The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Emblems of Fidelity, by James Lane Allen This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. Title: The Emblems of Fidelity A Comedy in Letters Author: James Lane Allen Release Date: October 5, 2019 [EBook #60435] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY *** Produced by Al Haines THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY A Comedy in Letters BY JAMES LANE ALLEN AUTHOR OF "THE KENTUCKY CARDINAL," "THE KENTUCKY WARBLER," ETC. There is nothing so ill-bred as audible laughter.... I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason nobody has ever heard me laugh. —Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son. GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1919 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN To THE SPIRIT OF COMEDY INCOMPARABLE ALLY OF VICTORY LIST OF CHARACTERS EDWARD BLACKTHORNE . . . Famous elderly English novelist BEVERLEY SANDS . . . Rising young American novelist BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE . . . Practical lawyer, friend of Beverley Sands GEORGE MARIGOLD . . . Fashionable physician CLAUDE MULLEN . . . Fashionable nerve-specialist, friend of George Marigold RUFUS KENT . . . Long-winded president of a club NOAH CHAMBERLAIN . . . Very learned, very absent-minded professor PHILLIPS AND FAULDS . . . Florists BURNS AND BRUCE . . . Florists JUDD AND JUDD . . . Florists ANDY PETERS . . . Florist HODGE . . . Stupid gardener of Edward Blackthorne TILLY SNOWDEN . . . Dangerous sweetheart of Beverley Sands POLLY BOLES . . . Dangerous sweetheart of Benjamin Doolittle, friend of Tilly Snowden CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN . . . Very devoted, very proud sensitive daughter of Noah Chamberlain ANNE RAEBURN . . . Protective secretary of Edward Blackthorne CONTENTS PART SECOND PART THIRD THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, England, May 1, 1910. MY DEAR MR. SANDS: I have just read to the end of your latest novel and under the outdoor influence of that Kentucky story have sat here at my windows with my eyes on the English landscape of the first of May: on as much of the landscape, at least, as lies within the grey, ivy-tumbled, rose-besprinkled wall of a companionable old Warwickshire garden. You may or you may not know that I, too, am a novelist. The fact, however negligible otherwise, may help to disarm you of some very natural hostility at the approach of this letter from a stranger; for you probably agree with me that the writing of novels—not, of course, the mere odious manufacture of novels—results in the making of friendly, brotherly men across the barriers of nations, and that we may often do as fellow-craftsmen what we could do less well or not do at all as fellow-creatures. I shall not loiter at the threshold of this letter to fatigue your ear with particulars regarding the several parts of your story most enjoyed, though I do pause there long enough to say that no admirable human being has ever yet succeeded in wearying my own ears by any such desirable procedure. In England, and I presume in the United States, novelists have long noses for incense [poets, too, though of course only in their inferior way]. I repeat that we English novelists are a species of greyhound for running down on the most distant horizon any scampering, half-terrified rabbit of a compliment. But I freely confess that nature loaded me beyond the tendency of being a mere greyhound. I am a veritable elephant in the matter, being marvelously equipped with a huge, flexible proboscis which is not only adapted to admit praise but is quite capable of actively reaching around in every direction to procure it. Even the greyhound cannot run forever; but an elephant, if he once possess it, will wave such a proboscis till he dies. There are likely to be in any very readable book a few pages which the reader feels tempted to tear out for the contrary reason, perhaps, that he cannot tear them out of his tenderness. Some haunting picture of the book-gallery that he would cut from the frame. Should you be displeased by the discrimination, I shall trust that you may be pleased nevertheless by the avowal that there is a scene in your novel which has peculiarly ensnared my affections. At this point I think I can see you throw down my letter with more insight into human nature than patience with its foibles. You toss it aside and exclaim: "What does this Englishman drive at? Why does he not at once say what he wants?" You are right. My letter is perhaps no better than strangers' letters commonly are: coins, one side of which is stamped with your image and the other side with their image, especially theirs. I might as well, therefore, present to you my side of the coin with the selfish image. Or, in terms of your blue-grass country life, you are the horse in an open pasture and I am the stableman who schemes to catch you: to do this, I approach, calling to you affectionately and shaking a bundle of oats behind which is coiled a halter. You are thinking that if I once clutch you by the mane you will get no oats. But, my dear sir, you have from the very first word of this letter already been nibbling the oats. And now you are my animal! There is, then, in your novel a remarkable description of a noonday woodland scene somewhere on your enchanted Kentucky uplands—a cool, moist forest spot. Into this scene you introduced some rare, beautiful Kentucky ferns. I can see the ferns! I can see the sunlight striking through the waving treetops down upon them! Now, as it happens, in the old garden under my windows, loving the shade and moisture of its trees and its wall, I have a bank of ferns. They are a marvelous company, in their way as good as Wordsworth's flock of daffodils; for they have been collected out of England's best and from other countries. Here, then, is literally the root of this letter: Will you send me the root-stocks of some of those Kentucky ferns to grow and wave on my Warwickshire fern bank? Do not suppose that my garden is on a small scale a public park or exhibition, made as we have created Kensington Gardens. Everything in it is, on the contrary, enriched with some personal association. I began it when a young man in the following way: At that period I was much under the influence of the Barbizon painters, and I sometimes entertained myself in the forests where masters of that school had worked by hunting up what I supposed were the scenes of some of Corot's masterpieces. Corot, if my eyes tell me the truth, painted trees as though he were looking at enormous ferns. His ferns spring out of the soil and some rise higher than others as trees; his trees descend through the air and are lost lower down as ferns. One day I dug up some Corot ferns for my good Warwickshire loam. Another winter Christine Nilsson was singing at Covent Garden. I spent several evenings with her. When I bade her good-bye, I asked her to send me some ferns from Norway in memory of Balzac and Seraphita. Yet another winter, being still a young man and he, alas! a much older one, I passed an evening in Paris with Turgenieff. I would persist in talking about his novels and I remember quoting these lines from one of them: "It was a splendid clear morning; tiny mottled cloudlets hung like snipe in the clear pale azure; a fine dew was sprinkled on the leaves and grass and glistened like silver on the spiders' webs; the moist dark earth seemed still to retain the rosy traces of the dawn; the songs of larks showered down from all over the sky." He sat looking at me in surprised, touched silence. "But you left out something!" I suggested, with the bumptiousness of a beginner in letters. He laughed slightly to himself—and perhaps more at me—as he replied: "I must have left out a great deal"—he, fiction's greatest master of compression. After a moment he inquired with a kind of vast patient condescension: "What is it that you definitely missed?" "Ferns," I replied. "Ferns were growing thereabouts." He smiled reminiscently. "So there were," he replied, smiling reminiscently. "If I knew where the spot was," I said, "I should travel to it for some ferns." A mystical look came into his eyes as he muttered rather to himself than for my ear: "That spot! Where is that spot? That spot is all Russia!" In his exile, the whole of Russia was to him one scene, one fatherland, one pain, one passion. Sometime afterwards there reached me at home a hamper of Russian fern-roots with Turgenieff's card. I tell you all this as I make the request, which is the body of this letter and, I hope, its wings, in order that you may intimately understand. I desire the ferns not only because you have interested me in your Kentucky by making it a living, lovely reality, but because I have become interested in your art and in you. While I read your book I believed that I saw the hand of youth joyously at work, creating where no hand had created before; or if on its chosen scene it found a ruin, then joyously trying to re-create reality from that ruin. But to create where no hand has created before, or to create them again where human things lie in decay—that to me is the true energy of literature. I should not omit to tell you that some of our most tight-islanded, hard-headed reviewers have been praising your work as of the best that reaches us from America. It was one such reviewer that first guided me to your latest book. Now I myself have written to some of our critics and have thrown my influence in favour of your fresh, beautiful art, which can only come from a fresh, beautiful nature. Should you decide to bestow any notice upon this rather amazing letter, you will bear in mind of course that there will be pounds sterling for plants. Whatever character my deed or misdeed may later assume, it must first and at least have the nature of a transaction of the market-place. So, turn out as it may, or not turn out at all, I am, Gratefully yours, EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. BEVERLEY SANDS TO EDWARD BLACKTHORNE Cathedral Heights, New York, May 12, 1910. MY DEAR MR. BLACKTHORNE: Your letter is as unreal to me as if I had, in some modern Æsop's Fables, read how a whale, at ease in the depths of the sea, had taken the trouble to turn entirely round to encourage a puffing young porpoise; or of how a black oak, majestic dome of a forest, had on some fine spring day looked down and complimented a small dogwood tree upon its size and the purity of its blossoms. And yet, while thus unreal, your letter is in its way the most encouragingly real thing that has ever come into my life. Before I go further I should like to say that I have read every book you have written and have bought your books and given them away with such zeal and zest that your American publishers should feel more interest in me than can possibly be felt by the gentlemen who publish mine. It is too late to tell you this now. Too late, in bad taste. A man's praise of another may not follow upon that man's praise of him. Our virtues have their hour. If they do not act then, they are not like clocks which may be set forward but resemble fruits which lose their flavour when they pass into ripeness. Still, what I have said is honest. You may remember that I am yet moving amid life's uncertainties as a beginner, while you walk in quietness the world's highway of a great career. My praise could have borne little to you; yours brings everything to me. And you must reflect also that it is just a little easier for any Englishman to write to an American in this way. The American could but fear that his letter might seriously disturb the repose of a gentleman who was reclining with his head in Shakespeare's bosom; and Shakespeare's entire bosom in this regard, as you know, Mr. Blackthorne, does stay in England. It will give me genuine pleasure to arrange for the shipment of the ferns. A good many years have passed since I lived in Kentucky and I am no longer in close touch with people and things down there. But without doubt the matter can be managed through correspondence and all that I await from you now is express instructions. The ferns described in my book are not known to me by name. I have procured and have mailed to you along with this, lest you may not have any, some illustrated catalogues of American ferns, Kentucky ferns included. You have but to send me a list of those you want. With that in hand I shall know exactly how to proceed. You cannot possibly understand how happy I am that my work has the approval of the English reviews, which still remain the best in the world. To know that my Kentucky stories are liked in England—England which, remaining true to so many great traditions, holds fast to the classic tradition in her literature. The putting forth of your own personal influence in my behalf is a source of joy and pride; and your wish to have Kentucky ferns growing in your garden in token of me is the most inspiring event yet to mark my life. I am, Sincerely yours, BEVERLEY SANDS. EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, England, May 22, 1910. MY DEAR SANDS: Your letter was brought out to me as I was hanging an old gate in a clover-field canopied with skylarks. When I cannot make headway against some obstruction in the development of a story, for instance, putting the hinges of the narrative where the reader will not see any hinges, I let the book alone and go out and do some piece of work, surrounded by the creatures which succeed in all they undertake through zest and joy. By the time I get back, the hinges of the book have usually hung themselves without my knowing when or how. Hence the paradox: we achieve the impossible by doing the possible; we climb our mountain of troubles by walking away from it. It is splendid news that I am to get the Kentucky ferns. Thank you for the catalogues. A list of those I most covet is enclosed. The cost, shipping expenses included, will not, I fear, exceed five pounds. Of course it would be a pleasure to pay fifty guineas, but I suppose I must restrict myself to the despicable market price. Shamefully cheap many of the dearest things in this world are; and what exorbitant prices we pay for the worthless! A draft will be forwarded in advance upon receipt of the American shipper's address. Or I could send it forthwith to you. Meantime from now on I shall be remembering with impatience how many miles it is across the Atlantic Ocean and at what a snail's pace American ferns travel. These will be awaited like guests whom one goes to the gate to meet. You do not know the names of those you describe so wonderfully! I am glad. I abhor the names of my own. Of course, as they are bought, memoranda must be depended upon by which to buy them. These data, verified by catalogue, are inked on little wooden slabs as fern headstones. When each fern is planted, into the soil beside it is stuck its headstone, which, like that for a human being, tells the name, not the nature, of what it memorialises. Hodge is the fellow who knows the ferns according to the slabs. It is time you should know Hodge by his slab. No such being can yet be found in the United States: your civilisation is too young. Hodge is my British-Empire gardener; and as he now looks out for every birthday much as for any total solar eclipse of the year—with a kind of growing solicitude lest the sun or the birthday should finally, as it passes, bowl him over for good—he announced to me with visible relief the other day that he had successfully passed another total natal eclipse; that he was fifty-eight. But Hodge is not fifty-eight years old. The battle of Hastings was fought in 1066 and Hodge without knowing it was beginning to be a well-grown lout then. For Hodge is English landscape gardening in human shape. He is the benevolent spirit of the English turf, a malign spirit to English weeds. He is wall ivy, a root, a bulb, a rake, a wheelbarrow of spring manure, a pile of autumn leaves, a crocus. In a distant future mythology of our English rural life he will perhaps rank where he belongs—as a luminary next in importance to the sun: a two-legged god be-earthed in old clothes, with a stiff back, a stiff temper, the jaw of the mastiff and the eye of a prophet. It is Hodge who does the slabs. He would not allow anything to come into the garden without mastering that thing. For the sake of his own authority he must subdue as much of the Latin language as invades his territory along with the ferns. But I think nothing comparable to such a struggle against overwhelming odds—Hodge's brain pitted against the Latin names of the ferns—nothing comparable to the dull fury of that onset is to be found in the history of man unless it be England's war on Napoleon for twenty years. England did conquer Napoleon and finally shut him up in a desolate, rocky place; and Hodge has finally conquered the names of the ferns and shut them up in a desolate, rocky place—his skull, his personal promontory. Nowadays you should see him meet me in a garden path when I come down early some morning. You should see him plant himself before me and, taking off his cap and scratching the back of his neck with the back of his muddy thumb, make this announcement: "The Asplenium filix-faemina put up two new shoots last night, sir. Bishop's crooks, I believe you calls 'em, sir." As though I were a farmer and my shepherd should notify me that one of the ewes had dropped twin lambs at three A.M. Hodge's tone implies more yet: the honour of the shoots—a questionable honour— goes to Hodge as their botanical sire! When I receive visitors by reason of my books—and strangers do sometimes make pilgrimages to me on account of my grove of "Black Oaks"—if the day is pleasant, we have tea in the garden. While the strangers drink tea, I begin to wave the well-known proboscis over the company for any praise they may have brought along. Should this seem adequate, I later reward them with a stroll. That is Hodge's hour and opportunity. Unexpectedly, as it would appear, but invariably, he steps out from some bush and takes his place behind me as we move. When we reach the fern bank, the visitors regularly begin to inquire: "What is the name of this fern?" I turn helplessly to Hodge much as a drum-major, if asked by a by-stander what the music was that the band had just been playing, might wheel in dismay to the nearest horn. Hodge steps forward: now comes the reward of all his toil. "That is the Polydactulum cruciato-cristatum, sir." "And what is this one?" "That is the Polypodium elegantissimum, mum." Then you would understand what it sometimes means to attain scholarship without Oxford or Cambridge; what upon occasion it is to be a Roman orator and a garden ass. You will be wondering why I am telling you this about Hodge. For the very particular reason that Hodge will play a part, I know not what part, in the pleasant business that has come up between us. He looms as the danger between me and the American ferns after the ferns shall have arrived here. It is a fact that very few foreign ferns have ever done well in my garden, watch over them as closely as I may: especially those planted in more recent years. Could you believe it possible of human nature to refuse to water a fern, to deny a little earth to the root of a fern? Actually to scrape the soil away from it when there was nobody near to observe the deed, to jab at it with a sharp trowel? I shall not press the matter further, for I instinctively turn away from it. Perhaps each of us has within himself some incomprehensible little terrible spot and I feel that this is Hodge's spot. It is murder; Hodge is an assassin: he will kill what he hates, if he dares. I have been so aroused to defend his faithful character that I have devised two pleadings: first, Hodge is the essence of British parliaments, the sum total of British institutions; therefore he patriotically believes that things British should be good enough for the British—of course, their own ferns. At other times I am rather inclined to surmise that his malice and murderous resentment are due to his inability to take on any more Latin, least of all imported Latin. Hodge without doubt now defends himself against any more Latin as a man with his back to the wall fights for his life: the personal promontory will hold no more. You have written me an irresistible letter, though frankly I made no effort to resist it. Your praise of my books instantly endeared you to me. Since a first plunge into ferns, then, has already brought results so agreeable and surprising, I am resolved to be bolder and to plunge a second time and more deeply. Is there—how could there help being!—a Mrs. Beverley Sands? Mrs. Blackthorne wishes to know. I read your letter to Mrs. Blackthorne. Mrs. Blackthorne was charmed with it. Mrs. Blackthorne is charmed with you. Mr. Blackthorne is charmed with you. And Mr. and Mrs. Blackthorne would like to know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands and, if so, whether she and you will not some time follow the ferns and come and take possession for a while of our English garden. You and I can go off to ourselves and discuss our "dogwoods" and "black oaks"; and Mrs. Sands and Mrs. Blackthorne, at their tea across the garden, can exchange copies of their highly illuminated and privately circulated little masterpieces about their husbands. (The husbands should always edit the masterpieces!) Both of you, will you come? Finally, as to your generous propaganda in behalf of my books and as to the favourable reports which my publishers send me from time to time in the guise of New World royalties, you may think of the proboscis as now being leveled straight and rigid like a gun-barrel toward the shores of the United States, whence blow gales scented with so glorious a fragrance. I begin to feel that Columbus was not mistaken: America is turning out to be a place worth while. Your deeply interested, EDWARD BLACKTHORNE. BEVERLEY SANDS TO TILLY SNOWDEN June 3. DEAR TILLY: Crown me with some kind of chaplet—nothing classic, nothing sentimental, but something American and practical —say with twigs of Kentucky sassafras or, better, with the leaves of that forest favourite which in boyhood so fascinated me and lubricated me with its inner bark—entwine me, O Tilly, with a garland of slippery elm for the virtue of always making haste to share with you my slippery pleasures! I write at full speed now to empty into your lap, a wonderfully receptive lap, tidings of the fittest joy that has ever come to me as your favourite author—and favourite young husband to be. The great English novelist Blackthorne, many of whose books we have read together (whenever you listened), recently stumbled over one of my obstructive tales; one of my awkwardly placed literary hurdles on the world's race- course of readers. As a result of his fall he got up, dusted himself thoroughly of his surprise, and actually despatched to me an acknowledgment of his thanks for the happy accident. I replied with a volley of my own thanks, with salvos of praise for him. Now he has written again, throwing wide open his house and his heart, both of which appear to be large and admirably suited to entertain suitable guests. At this crisis place your careful hands over your careful heart—can you find where it is?—and draw "a deep, quivering breath," the novelist's conventional breath for the excited heroine. Mr. Blackthorne wishes to know whether there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands. If there is, and he feels sure there must be, far-sighted man!—he invites her, invites us, Mrs. Blackthorne invites us, should we sometime be in England, to visit them at their beautiful, far-famed country-house in Warwickshire. If, then, our often postponed marriage, our despairingly postponed marriage, should be arranged to madden me and gladden the rest of mankind before next summer, we could, with our arms around one another's necks, be conveyed by steam and electricity on our wedding journey to the Blackthorne entrance and be there deposited, still oblivious of everything but ourselves. Think what it would mean to you to be launched upon the rosy sea of English social life amid the orisons and benisons of such illustrious literary personages. Think of those lovely English lawns, raked and rolled for centuries, and of many-coloured fêtes on them; of the national tea and the national sandwiches; of national strawberries and clotted cream and clotted crumpets; of Thackeray's flunkies still flunkying and Queen Anne's fads yet fadding; of week-ends without end—as Mrs. Beverley Sands. Behold yourself growing more and more a celebrity, as the English mutton-chop or sirloined reviewers gradually brought into public appreciation the vague potentialities, not necessarily the bare actualities, of modest young Sands himself. Eventually, no doubt, there would be a day for you at Sandringham with the royal ladies. They would drive you over—I have not the least idea how great the distance is—to drink tea at Stonehenge. Imagine yourself, it having naturally turned into a rainy English afternoon, imagine yourself seated under a heavy black-silk English umbrella on a bare cromlech, the oldest throne in England, tearing at an Anglo-Saxon muffin of purest strain and surrounded by male and female admirers, all under heavy black-silk umbrellas—Spitalsfield, I suppose —as Mrs. Beverley Sands. Remember, madam, or miss, that this foreign triumph, this career of glory, comes to you strictly from me. To you, of yourself, it is inaccessible. Look upon it as in part the property that I am to settle upon you at the time of our union— my honours. You have already understood from me that my entire estate, both my real estate and my unreal estate, consists of future honours. Those I have just described are an early payment on the marriage contract—foreign exchange! What reply, then, in your behalf am I to send to the lofty and benevolent Blackthornes? As matters halt between us —he also loves who only writes and waits—I can merely inform Mr. Blackthorne that there is a Mrs. Beverley Sands, but that she persists in remaining a Miss Snowden. With this realisation of what you will lose as Miss Snowden and will gain as Mrs. Sands, do you not think it wise—and wise you are, Tilly—any longer to persist in your persistence? You once, in a moment of weakness, confessed to me—think of your having a moment of weakness!—you once confessed to me, though you may deny it now (Balzac defines woman as the angel or devil who denies everything when it suits her), you once confessed to me that you feared your life would be taken up with two protracted pleasures, each of which curtailed the other: the pleasure of being engaged to me a long time and the pleasure of being married to me a long time. Nerve yourself to shortening the first in order to enter upon the compensations of the second. Yet remorse racks me even at the prospect of obliterating from the world one whom I first knew and loved in it as Tilly Snowden. Where will Tilly Snowden be when only Mrs. Beverley Sands is left? Where will be that wild rose in a snow bank—the rose which was truly wild, the snow bank which was not cold (or was it?)? I think I should easily become reconciled to your being known, say, as Madame Snowden, so that you might still stand out in your own right and wild-rose individuality. We could visit England as the rising American author, Beverley Sands, and his lovely risen wife, Madame Snowden. Everybody would then be asking who the mysterious Madame Snowden was, and I should relate that she was a retired opera singer—having retired before she advanced. By the way, you confided to me some time ago that you were not very well. You always look well, mighty well to me, Tilly. Perfectly well to me. Can your indisposition be imaginary? Or is it merely fashionable? Or—is it something else? What of late has sickened me is an idea of yours that you might sometime consult Doctor G. M. Tilly! Tilly! If you knew the pains that rack me when I think of that charlatan's door being closed behind you as a patient of his! Tell me it isn't true, and answer about the beautiful Blackthornes! Your easy and your uneasy BEVERLEY. TILLY SNOWDEN TO BEVERLEY SANDS "Slippery Elm" Apartments, June 4. I am perfectly willing, Beverley, to crown you with slippery elm—you seem to think I keep it on hand, dwell in a bower of it—if it is the leaf you sigh for. But please do not try to crown me with a wig of your creative hair; that is, with your literary honours. How wonderfully the impressions of childhood disappear from memory like breaths on a warm mirror, but long afterwards return to their shapes if the glass be coldly breathed upon! As I read your letter, at least as I read the very chilly Blackthorne parts of your letter, I remembered, probably for the first time in years, a friend of my mother's. She had been inveigled to become the wife, that is, the legally installed life-assistant, of an exceedingly popular minister; and when I was a little girl, but not too little to understand—was I ever too little to understand?—she used to slip across the street to our house and in confidence to my mother pour out her sense of humour at the part assigned her by the hired wedding march and evangelical housekeeping. I recall one of those half-whispered, always half-whispered, confidences—for how often in life one feels guilty when telling the truth and innocent when lying! On this particular morning she and my mother laughed till they were weary, while I danced round them with delight at the idea of having even the tip of my small but very active finger in any pie that savoured of mischief. She had been telling my mother that if, some Sunday, her husband accidentally preached a sermon which brought people into the church, she felt sure of soon receiving a turkey. If he made a rousing plea for foreign missions, she might possibly look out for a pair of ducks. Her destiny, as she viewed it, was to be merely a strip of worthless territory lying alongside the land of Canaan; people simply walked over her, tramped across her, on their way to Canaan, carrying all sorts of bountiful things to Canaan, her husband. That childish nonsense comes back to me strangely, and yet not strangely as I think of your funny letter, your very, very funny letter, about the Blackthornes' invitation to me because I am not myself but am possibly a Mrs.—well, some Mrs. Sands. The English scenes you describe I see but too vividly: it is Canaan and his strip all over again—there on the English lawns; a great many heavy English people are tramping heavily over me on their way to Canaan. The fabulous tea at Sandringham would be Canaan's cup, and at Stonehenge it would be Canaan's muffin that at last choked to death the ill-fated Tilly Snowden. In order to escape such a fate, Tilly Snowden, then, begs that you will thank the Blackthornes, Mr. and Mrs., as best you can for their invitation; as best she can she thanks you; but for the present, and for how much of the future she does not know, she prefers to remain what is very necessary to her independence and therefore to her happiness; and also what is quite pleasing to her ear—the wild rose in the snow bank (cold or not cold, according to the sun). In other words, my dear Beverley, it is true that I have more than once postponed the date of our marriage. I have never said why; perhaps I myself have never known just why. But at least do not expect me to shorten the engagement in order that I may secure some share of your literary honours. As a little girl I always despised queens who were crowned with their husbands. It seemed to me that the queen was crowned with what was left over and was merely allowed to sit on the corner of the throne as the poor connection. P.S.—Still, I would like to go to England. I mean, of course, I wish we could go on our wedding journey! If I got ready, could I rely upon you? I have always wished to visit England without being debarred from its social life. Seriously, the invitation of the Blackthornes looks to me like an opportunity and an advantage not to be thrown away. Wisdom never wastes, and you say I am wise! It is true that I have not been feeling very well. And it is true that I have consulted Dr. Marigold and am now a patient of his. That dreaded door has closed behind me! I have been alone with him! The diagnosis at least was delightful. He made it appear like opening a golden door upon a charming landscape. I had but to step outdoors and look around with a pleasant smile and say: "Why, Health, my former friend, how do you do! Why did you go back on me?" He tells me my trouble is a mild form of auto-intoxication. I said to him that must be the disease; namely, that it was mild. Never in my life had I had anything that was mild! Disease from my birth up had attacked me only in its most virulent form: so had health. I had always enjoyed—and suffered from—virulent health. I am going to take the Bulgar bacillus. Why do you dislike Dr. Marigold? Popular physicians are naturally hated by unpopular physicians. But how does he run against or run over you? Which of your books was it the condescending Englishman liked? Suppose you send me a copy. Why not send me a copy of each of your books? Those you gave me as they came out seem to have disappeared. The wild rose is now going to pour down her graceful stalk a tubeful of the Balkan bacillus. More trouble with the Balkans! TILLY (auto-intoxicated, not otherwise intoxicated! Thank Heaven at least for that!). BEVERLEY SANDS TO BEN DOOLITTLE June 3. DEAR BEN: A bolt of divine lightning has struck me out of the smiling blue, a benign fulmination from an Olympian. To descend the long slope of Olympus to you. A few days ago I received a letter from the great English novelist, Edward Blackthorne, in praise of my work. The great Edward reads my books and the great Ben Doolittle doesn't— score heavily for the aforesaid illustrious Eddy. Of course I have for years known that you do not cast your legal or illegal eyes on fiction, though not long ago I heard you admit that you had read "Ten Thousand a Year." On the ground, that it is a lawyer's novel: which is no ground at all, a mere mental bog. My own opinion of why you read it is that you were in search of information how to make the ten thousand! As a literary performance your reading "Ten Thousand a Year" may be likened to the movement of a land-turtle which has crossed to the opposite side of his dusty road to bite off a new kind of weed, waddling along his slow way under the impenetrable roof of his own back. For, my dear Ben, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other human being in this world, do you know what I think of you as most truly being? The very finest possible specimen of the highest order of human land-turtle. A land- turtle is a creature that lives under a shovel turned upside down over it, called its back; and a human land-turtle is a fellow who thrives under the roof of the five senses and the practical. Never does a turtle get from under his carapace, and never does the man-turtle get beyond the shovel of his five senses. Of course you realise that not during our friendship have I paid you so extravagant a compliment. For the human race has to be largely made up of millions of land-turtles. They cause the world to go slowly, and it is the admirable stability of their lives neither to soar nor to sink. You are a land-turtle, Benjamin Doolittle, Esquire; you live under the shell of the practical; that is, you have no imagination; that is, you do not read fiction; that is, you do not read Me! Therefore I harbour no grievance against you, but cherish all the confidence and love in the world for you. But, mind you, only as an unparalleled creeping thing. To get on with the business of this letter: the English novelist laid aside his enthusiasm for my work long enough to make a request: he asked me to send him some Kentucky ferns for his garden. Owing to my long absence from Kentucky I am no longer in touch with people and things down there. But you left that better land only a few years ago. I recollect that of old you manifested a weakness for sending flowers to womankind—another evidence, by the way, of lack of imagination. Such conduct shows a mere botanical estimate of the grand passion. The only true lovers, the only real lovers, that women ever have are men of imagination. Why should these men send a common florist's flowers! They grow and offer their own—the roses of Elysium! To pass on, you must still have clinging to your memory, like bats to a darkened, disused wall, the addresses of various Louisville florists who, by daylight or candlelight and no light at all, were the former emissaries of your folly and your fickleness. Will you send me at once the address of a firm in whose hands I could safely entrust this very high- minded international piece of business? Inasmuch as you are now a New York lawyer and inasmuch as New York lawyers charge for everything— concentration of mind, if they have any mind, tax on memory and tax on income, their powers of locomotion and of prevarication, club dues and death dues, time and tumult, strikes and strokes, and all other items of haste and waste, you are authorised to regard this letter a professional demand and to let me have a reasonable bill at a not too early date. Charge for whatever you will, but, I charge you, charge me not for your friendship. "Naught that makes life most worth while can be had for gold." (Rather elegant extract from one of my novels which you disdain to read!) I shall be greatly obliged if you will let me have an immediate reply. BEVERLEY. How is the fair Polly Boles? Still pretending to quarrel? And do you still keep up the pretence? Predestined magpies! BEN DOOLITTLE TO BEVERLEY SANDS 150 Broad Street, June 5. DEAR BEVERLEY: Your highly complimentary and philosophical missive is before my eyes. You understand French, not I. But I have accumulated a few quotations which I sometimes venture to use in writing, never in my proud oral delivery. If I pronounced to the French the French with which I am familiar, the French themselves would drive their own vernacular out of their land—over into Germany! Here is one of those fond inaudible phrases: A chaque oiseau Son nid est beau. That is to say, in Greek, every Diogenes prefers his own tub. The lines are a trophy captured at a college-club dinner the other night. One of the speakers launched the linguistic marvel on the blue cloud of smoke and it went bumping around the heads of the guests without finding any head to enter, like a cork bobbing about the edges of a pond, trying in vain to strike a place to land. But everybody cheered uproariously, made happy by the discovery that someone actually could say something at a New York dinner that nobody had heard before. One man next to the speaker (of course coached beforehand) passed a translation to his elbow neighbour. It made its way down the table to me at the other end and I, in the New York way, laid it up for future use at a dinner in some other city. Meantime I use it now on you. It is true that I arrived in New York from Kentucky some years ago. It is likewise undeniable that for some years previous thereto I had dealings with Louisville florists. But I affirm now, and all these variegated gentlemen, if they are gentlemen, would gladly come on to New York as my witnesses and bear me out in the joyful affidavit, that whatever folly or recklessness or madness marked my behaviour, never once did I commit the futility, the imbecility, of trafficking in ferns. A great English novelist—ferns! A rising young American novelist—ferns! Frogstools, mushrooms, fungi! Man alive, why don't you ship him a dray-load of Kentucky spiderwebs? Or if they should be too gross for his delicate soul, a birdcage containing a pair of warbling young bluegrass moonbeams? I am a land-turtle, am I? If it be so, thank God! If I have no imagination, thank God! If I live and move and have my being under the shovel of the five senses and of the practical, thank God! But, my good fellow, whom I love and trust as I love and trust no other man, if I am a turtle, do you know what I think of you as most truly being? A poor, harmless tinker. You, with your pastime of fabricating novels, dwell in a little workshop of the imagination; you tinker with what you are pleased to call human lives, reality, truth. On your shop door should hang a sign to catch the eye: "Tinkering done here. Noble, splendid tinkering. No matter who you are, what your past career or present extremity, come in and let the owner of this shop make your acquaintance and he will work you over into something finer than you have ever been or in this world will ever be. For he will make you into an unfallen original or into a perfected final. If you have never had a chance to do your best in life, he will give you that chance in a story. All unfortunates, all the broken-down, especially welcome. Everybody made over to be as everybody should be by Beverley Sands." But, brother, the sole thing with which you, the tinker, do business is the sole thing with which I, the turtle, do not do business. I, as a lawyer, cannot tamper with human life, actuality, truth. During the years that I have been an attorney never have I had a case in court without first of all things looking for the element of imagination in it and trying to stamp that element out of the case and kick it out of the courtroom: that lurking scoundrel, that indefatigable mischief-maker, your beautiful and beloved patron power—imagination. Going on to testify out of my experience as a land-turtle, I depose the following, having kissed the Bible, to wit: that during the turtle's travels he sooner or later crosses the tracks of most of the other animal creatures and gets to know them and their ways. But there is one path of one creature marked for unique renown among nose-bearing men: that of a graceful, agile, little black-and-white piece of soft-furred nocturnal innocence—surnamed the polecat. Now the imagination, as long as it is favourably disposed, may in your profession be the harmless bird of paradise or whatever winged thing you will that soars innocently toward bright skies; but, once unkindly disposed, it is in my profession, and in every other, the polecat of the human faculties. When it has testified against you, it vanishes from the scene, but the whole atmosphere reeks with its testimony. Hence it is that I go gunning first for this same little animal whose common den is the lawsuit. His abode is everywhere, though you never seem to have encountered him in your work and walks. If you should do so, if you should ever run into the polecat of a hostile imagination, oh, then, my dear fellow, may the land-turtle be able to crawl to you and stand by you in that hour! But—the tinker to his work, the turtle to his! A chaque oiseau! Diogenes, your tub! As to the fern business, I'll inquire of Polly. I paid for the flowers, she got them. Anybody can receive money for blossoms, but only a statesman and a Christian, I suppose, can fill an order for flowers with equity and fresh buds. Go ahead and try Phillips & Faulds. You could reasonably rely upon them to fill any order that you might place in their hands, however nonsensical-comical, billy-goatian-satirical it may be. They'd send your Englishman an opossum with a pouch full of blooming hyacinths if that would quiet his longing and make him happy. I should think it might. We are, sir, your obliged counsel and turtle, BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE. How is the fair Tilly Snowden? Still cooing? Are you still cooing? Uncertain doves! BEN DOOLITTLE TO POLLY BOLES 150 Broad Street, June 5. DEAR POLLY: I send you some red roses to go with your black hair and your black eyes, never so black as when black with temper. When may I come to see you? Why not to-morrow night? Another matter, not so vital but still important: a few years before we left Louisville to seek our fortunes (and misfortunes) in New York, I at different times employed divers common carriers known as florists to convey to you inflammatory symbols of those emotions that could not be depicted in writing fluid. In other words, I hired those mercenaries to impress my infatuation upon you in terms of their costliest, most sensational merchandise. You should be prepared to say which of these florists struck you as the best business agent. Would you send me the address of that man or of that firm? Immediately you will want to know why. Always suspicious! Let the suspicions be quieted; it is not I, it is Beverley. Some foggy-headed Englishman has besought him to ship him (the foggy one) some Kentucky vegetation all the way across the broad Atlantic to his wet domain— interlocking literary idiots! Beverley appeals to me, I to you, the highest court in everything. Are you still enjoying the umbrageous society of that giraffe-headed jackass, Doctor Claude Mullen? Can you still tolerate his unimpassioned propinquity and futile gyrations? He a nerve specialist! The only nerve in his practice is his nerve. Doesn't my love satisfy you? Isn't there enough of it? Isn't it the right kind? Will it ever give out? Your reply, then, will cover four points: to thank me for the red roses; to say when I may come to see you; to send me the address of the Louisville florist who became most favourably known to you through a reckless devotion; and to explain your patience with that unhappy fool. Thy sworn and thy swain, BEN DOOLITTLE. POLLY BOLES TO BEN DOOLITTLE The Franklin Flats, June 6. MY DEAR BEN: Your writing to me for the name of a Louisville florist is one of your flimsiest subterfuges. What you wished to receive from me was a letter of reassurance. You were disagreeable on your last visit and you have since been concerned as to how I felt about it afterwards. Now you try to conciliate me by invoking my aid as indispensable. That is like you men! If one of you can but make a woman forget, if he can but lead her to forgive him, by flattering her with the idea that she is indispensable! And that is like woman! I see her figure standing on the long road of time: dumbly, patiently standing there, waiting for some male to pass along and permit her to accompany him as his indispensable fellow-traveller. I am now to be put in a good humour by being honoured with your request that I supply you with the name of a florist. Well, you poor, uninformed Ben, I'll supply you. All the Louisville florists, as I thought at the time, carried out their instructions faithfully; that is, from each I occasionally received flowers not fresh. Did it occur to me to blame the florists? Never! I did what a woman always does: she thinks less of—well, she doesn't think less of the florist! Be this as it may, Beverley might try Phillips & Faulds for whatever he is to export. As nearly as I now remember they sent the biggest boxes of whatever you ordered! I have an appointment for to-morrow night, but I think I can arrange to divide the evening, giving you the later half. It shall be for you to say whether the best half was yours. That will depend upon you. I still enjoy the "umbrageous society" of Dr. Claude Mullen because he loves me and I do not love him. The fascination of his presence lies in my indifference. Perhaps women are so seldom safe with the men who love them, that any one of us feels herself entitled to make the most of a rare chance! I am not only safe, I am entertained. As I go down into the parlour, I almost feel that I ought to buy a ticket to a performance in my own private theatre. Ben, dear, are you going to commit the folly of being jealous? If I had to marry him, do you know what my first wifely present would be? A liberal transfusion of my own blood! As soon as I enter the room, what fascinates me are his lower eyelids, which hold little cupfuls of sentimental fluid. I am always expecting the little pools to run over: then there would be tears. The night he goes for good—perhaps they will be tears that night. If you ask me how can I, if I feel thus about him, still encourage his visits, I have simply to say that I don't know. When it comes to what a woman will "receive" in such cases, the ground she walks on is very uncertain to her own feet. It may be that the one thing she forever craves and forever fears not to get is absolute certainty, certainty that some day love for her will not be over, everything be not ended she knows not why. Dr. Mullen's love is pitiful, and as long as a man's love is pitiful at least a woman can be sure of it. Therefore he is irresistible—as my guest! The roses are glorious. I bury my face in them down to the thorns. And then I come over and sign my name as the indispensable POLLY BOLES. POLLY BOLES TO TILLY SNOWDEN June 6. DEAR TILLY: I have had a note from Beverley, asking whether he could come this evening. I have written that I have an appointment, but I...