its kind golden rays, which are more beautiful on the dirtiest sidewalk of Little Italy back of our square amidst the raggedest and noisiest lot of children than the chiselled gold-circling around the cold, costly cut precious stones in Tiffany's window on Fifth Avenue. The sun did it, who shines for the poorest of us just as warm and gladly as for the richest. The sun who finds his way to the heart of every one of us, no matter where we are, no matter what our lot in this world might be; the sun comes and knocks at the door of our heart, and he is persistent. We will have to open, even if we think in the importance of our microbic existence that we have no time . . . . for sun rays which warm our heart and tor light and for love.
One quarter of an acre of playgrounds is provided by our city for the thirty-five thousand children of Greenwich Village. One quarter of an acre of land to play in, to romp in, to feel like a human being before being shut up again in the evening in the stuffy atmosphere of a dingy tenement room. There are large parks in other parts of the city; parks where these poor little ones who do not know God's free country could spend a day and think they had been in the country. But mothers cannot take them, they have to work and slave from morning till late in the night in order to eke out a living after they succeeded to earn enough to pay their rent to their landlord (I cannot understand how the honorable landlords dare to take money for these dungeon holes, very often unfit to house vermin).
Cars and elevators cannot be used without paying a fare and children get very hungry being out in the green using for once their limbs unrestrictedly, and a proper repast has to be provided for them. The babies want milk.
There is a man among us who plays St. Peter to the children of Greenwich Village. He is the gatekeeper to the summer pleasures of thirty-five thousand future citizens of our country. The Rev. Sheridan Watson Bell of the Washington Square Church, supported by a host of men and women — his true apostles — is planning for this year still more than he did last year for the children of the village. No sectarian questions are being asked, no matter what nationality or denomination they might call their own. They all are alike, they all are entitled to fresh air, to sunlight, to the freedom of the country. Dr. Bell gave last year two hundred and fifty children each week a whole day in one of our city parks. They had a jolly ride up to the park, a lot of playing if they felt like it; they could lie on the green grass and look up to the sky, unhampered by smoke stacks and factory buildings, and they could watch the passing clouds! They could dream, and a good substantial lunch would remind them that dreams come true even here on earth. And then the ride homeward again, fun and laughter and tired — healthily tired, ready for a good night's rest.
Do you remember how often kids come up to you while you are buying a ticket tor a moving picture show and look at you with their pleading, hungry eyes: "Please, mister, take me in." If you are one of those who feel the warm spring sun even if their backs are turned to the window, you'll buy a ticket for the child and play the host.
If you feel inclined to give one of these thirty-five thousand children of our village eight perfect summer days away from the dusty, smoky street, send Dr. Bell one dollar. Send it in care of the Washington Square Church or in care of Bruno's Weekly. What is one dollar? The tip you hand the waiter after a ten dollar dinner, the price of five high-balls, the price of a taxi from the Brevoort Hotel to some lobster palace. . . . No, not that? A part of your weekly room rent, almost the half of a pair pf shoes or your laundry bill?
But think, it means sun, happiness, health to a little boy or to a little girl.
Of course, you will send that dollar. But send it immediately. Bis dat, qui cito dat.
Djuna Barnes, who designed the front cover of Bruno's Weekly this week, retired to a sedate and quiet private life. After a rather exciting career of a few years of newspaper work (drawing and writing) she decided to do some real work unhampered by editorial (sic!) influences. A series of war pictures and among these her uncanny gripping "The Bullet," are not only the work of a promising artist, but of one who started to really fulfill promises.
As well as in drawing and painting she has a style of her own. in her literary adventures. Her poems and her short stories cannot possibly be called otherwise but adventures. She feels the rhythm of her inspiration and she struggles along as good as she can to make us feel it too. Her inspiration is flirting constantly with her creative desires. But Djuna Barnes is a bad match-maker. The little things in life make for tragedies. Spelling, punctuation, syntax, lack of concentration, are such little things. They are everyday tragedies in Djuna's life
Charles Keeler is expecting anxiously the appearance of the new book "Songs of Victory." It should have been out a few weeks ago, but Laurence Gomme is not better than all the other publishers, just a little bit late.
Hamilton Owens, once upon a time the youthful Sunday editor for Mr. Munsey's New York Press, and who is now the publisher of the "Motion Picture Mail," made after a long absence a trip to the village. He and his associate editor Homestead, were seen last week in a spaghetti house.
A Defense (?) of Vaudeville
VAUDEVlLLE is excellence of execution without motive. Drama is motive partially dependent upon execution. In Drama we see life. The Drama is for people who do not see life until it is acted, and for those who prefer to look at life only.
Drama is life. Vaudeville is the beauty of life. We enjoy the beauty of life without the motive when we watch a graceful diver, when we dance, in music, sometimes in paintings. There are those who revel in Brahms, and discard Wagner as inferior. It is a matter of comparative execution. Drama is the idea.
Drama, like the cigar, stimulates and continues meditation, research. Vaudeville the cigarette, affects the senses primarily, the brain reflexly. Drama is for those who do not know introspection and musing, and for those who dwell exclusively on life. Vaudeville appeals to those who ARE Drama and seek beauty without motive, and to those who sense the primitive affect, unconscious of cause.
A Drama may be good even with poor execution; Vaudeville, never. A Drama is an idea well expressed in words and action. A Vaudeville act (not a play in a vaudeville program, but an exhibition of strength, beauty, equilibrium, rhythm or buffoonery) is execution and personality minus motive — as is a concert. Granting that music may have a meaning — it is sensual, not mental.
Humor is the intermediate medium between sense and brain, and Drama is essentially mental, tempered — but slightly — by scenery and acting. Opera depends upon both motive and execution is the more essential.
To sum up: —Drama is study; Vaudeville, enjoyment.
W. V. Richberg
Books and Magazines of the Week
Von Zorn
EDWARD ARLINGTON ROBINSON'S "Van Zorn," a comedy in three acts, and published by that lady-like concern, the Macmillans is, for some reason or other, laid in Macdougall Alley, Greenwich Village, New York. The characters are artists who are wealthy. With all due respect to Mr. Robinson as one of our foremost American poets, we cannot applaud a work whose relation to the life of the alley is about as real as an automaton is to a human being. The characters talk like books, and of them all, Van Zorn himself, a wealthy fatalist, is the most tiresome. Villa, the heroine, is a stilted lady. Her attempts at wit are a painful bore. And what ancient humor she unearths!
''It seems to me sometimes that funerals are better than weddings. When we go to funerals, we know what has happened; but when we go to weddings, we don't even pretend to know what is going to happen."
"A spirited story," says the Macmillans. It is about as spirited as the worms who wait on customers at their saintly sanctums on the Avenue. Technique it has, but a technique as academic and cold as a dead fish.
A.K.
From The Mirror, St. Louis
APROPOS the "Encyclopedia Brittanica" swindle, it is worthy of note that the advertising of the "handy'" set is placed by its publishers and not by the Sears, Roebuck Company of Chicago. It is the publishers, not the distributors who are responsible for violation of the guarantee that the price of the publication would be raised after the filling of the advance orders. The cheaper edition robs the purchasers of the first edition of the 60 per cent difference between the original and later prices. Subscribers to the first edition should refuse to complete their time payments otherwise than on the basis of the lesser price for the handy edition.
Failure?
SO much was asked of me
That, in striving to forget,
My Heart was crushed.
So much was asked of me
In striving to raise my eyes
My lids have drooped.
So much was asked of me
My Soul could no longer strive;
In the dust I lay.
— Diamond Crisp
In a Modern Art Gallery
Laid out on a table draped with heavy black velvet, is a room without windows and with staring, orange-colored tapestry, was the pale body.
The room had no windows, the air was thick and heavy like that in the Martyr Chamber of the Venetian palace, sixty feet below the ground.
The lifeless eyes of the corpse were opalescent. They shone in the darkness like badly cut opals on the velvet waist of a picturesque Mexican.
The orange of the walls seemed glaring and the black velvet under the carcass, fascinating like the preachment of the fifth Buddha, who is not born yet.
The orange of the walls was dazzling like the hungry eyes of the stray hyenas. The beasts smelt the nearness of the dead. They wanted to feast on his flesh, they wanted to crunch his bones.
There was no light. There was no love. There was no beauty.
There was black. There was orange. There was hunger.
Guido Bruno
Gleanings From Jean Paul
The Enemies of Freedom
Crush every league of her friends, destroy every book and every one who gave it to the world, to show us the rising sun of freedom, and that sun will not be reflected from one mirror alone, but will shine with new lustre in every fragment. When the sea is smooth, but one sun shines out from its breast; but when broken into a thousand waves, it glitters with a thousand.
To a Rose Bleached by the Sun
Pale rose, the sun gave thee thy bloom, and the glowing sun now robs thee of it; thou art like us. When the spirit, which makes the cheek of man to glow, draws nigher and nigher to us, it, too, makes our cheek pale, and we die.
Thought and Action
Many flowers open to the sun, but one only follows him constantly. Let thy heart be the sunflower; let it not only be open to God, but bow to him, and follow him.
Flowers on a Virgin's Bier
Strew flowers upon her, ye, her fair friends! Once ye brought flowers to grace her cradle-festivals; now she is celebrating the greatest of them all, for her bier is the cradle of heaven.
The Last of the War Correspondents
(Concluded from last week)
Merely an incident in his way of life is this avoiding an accident by pointing a pistol at a man's heart. The baron knows he will have to be well protected and for the first time he seeks shelter in Chihuahua from individual assassins. Urquidi takes him to the house of Gonzales de la Garza., who is later to become one of Mexico's presidents for a few days' appearance only. De la Garza is kind and gives the proper refuge.
The next day it is Juarez and across the border.
Von Kriegelstein is written up in Chicago as he goes through.
Consequently he must get some kind of a paper, probably an American passport to get him over to Europe. Well, at any rate we said good bye and although the British cruisers searched the steamer he was on — well what can one or two ordinary humans do with a man who talks so many languages.
But because he was von Kriegelstein I kept thinking of him after he had gone. Then came the news of his death, as he should have died facing the Russians whom he hated and wrote against. The sun of his profession has set, but the star of von Kriegelstein is rising. Like most he will be best known long after he is dead because he has left his books to speak for him.
To Clara Tice
O CLARA TICE
How very nice
To think about the rhymes
That one can frame
About your name
A hundred or more times
O Clara Tice,
You rhyme with mice;
You should be very glad!
I'm sure you'll find
It will remind
Of the pet cat you had.
O Clara Tice,
Your talent's spice
To Guido Bruno's wit;
And, in his sheet.
We hope to meet
A great deal more of it.
Violet Leigh
Bruno's Weekly, published weekly by Charles Edison, and edited and written by Guido Bruno, both at 58 Washington Square, New York City. Subscription $2 a year.
Entered as second class matter at the Post Office of New York. N. Y., October 14th, 1915, under the Act of March 3d, 1879.
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