THE ORPHAN GIRL'S LAMENT-From "The Classic Gem" DAWN-legor llitsch
SONNET-Harold Cooper
THE SECRET RITE-H. H C.
AGE; SILENCE-Paul Cale
EDITORIAL
EXTRAVAGANZA-Ruth Fiske •
THE MATHEMATICAL MIND-Evelyn Duncan FOREVER; MORNING-A lice C ar'Ver
OUR GRANDFATHERS MIGHT HAVE KNOWN HIM-Mary Hicks FOAM-Gene'Va H. Bennett
NIAGARA-Isabel Taliaferro SPRING, IN THE BACK FIELD-£. Gill MOCKED?-]. Adams
WOMAN FROM ELIZABETH DOWN TO ANNE-Mary Elizabeth Mays WAVE&-Gene'lJa H. Bennett WESTHAMPTON
LINES TO THE UNIVERSITY CHAPEL
HALDER FISHER
Thou'rt young! the height and depth, the strong-hewn lines Of thy high-vaulted, sturdy-timbered roof Must yet acquire the soft and mellowed mien That time alone can give to all new things. Those too-exact squared stones of varied hue Have yet to blend together in that smooth And pleasant continuity of tone Which only age is able to bestow. The silver-brown, which, interspersed with green, Shades the woodwork enclosed within thy mass, Will deepen to such rich and somber gloom As fits it more for worship and for thought.
We see thee in thy youth, 0 Church of God ! Preserving still the traces of man's tool; Thine outline neither softened yet, nor merged Into the darksome background of the pines Behind thy bulk; thy Gothic rose-window, And that which breaks the wall above thy choir, And those which line thy sides with crystal ranks, Not yet through agency of dusty webs Filter the boistrous sunshine as it cuts The artificial dusk within thy walls. But may we see thee when thine upstart youth, Chastened by the lash of the element, Has turned into old age, yet lusty still. May we see thee when thou art accepted By Him as fit abode for that spirit Which moulds the hearts and minds of the young life That studies in the shadow of thy spires.
To you who enter this sweetly arched door : Do not accept this as a thing of chance, But in the nascent beauty it contains Foresee the nwjesty of future age.
MOON SHADOWS
JOSEPH HOLLAND
J. Carrington Snitzler had often wondered about his family history. He was unable to remember his father, ·for he had never seen him. He had been reared under the watchful eyes of his mother. He shivered instinctively when he recalled the cold penetrating look in those eyes-a peculiar, chilly feeling ran up his spine . . . not a pleasant feeling.
The mother had been gathered to her reward for lo these many years! J. Carrington had attended the funeral in fine spirits. He let fall no tears; in fact, his face actually wore a slightly pleased expression . . . not at all a very usual expression for this particular gentleman to wear.
All who saw his mother's corpse had declared that she looked almost human as she lay there with her head on her white satin cushion. This may probably be attributed to the fact that death had closed those cold, relentless eyes which had set her apart and away from the more gentle run of humanity during her lifetime. The complacent satisfaction, which was said to have been fixed upon her countenance in death, can be easily explained as thoroughly in accordance with her personality, for she could not help but express her satisfaction at so successfully making her escape without having made any single soul happy during her sojourn in this valley of sorrows.
Her son had been left in good circumstances and lived comfortably now that she was dead. She had been a good business woman and had been very successful in her dealings. Her miserly instinct of pinching every copper as if it were gold had maintained her coffers against ruinous leakage and by shrewd speculation they had even been substantially added to.
She had maintained an attitude of watchful indifference to her son, never allowing the slightest spark of human tenderness for her offspring to touch her lest she might unwittingly be consumed in the flame. In consequence the child had always felt depressed in her company and had avoided it as much as possible. Being denied affection from a maternal source, he sought it elsewhere, developing consequently, a somewhat gentle, kindly nature that set him in good stead. Yet, there was that warped side of his personality, for which
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his mother was responsible, which added a great obstacle to his popularity.
He had now grown far into manhood. In fact his prime of life was fast passing and old age was not many years distant. He had remained a bachelor until now, but he was at present planning to discard his celibacy and take upon himself the marriage yoke with a raw-boned wench of his acquaintance His tastes in feminine beauty were far from exacting, yet he was devoted to the ill-favored creature and their engagement had been announced.
He loved children and wanted some of his own. He felt that with a faithful wife by his side and with his children about him to brighten his later years, no obstacle could stand in the way of his happiness.
Returning to the matter of the gentleman's ancestry we find, just as he did,-nothing. His mother had always drawn her lips tightly across her teeth when he had questioned her for information about his father or any of his kinsmen and had hastened to change the subject of conversation. The matter of possible illegitimacy had entered into his thinking, but all fears in this particular field had been swiftly dispelled by her. He could find out nothing from other sources because he had been brought to this locality when he was quite young and no one had ever been able to learn much about the lone woman, his mother. Not being given to long and careful pursuit of truth and considering the matter of his present condition of greater importance than that of how, and through what agency he had been brought into this world, he forthwith dropped the subject.
There was, however, one object which now graced the desk in his study, that had always attracted his attention and aroused his curiosity. He had found out that it had been among his father's possessions and that it had actually been a part of the anatomy of one of his ancestors. It was a human skull; the only available belonging of his father about which he had ever known . He would sit for hours looking at the gruesome thing and wishing that he could find out its history .
J. Carrington Snitzler now lay in his bed asleep. A beam of moonlight fell across his face; illuminating with a cool, silver radiance his long nose which touched the coverlet in marked resemblance to the upper beak of a parrot which is holding a large cracker in its mouth. His sonorous breathing proclaimed the fact that his rest was profound if, indeed, it could long continue above the noise which he
MOON SHADOWS s
was making. During the raucous intake of breath his head came up slowly, bringing the parrot-beak a few inches off the counterpane, but, when the exhaling process began, the beak suddenly dropped with a savage, pecking motion. He finally sighed heavily, shifted a bit restlessly and smiled as if he were enjoying pleasant dreams-as indeed he was:
His beautiful children were playing about him in a wonderful garden and his beloved wife sat nearby knitting He felt little arms about his neck and soft child-voices sounded in his ears. Suddenly, his sweet dreams were interrupted for, through the darkness, he seemed to see approaching the skull that he kept upon his desk. A skeleton materialized and the body took on a mantle of flesh. His ancestor stood before him; but suddenly he realized that he bore the face of a fool. His body was misshapen and ugly; his face was horrible and revolting.
The jester's lips moved and he seemed to mumble names as if he were calling a roll. Myriad dim shapes of his forebears appeared behind him. Insanity was stamped on many of the dim visages. They laughed and pointed and seemed to cry out to the terror-stricken Snitzler: "You are of us; we are your fathers !" Then a face grew clear and distinct as it appeared from behind the jester's shoulderthe face was that of one in sane. The eyes were bleary and the lips blubbered silently. At this sight the dreamer turned away terrified. The face was that of his father! Yes ,' he knew it must be. For some reason he was absolutely sure. He seemed to know him by instinct.
He knew now why he had never been told about his father. He realized the curse that was upon him and hid his face in his hands. Then came terrible, mocking laughter that cut him like a lash. Something stirred within him. He turned to his children and saw that they were no longer happy, joyful, healthy beings as they had seemed before; but pitiable, feeble-minded, driveling little creatures. That thing within which had responded to the laughter of the jester's band now rose and swept everything before it like a roaring torrent. Maddening, desperate, hate overwhelmed himi and only the intense desire to annihilate his tormentors remained.
With a wild cry of desperation he wheeled about and saw the hideous mob retreating from him. He rushed madly after them. With a desperate gesture he reached out his hand to throttle the
THE MESSENGER
grimmacing creature before him. His hand touched the face it was cold cold and dry.
He recoiled with a terrible shock and awoke. He was standing before the desk in his study and there before him was the skull. Strangely enough a strong beam of moonlight came through the ·long, high window on the right and fell directly across the death's head so as to make it stand out in a truly startling manner while the remainder of the room seemed to remain in darkness.
J. Carrington Snitzler stood trembling in his nightgown with his bare toes clutching the rug beneath his feet. He felt a cold sweat come out on his forehead as he beheld the ghastly · spectacle. He looked down terrified at the startling whiteness of his expansive night-dress where another moonbeam struck it. A great flush of shame at the extreme silliness of his position surged up in him, but as quickly gave way to pure, unreasoning terror. Perhaps Mr. Snitzler heard a slight noise, but upon some provocation he gave a muffled scream and fled with all the speed at his disposal to his deserted couch and, jumping nimbly in, made haste to pull the cover up over his head.
A much flurried Mr. Snitzler appeared before his fiancee next morning to stammer and grope about for words to express the fact that he no longer wished to remain engaged. The neighbors wondered-for neighbors always manage to find out and to wonderwhat had induced him to take such a step, for they reasoned that, by virtue of her uncomeliness, the woman could scarcely choose to be aught but a faithful and loving wife.
FUGA PER CANONEM
J.
I believe in the symphony of souls. I believe in nothing but the immortality of music. Each within ourselves creates a sound. We are sounds created. We vibrate in an unknowing sympathy, to an unknown quality. We tremble on the ears of other men, and pass into the great silence
Some rise as great chords, brilliantly transcendent, rising above the hum and roar and discord of the commonplace. Lesser beings feel the thrilling response, the sympathetic reaction; they cry louder, trying to fill out and become that which they are not.
Like ethereal cliffs and crags, glowing imperishable, they tower over the surge and roar of the tide of mediocrity below. The tragedy of life condemns them to be. They are the virtuosi in the Podunk orchestra, and the millions out of tune.
Each in his own life possesses an inescapable instrument. Into the hands of many are forced the tin drum, the ukelele, the toy tin horn. Others, with a superior instrument, crave only the blatant toy of the man next door. Each drifts into the composition to him most suited. Most of us are simply rasping noises, in an orchestra of discord. Some are lowest notes of sweetest tenor. Others are fine and high and piercing. The higher the attunement, the keener the ear for the finer composition, the more nearly perfect the whole work done by one
One gravitates into a circle in which each note is a contribution toward the whole symphonic entity. (This is the fugue of my thought.) Those out of tune are disgarded; I am disgarded. To me was given a sadly gilded harp with knots on the principal strings. The better works form a background against which the flashing notes of genius are sharpened and contrasted. Each man in his friends looks for the note to himself attuned. Some care for the raucous blast of blatant horn. Some seek the softest sighs of the living strings. Others seek the soul upon whose strings the echoes roll and play again the perfect melodies of a yesterday. Others boldly strive to create a new rhythm and in their staccato thundering against the dullness of the ever-present Present, are martyred to Ye Gods, The Reasons !
THE MESSENGER
Of the great mass, most bang on tins and loudly shout, adding hoarseness to the hopeless din that rises only as a murmur from beyond the garden wall, in which the genius sings, a lone clear call of nightingale, a song of peace, of hope, never of content, ofttimes of sobbing hate. Some spend their lives in piping ever shrill but ineffectually on the strains of a "We're Marching to Zion"-and points north song, joining in and listening always to their neighbor lest they make a note that's new. They dare not sing in bold clear note the song of souls set free.
I believe in the immortality of music. The glorious strains of the masters ' work are but the psychic throbbings of the world, at last transformed, set free. Crystallized. And these, set free, are winging their way to other worlds where the theme of the song is ever unchanged. There the whole grand thing is magnified, the swelling chorus grows and speeds upon its way. There are those in the valleys that hear it not. Men die. Song lives. Herein is the only everlasting spirit. If I must have a god, being human, let it be the Power of Song !
The song of the hoe is a wailing cry and that of the city is sad. So it must be that the true masterpiece, in it contains a subtle fusing of each.
Some believe in a heaven, a god. Others believe in a hell. But I, if I were believing at all, would choose only an ethereal wave traversing endless space, the void between Here and There.
Love is a hand that touches the strings. Some feel it early. Some late. The hand sometimes fumbles, and most times is weak. At times it is bold and firm. To those who early have received the touch the vibrations go on, influenced by an immanence. Others, having felt the touch, and losing it, die out, chill and cold, only trembling a bit in the general wail, as the chill air about them blows.
Must I-do I belong to those who must listen without? or am I privileged to sit and sing? Must I-Up, up flows the melody through my soul, it squeezes, it tears and it pains. But to express it-
TO THE MODERNISTS
H.H.C.
You versifiers ! Obliquely manipulated Vocabularies are yours.
Intellectual pettishness befogs you.
Vapid buffoneries are juxtaposed to Hyperaesthetic Reactions.
You toy in vain : Weak rebels !
Since trees blind you : the Forest is unseen ....
The Spirits of the Masters Hover In pity o'er you.
PREFACE
GEO. H. KERR
IN making a survey and index of the poetry produced by students of Richmond College between the years 1876 and 1926 it was necessary to set up a new standard of adjudication. Measurement of the qualities of college poetry must not be too severe. With such a small school body from which to draw material, little of permanent value has been produced. Judging from the quantity of work published in THE MESSENGERby some of the students, their total output must have been prodigious.
Each poem was submitted to a, cursory questionnaire. Form was not particularly emphasized, except in cases where the unusual had been adopted. First consideration involved the questions: is it a "song of the soul" or is it a meaningless rhyming for construction's sake? Is it a skillful, balanced, satisfying word picture or brittle vignette or is it a labored, overladen discourse obscured by meaningless rhapsodizing? Second to consideration of -content is the consideration of treatment or approach. Is it in this phase usual or unusual? A third aspect is the evidence of the writer's sensitiveness to the pulsating world about him. Especially was this stressed during the war and post-war periods.
Basically a poem should be a rhythmical expression of Truth and Beauty. The necessity for particular rhythm was waived in some cases of the latter free verse where the truth and solidity of the subject warranted a smashing, if somewhat rough, presentation. The claims of Beauty were ofttimes neglected in the more recent compositions; for many of the fundamentals , of life, of which the poet must sing, are of such stark harshness of nature that all the rhetorical artificers of the world could not clothe them in a garment of loveliness.
The poems selected for presentation are not always the representative ones of the year. Rather, they are the unusual ones; for the majority of the material was of such mediocrity that the necessary examinations of them was often exceedingly dull. Few pieces are of lasting merit. Some years lack any good material. Translations and parodies were omitted from the selected group. The numerous alphabetical jingles and the inevitable "In Memoriams" were not indexed. Few poems relative to "Dear Old Alma Mater" were included because of their exceedingly local interest. Poetry must possess a catholicity of interest.
PREFACE
The earlier poets were prone to burden their verse with sugary phrases, padded with hopelessly inane and obscure figures of poetry. Even more hopeless were the titles attached. Countless odes and sonnets were addressed simply "To ---" by - -, '88. Even after 1910 a young swain addressed a sonnet "To ---." Another devised a masterpiece on "Louise's Birthday" in 1925. Worst of all to be found was the title "Eidrib," which, anagramatically, is "Birdie," the subject of a silly rhyme to the "prisoned feathered brother." Not yet were the voices of the people aware of the real prisoners of their social organization. If they were aware of them, they carefully turned their heads and walked by on the other side, dallying with worthless honeyed rhyme schemes as they went.
Coining words must have been the chief diversion of these youthful aspirants to the laurels of the bard. It seems impossible that such archaic language was known so well as late as the 1880's. I can hardly say that they were fluent in the use of it. How commodious it must have been to adapt these ancient styles and to invent new atrocities to embellish and fill out the verse. Traces of this superfluous padding remained until 1910. I dare say that the editorial scrapbasket continues to receive much of the inevitable trash coming from the pens of uninspired dabblers in unique phraseology and sing-song platitudes.
To mention some of the outstanding poets is to reveal an interesting side to the natures of a few rather prominent people. James C. Harwood produced a great quantity of work, much of which was of good quality, judged by the standards of the contemporaneous verse. One person, known only as "Clinton," produced an amazing amount. Many of his lines are excellent. If a number of his splendid lines could be divorced from the poems in which they appear, and could be satisfactorily re -worked, the value of his productions would assume tremendous proportions. L. R. Hamberlin, who afterwards published independently, dominated the pages of THE MESSENGER for years. He continued to send back verse long after he had completed his studies here. In this older work, one notices particularly the delicate conceptions of "Fairy" and the love of the ocean portrayed in Stillwell's poems.
Probably the first to strike a note of the really modern trend of poetry and poem-forms was Francis Pendleton Gaines. A most interesting transition can be traced through his products. His earlier
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subjects were as trite as those of his contemporaries. In November of 1910 he struck a decidedly new note in "A Prayer for Mediocrity." Special mention should be made of the Sandburgian aspect of "The Fit Survive," which appeared in April, 1911, followed the next month by "The Convict."
Helen A. Monsell ranks with the foremost. Her love and fear of the sea are blended beautifully in some of her productions. Refreshing indeed it was to find a facile pen turning out new, sound, different settings and interpretations.
The war shock shattered all the old smugness and complacency, the old satisfaction with the superficial phrasing of worn-out themes. The tragedy of the conflict seems to have been realized at once. At no time was the war or its deeds of bravery idealized. Instead, the horrors of the European struggle were constantly spoken of as "the continental murders." Many were the heartfelt expressions of the keenest desire to avoid the struggle. Once having plunged into the carnage, however, the voices seemed to beg for strength rather than for glory. It is really astonishing to see how the youth of the nation, always too prone to see glory in a warfare, faced the problem. Absolute fairness of spirit permeates the poems. For instance, "The Deserter" is not a picture full of bitterness. It is full of truth and pity. Could the great number of war poems appearing in January of 1918 be attributed to the effects of the visits at home during the Christmas vacation immediately preceding? Perhaps the awfulness of the situation rushed upon the senses only when the student had left the quiet of the campus and had seen the havoc wrought in homes even here in America. These war poems I have chosen, not because they are in finer form, not because they are polished and beautiful in rhythm, but because they are conscious, palpitating, living expressions of the greatest force of the. moment.
I felt, undemonstrably, a pseudo-lightheartedness during and immediately following '14-'18. Perhaps there was a certain numbness of the esthetic sense. All perceptive powers were dulled by the impossibility of grasping the full import of the titanic struggle.
After a very short period of time the revolt broke in full strength against the scheme of things in general. A great variety of experiments in subject material and treatment of the medium came into being. Some forms were rejected at once. Some are still in use. The whole attitude toward the complexity of life had changed. A
new spmt had been generated. The old forms were infused with new life. eyperiments in free verse were numberless. Some of the more radical became "merely loquacious 'shredded prose.'" French poems were published, in the original, the first, "Limerique," appearing in January of 1922.
Among the outstanding workers of the post-war period was Thelma Phlegar, a devotee of beauty whose delicate and striking fabrications have since appeared in "Poetry" and other recognized publications. Probably the leading exponent of the new freedom of thought and expression was George R. Freedley. His work is superb, almost masterly. He reaches a degree of insight and expression rarely, if ever, found in the older work.
Some interesting details were found in the perusal of these old publications. One notes that until recent years poetry has been the much-used medium or organ for praise, prophecy, and protection by many of the host of ministerial students. Such poems as "Where Shall I Be In Eternity?" and "If I Should Die Tonight" are in abundance prior to 1915. "Happy Jack," obviously a minister of the message of peace and good cheer, seemed to have an overwhelming propensity for dreary thoughts. Richmond dares even to answer Ruskin at one time. Ricare Lane published "No Castles" in June of 1891 as a response to the idea propounded by Ruskin that there could be no romance in a country as youthful as America.
Of the 853 poems written during these years, only two were produced by a foreign student, Mr. Chack Kwong Wong.
The old adage concerning the springtime and the questionable fancies of young men seems to be strengthened by the fact that more poems, totaling 112, were produced in the month of April than in any other. The creative powers of man in this a finer field seem also to be at their full tide in the early spring.
In presenting this index andi brief resume of the poetry of Richmond College during the past fifty years I beg leniency at the hands of him who would judge my judgment. Being a critic in no technical sense of the term, I realize that personal preference has guided me to a great extent. I have read for the purpose of extracting only the essence of keenest enjoyment and personal satisfaction. I have included where others would omit, and omitted where others would have included.
(November, 1930.)
THE CONVICT
(1911)
Faint across the long grey wall( Stone floor, steel cot, and the prison bars.)
Oh! to see once more free sunlight fall. (Strip'd suit, keen whips, and the prison bars.)
And this unending, dead'ning fearAnd God made me for slavery here?
Arms, oh so tired, and weary back, ( Strip'd shirt, brute clubs , and the prison bars.)
And work and work till the night is black. (Dull eyes, heart-aches, and the prison bars.)
Here images of God do dwell
In these , my daily dreams of Hell.
And the evening bell is heard on high, "You cost us bread. Oh, hurry and die."
FRANK GAINES
THE FIT SURVIVE
V. D.
Breath of the West
Cold on her breast And bloodless lips and white have now their rest.
She did not die. We slew her there And laughed and fingered her black hair . The practiced preacher prayed that God beyond the dawn Pardon for her, and manfully subdued his yawn.
Sure, let her die. Is not Hell made bright For feeble women who can only give Their little bodies to the sin they cannot fight? There are good women and the fit survive.
Cold on her breast
Breath of the West. Cold, cold it blew, But not so cold as godly men and true.
THE ORPHAN GIRL'S LAMENT
(Whose fath er was a drunkard)
"Go, see what I have seen, Go, hear what I have heard, Go, feel what I have felt. Go, weep as I have wept, Go, kneel where I have knelt, Go, suffer as I have suffered, Go, be a drunkard's child, as I have been Then tell me I hate the bowl!Hate ! 'tis a feeble word I loathe, abhor ! my soul with disgust is stirred! Where' er I hear, see or tell ! Of the dark beverage of Hell!"
October 3, 1856 (The Classic Gem, Vol. 2, No. 1).
DAWN
!EGOR lLITSCH
IT was very early. The sun had not yet risen to cast its warming rays over the cold, foggy outlines of the world's surface; but the reflected brilliance of its presence gave forth a blood red announcement of its coming. The light of dawn was gradually paling the feeble yellow glow of the electric bulb in the passage outside the barred door of her cell.
She sat on the edge of her prison bunk with her back propped stiffly against the cold stone wall. Her shoulders were resolutely squared and her head was held high. There was dignity in her manner now. Every line of her face and figure expressed a detachment from her present surroundings. Her eyes were focused on something beyond the opposite prison wall, for her thoughts were far away.
Her mouth was fixed in a straight, cold, impassive line and her lips were compressed as if in fear that they might utter the things which she thought. A work-worn, unhappy face she had, which would never suggest a satisfaction with life. No smile had come to those lips and eyes for years; her cheeks may have once been rosy, but now they were pale and colorless. No flush of pleasure had suffused this stern face for many a weary day, for there was work to do; one must not play when one has to work. Her coarse, stringy hair was drawn tightly to her head and done up in a tight knot in the back.
A faded calico dress revealed her harsh, red throat exposed between the two lapels of her collar, pulled together and , fastened with a bright new safety pin in an attempt at neatness. The skirt extended to her ankles, as if in an attempt to hide the poor cotton stockings beneath. The sleeves of her dress were barely long enough to reach to her wrists. Her roughened, unbeautiful hands at last lay idle in her lap; those hands which had worked so hard for those whom she loved and had been so kind and tender to her little one; the hands which had soothed the aching foreheads of the sick when nearly all in her neighborhood had fallen sick with influenza. These hands had never tired of ministering then, when all others had failed. The gentle, tireless hands that had performed so many acts of love ... and yet, those very hands which had brought her here by their act of desperation.
She instinctively gave a slight shiver, not because of fear, but
because her body was cold . She was past fear; what did it mean to her that, in a few ' moments, they were coming to take her away and deprive her of the life that was of so little meaning now?
The sound of steps came to her from the passage outside-approaching-ominous footsteps.
Her mind was a terrible jungle of thoughts, in which she had lost her way. But, clear before her face, she saw the face of her baby son. The poor little fellow had been born a cripple. His back was terribly twisted and his frail, little legs were so crooked and weak that the doctor had said he would never walk.
Its father had cursed violently when he heard of the child's deformity and had never stopped reviling her for bringing into this world such a helpless creature; but she never complained, for, to her, the fact of her child's deformity suggested no barrier to a full affection for it. Her husband spent the night after its birth in a wild riot of drinking with his rough companions.
She had protected her little one from the torture that her unnatural husband seemed to take a fiendish delight in imposing on the defenseless child. It was an exceptionally good baby and seldom cried or annoyed, anyone; least of all its father. So the man had no basis for dislike of the child except the fact of its deformity.
Then, one day, he came in with an angry look in his eyes. He engaged in a torrent of maledictions against her, cursing with all his might-straining his crazed imagination to find odious words to express his hatred for her and for the child she had brought into the world. She was busy with her work and did not pay any attention to his remarks. When he realized that he was being ignored he became even more angry and turned his attention to the child, who had been awakened from peaceful slumber on its floor-pallet near its mother when he had entered. The baby was now staring in wideeyed amazement at what was happening in the room.
The sight of this creature, who presumed to be his son, finally got the mastery of him, and he advanced threateningly towards the child. The man raised his foot and, with a satanic burst of rage, viciously kicked the child in the face with his heavy foot. A slight cry came from the child and two little hands reached upward towards its face; then, with a gasp, it fell back limp and still.
She .had turned just in time to see this beastly act and stood perplexed, not daring to believe her eyes. Her tired body almost
gave way and she staggered forward toward the beast who now stood looking down in terror at what he had done. Suddenly, the full truth came to her and just as suddenly the mother beast within her broke through the thin veneer of civilization and she became the animal, defending her young Her mind became a seething mass of venom and, scarcely realizing what she did, she clutched a large carving knife from the table before her and sprang upon the offender. She was dimly conscious of the alcoholic odor of his breath and of warm, hot blood trickling over her hand which held the knife.
When she reached the child it was quite lifeless. The man lay dead with the knife beside him and his blood made an ever-widening stain on her newly scrubbed floor, but this she did not see. She had shrieked, like a wild beast, over the limp, dead form which she held in her arms. People had come and taken her away.
She was quiet now; she no longer wished to scream. Her mind was no longer a roaring furnace of wild , distorted flames, but only a pile of glowing embers.
She had been mocked by a trial before men who did not understand. She had no money to pay; for a competent lawyer and so she was represented by a young court lawyer who had no experience and was without sympathy for her. In the witness chair she did not listen to what was said, but only stared blankly at the courtroom wall and repeated her denials.
She had been found guilty of the murder of her husband and child. The judge had risen and had pronounced, in an awesome voice, the death penalty. In the whole courtroom, she was perhaps the least moved.
Now she sat, lonely and forsaken, visited only by a silly priest who had spoken silly words to her. She had not bothered to listen. Now, even he had gone and she was left to the myriad thoughts that crowded her mind as she sat there in the gray dawn of the day of which she would never witness the full splendor.
The footsteps came nearer and nearer. She did not move. The key was inserted in the lock and the bolt was turned. She stood up and, without hesitation, went with the company. The priest was there to follow her to the very erid of her road; he did not seem so silly now. But why was he so serious of face and why did he clutch that toy in his hand? She did not care. She walked with them down the
THE MESSENGER
long passage and passed through the dimly lighted doorway at its end-just an ordinary door.
In the warden's office a group of men were listening to a radio program that was being broadcasted from the other side of the continent. A hoarse voice was concluding an address with these words:
"Of law there can be no less acknowledged, than that her seat is the bosom of God; her voice, the harmony of the world "
The lights in the room dimmed perceptibly several times and then came on bright! again. The men looked at each other.
One man got up and turned off the lights, for they were hardly necessary now. He went over and raised the window shade. The sun was coming up; fresh from its cloud pillowed rest, and gilding the land with its first, bright rays.
A new day had begun.
SONNET
HAROLD COOPER
I dream of stranger scenes in a land remote and cold, Where splendid shafts of ice aspire to a vault of gold, Where coldly carven turrets yearn to the blood-red sky, And wanly colored flames give forth a weary sigh.
'Tis a frozen region forlorn, gigantic, frigid and bareFantastic and intricate patterns are traced in the frosty air; A god-inhabitated dwelling rears its glamorous dome While lights of green and yellow hungrily make their moan.
A gaunt and horrid ghoul uprears his blasted face
And drapes his cancerous carcass with shreds of leprous lace. Corrupt and foul, beyond this world, too much for Hell Below; he crept with slow, obscene delight to knell The curs'd unholy blight, that all who heard should fear: Fear the poisoned sound that weirdly lures you near!
THE SECRET RITE
H. H. C.
" ... Oose your eyes with holy dread, For he on honey-dew hath fed And drunk the milk of Paradise."
THE dull, low throbbing of muffied drums arises from beyond the mountain up which I am toiling. At last I surmount the ridge to behold a vision of rhythm and color. Opalescent pillars of solid pearl stand in a semicircle with the outlines of their pure forms brought into relief by the background of rich-green, sensuouslyt waving palm trees. Lithe virgins sway in perfect harmony upon a silver and gold expanse of wondrous texture: a fabric woven on the handlooms of the gods.
Suddenly the drums quicken and die, and the very atmosphere hovers in expectation as the resonant, long note of a violin begins to sound softly, then ascend in intensity until its poignant appeal seems to be visible-like a strand of silver glistering in mid-air.
A woman appears on the god-woven rug, and the violin sings for her dance; but she stands poised for a moment: her rigidly erect body naked except for the coral gleaming in her tempestuous black hair, and the two rubies that glint redly on the tips of her narrow breasts.
As the music approaches the unattainable altar of perfection, her extended hands express inarticulate suffering, while the fingers of her soul apprehend the vibrant, shimmering rhythm. She can remain static no longer-so with feline adroitness every muscle co-ordinates for the rendering of the voluptuous poem in movement.
THE MESSENGER
Member Intercollegiate Press Association of Virginia
RICHMOND COLLEGE
H. G. KINCHELOE
THOMAS DUKE
WILLIAM BERRY
YANK BAITIATO
LUTHER WELLS
WESTHAMPTON COLLEGE
ELIZABETH GILL , MAUDE MAHANEY
JOHNNIE ADAMS ,
Acting Editor
Business Manager Assist ant Editor
Assistant Editor Staff Artist
Editor-in-Chief
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• Assistant Editor
THE MESSENGER is publishedeverymonthfromNovemberto Aprilinclusiveby the studentsof the Universityof Richmond.Contributionsare welcomedfrommembersof the studentbodiesand facultiesof bothcolleges,and fromalumni.Manuscriptsnot found suitablefor publicationwill be returned. Subscriptionrates are two dollarsper year; thirty.fivecentsper singlecopy. Allbusinesscommunicationsshouldbe addressedto the BusinessManagers.
Enteredas second•classmatterin the postofficeat the Universityof Richmond.
EDITORIAL
CIRCUMSTANCES have arisen which have caused Mr. Morrissette to submit his resignation as editor of THE MESSENGER. It is to be regretted deeply that he has done so. It is to be regretted as well that there are bigots upon our campus. But there are bigots on all campuses. The criticism which has been directed against Mr. Morrissette's editorial policies has been, partly just, partly unjust. It is true, he has catered to non-campus writers. But the potential writers on the campus have refused to write. Having no usable material from the campus, Mr. Morrissette was forced to seek contributions elsewhere. It is true also that the selection of material for publication has not accorded with the literary ( ?) taste of the campusat-large. Mr. Morrissette has, however, been sincere. He has attempted to make THE MESSENGER a literary magazine, not a sophomoric journal. As succeeding editor of THE MESSENGER, I bow to Mr. Morrissette as a talented and excellent writer, a capable editor.
-H. G. K.
EXTRAVAGANZA
RUTH FISKE
From the dark I watch the wild Intoxicating dance.
Something within me moves In the same mad rhythm of the jazz-crazed panorama below.
Pairs of moving atoms whirl
To the ever shifting beat of man-made noise, While between their dual motion, others wind disentangled.
Myriad colors clash and blend
With the shadows. Colors tumbling from a prism Intermittently, rebound among the dizzying revel.
So I whirl and twist like a maenacl, dancing frenzied with wine, 'Ti~ with a shattered blare It ceases, and I reel In delirious mockery.
THE MATHEMATICAL MIND
EVELYN DUNCAN
THE other day I picked up a Trigonometry that I had saved in the justifiably pessimistic belief that I might need it later, and as I glanced through it, this proposition caught my eye: "A man walking across a level plain observed that a distant mountain had an elevation angle of 34° 15' 2.5''. He was six miles from it. How high was the mountain?"
My mind becomes a hazy resentful blank at the mere suggestion. I have often observed the Massanutten Mountain in much the same fashion, except that I just think it a right remarkable looking mountain and it is an ornament to the landscape, and remember that it's split down the middle so that a few of Jackson's men once held it against a large Yankee army. That's all. Never have I observed its angle of elevation or even known how far off it was. So I could go on giving instances of my lack of scientific observation of the mountains around my house and of other unmathematical layers. When I was a child and had two apples to divide among three playmates, I did not, like little Rollo in my first arithmetic, sit down and discover by division that each would get two-thirds of an apple. No, I unimaginatively asked mamma for another apple or else let the littlest playmate do without. So I continued to the ripe age of twelve when I studied papering, plastering, carpeting, etc. I merely figured that if you've got a big room, you get a 9x12 carpet; that when papa mended the hen house, he just took a piece of board and mended and if the piece was too big, he sawed some off, and if it was too little, he used two pieces. That papering and plastering was done by colored men who took what was left over back to the hardware store or else got some more from the, same source to finish the job. All that figuring seemed a waste of time to me.
But now when I have flunked every known form of higher mathematics except geometry which is logic, anyhow, I really begin to think about the mathematical mind. A mathematician will take fanatical pleasure in figuring out abstract and useless formulas. He loves to add, subtract, multiply and divide, to do algebra and "trig" and physics problems. He enjoys looking at the moon and telling you how long the beam that is hitting you in the eye took to get to the earth and how far back it is refracted from the same eye He can really observe mountains. He's a superior being and makes no bones of it.
THE MESSENGER
All the psychology in the world cannot convince me that he was not born that way. When I came squalling on the scene, I ate my first meal and thought, "Not bad, mamma, not bad." But the mathematician of tomorrow figured I have had 1/ 8 pound of milk and at the rate of six feedings a day, barring indigestion, I should gain about 1/ 4 pound a day, and so, since my present weight is 8 and 2 / 27 pounds, in three months I will weigh 23.5 pounds. This, however, is merely approximate, and since I will probably have colic at least three times, I shall weigh only 16 and 7/ 82 pounds at 24.7 minutes past eight in the morning three months from today. He undoubtedly spent his first year counting the flies on the ceiling and subtracting the total from the dots on thei window curtains. He figured out also the rate of multiplication of flies and the consequent number of swats or gallons of Flit necessary to keep the population at a respectably low level. He observed that the number of hours spent in his bath were inversely proportioned to the loudness of his yells while in the tub and that the hours spent in drinking were directly proportional to the contractions of his various muscular movements during the process. No wonder that by the time he reached high school he seized upon algebra and other forms of math with glee. No wonder he majored in it at college. Then he grew up and walked across a level place and saw a mountain. Instantly he figured how far it was to the mountain and all the rest of the things stated in the problem I gave at first. Then for good measure, he figured out the pressure of the atmosphere at the top and bottom of the mountain. The chemical percentages of all the elements composing it and the trees on it. Its thermal conductivity and its specific heat. He then calculated its mass and weighed it mentally. Wonderful! Wonderful!
Poor me, I just look at a mountain and say, "Well, mountain, lousy mountain." And I've even forgotten what an elevation angle is. I'm just not made right.
FOREVER
ALICE CARVER
How often, when my heart is cold with pain, How often have I made my bed with sorrow, And weary, weary, weary have I lain; My burden of desire is all so vainI shall be thus I know again, again, Be husbanded by grief once more tomorrow .
MORNING
ALICE CARVER
Only the common crescent moon
White in the hallowed radiance of the unborn sun, Only the morning star blessing the day begun, Fading so softly, gone so soon.
Only the voiceless melody
Lovelier that its music cannot quite be heardOnly the answering song deep in my glad heart stirred Binding the very heavens to me.
OUR GRANDFATHERS MIGHT HAVE KNOWN HIM
MARY HICKS
IHAD made up my mind that I was not going. to write on Blake. I might have known then that I was going to because I was so sure that I was not. Blake, wherever he is, must have smiled at my being so certain about anything connected with him, and then laughed triumphantly when I tried in vain to resist Anthony Bertram's article about him. I could almost believe that he induced the fates to cause me to run into this article !
Mr. Bertram approaches Blake from this very viewpoint - the elusive, the intangible, the paradoxical. "We cannot reason about his philosophy because he condemns reason; we cannot compare him with Nature since he condemned Nature as an illusion." However, the conclusion is drawn that, though Blake wrote from his imagination, he wrote in words and symbols, which were fashioned by reason, and was therefore only reasoning against reason.
It has been said of Blake that he was mad. That is a respected and awesome state because it assumes great genius. To say bluntly, however, "Blake is muddle-headed" is daring because, on the surface, muddle-headedness carries none of the prestige or dignity of madness. Bertram hastens to explain by giving this condition attributes of greatness also. This state of mind, according to him, is the "halfway house between clear-headed stupidity and irrational clarity. Clearheaded people are always certain that black is black and white is white and are almost sure to be wrong. It may be the first sign of grace not to know black from white, but it is muddle-headed. What is, is, but to speculate as to its relation to what is not is a most adventurous undertaking. It carries us inevitably into realms beyond reason where Blake was at home. It is just conceivable he was right about some things, and we may conclude that muddle-headedness is the highest state yet attained by man." While Rubens, he believes, is the greater artist, he is not so sure but that muddle-headedness is more important than art, because Rubens is within the world of human wit, while Blake transcends it into immortality.
Realism is photographic. Blake is therefore essentially abstract, since he does not give us slices of life.
As an illustrator, Blake was interested in the mystical signifi-
cance, illustrating the meaning rather than the scene itself. As an example of this, the author compares Blake's "Entombment" with that of Rembrandt. To the Dutch painter, the scene was one of deep human pathos, and he painted it thus. On the other hand, Blake's sorrow is subdued to universal order and made subordinate to harmony and beauty.
That Blake believed himself inspired, Mr. Bertram admits. He raises the question, "Since we have not all travelled in heaven, how are we to know whether Blake's works are faithful to his visions?" and answers it by asserting that we must judge whether they are convincing in themselves.
Blake despised shackles. There were only two things that he attended to-the idea and the pattern by which to express it.
Mr. Bertram is of the opinion that too much time is spent in looking for logic in this poet and painter who disowned logic and held it evil. "Like the eternal problems he writes about, he is insoluble." Frankly, the critic admits he likes Rubens better because he likes to know what he is about. Like all of us, our "abominable materialism" must assert itself.
In conclusion, the writer declares that for all practical purposes, Blake is dead. We must make of him what we can, for he can explain no more. His soul has marched on and maybe it has learned the secret.
The way I feel about existence is queer. I know perfectly well that we could not live without existing, and yet, even in view of this vital fact, it seems so trivial, so unimportant and commonplace. I always feel as though I want to apologize for eating or sleeping or even being hungry or sleepy or cold. Yet, tonight, before I could even think of Blake, I had to nurse a fire for forty-five minutes because my feet and hands were cold and uncomfortable. That is repugnant. Why should beauty and fancy be subordinate to mere hands and feet? They ought to transcend them. Certainly their meaning does.
I can reconcile myself to the fact that I am primarily sensual because I am just an earthy nobody who probably could not do anything else if she did not eat and sleep and build fires, but I have just been jolted into the rather terrifying and disillusioning realization that Blake existed. Now I have to think of him as eating and enjoying it and being in a bad humor when he was hungry and was too poor to
have anything. All because I chanced tc. read in an article on Blake, by Anthony Bertram, "Our grandfathers might have known him, for he lived in the prosaic years between 1757 and 1827."
For me, Blake was the immortal who never lived on this earth, even in his physical frame. My conception had always been of a Blake floating invisibly in the ether between heaven and earth, writing with the mist the impressions which his winged soul brought back from its flights to infinity. He had become silent because his soul had gone to dwell with the other immortals. That is a fantasy of the imagination, and I suppose that it is a good thing for a twentiethcentury person to come down to the substantial earth and see that Blake was born, dragged out a frugal and miserable existence, died and was buried, and that it is perfectly possible that my grandfather could have known him. That last is what startled me most. Grandfathers are so tangible and undeniably real that they are even domestic. The dream Blake was always in a phantom company. Not that I am discounting grandfathers or wishing to appear snobbish. I am just so sure that I had a grandfather. If it were a Mr. Smith even, I would not feel that he was necessarily real. To imagine my grandfather walking down the street with Blake makes him not only essentially worldly, but even related to me, and that could never be conducive to worshipful idealism!
I am frank to admit that I do not like to have Blake made human. Still, I can get consolation out of challenging and even denying the statement that Blake lived in the prosaic years between 1757 and 1827. He existed in those years, but he lived and has never died in a world where there are no prosaic years.
FOAM
GENEVA H. BENNETT
Green streaked with white, Love mingled with hateA swirling, swishing vortex. Man struggles. It is futile. White is lost in emerald.
NIAGARA
ISABEL TALIAFERRO
ISTOOD at the railing just over the falls. My eye swam downward with the white spray. Underneath that light, lacy water I felt the heaviness of a solid mass, and the thundering, the low pounding thundering that roamed in the caves below. Here again was a picture of life from the beginning that is not remembered to the end that is not conceived.
Back of me flowed the river, deep, and slow, and even. We can never know the secrets of that river. It is Eternity. Some people gaze at it in awe and wonder, some do not notice. From the river are born our lives on earth. They are the drops, uncounted millions, that break apart in individuals when this life begins. Chance determines whether their few seconds' falling through this world are lighted by the sun or by the moon. The rocks are fate. There is no other way; we fall upon them and have no choice which way to go. Some drops go through the smoothest way between the rocks, and flow into Eternity again having known in life only the quick sunlight. But there are many which the rocks turn from their course into shallow pools, dead channels. They, too, move on toward the river, but so slowly that they stagnate as the years of life go by.
A mist that is hovering there forever lifts a little, then draws close and wraps itself around the falling drops. It is the mist in which we live, our conception of eternal life, rising from the river below, where wild waters plunge deep and then flow on without the shadow of a ripple. That flowing is Eternity. It is for a moment only, that the water falls, that life lasts, a rooment governed by fate. It is gone, and we merge in one Eternity.
SPRING, IN THE BACK FIELD
E. GILL
Among the blackened stubble in the red-brown earth, a thin green is appearing.
Like a new color gradually embroidered into an unfinished design. The sassafras along the rail fence-row, Is putting out pale buds from wine-red stems to carry out the pattern of the land.
The gray-red rock-pile in the center of the field is not so bare as it has three months been, For last year's vines that still hold to the crevices Are yielding up their stiff, black threads to greener growth. And in the air there is a clinging dampness that presages rain.
MOCKED?
J. ADAMS
FORan instant the girl rested her head against the cold marble of the altar. In that one brief moment she forgot that she was to pray, forgot that he was waiting outside, forgot everything and was g-lad to rest even for a second. She had prayed so long that she could not remember that she had ever done anything else. She raised her head. Had she prayed? While she knelt there she knew that she had not. Instead she had thought of the slender moon-shadows in the garden and a white face looking over the brick wall. She had thought of the mockery of wearing a white robe and running dull black beads throughi her fingers day after day from the first light to the last light. She hated those sisters who stood behind her and the thought they were praying. Theirs was a greater mockery than hers. They lived on and believed and told their beads. She endured the hours, scorned and played with her beads. They had pretended to be like God for so long that they had become almost as cunning and cruel as He was. If they had known that she had caught only a glimpse of him and that that one glance was the thing that kept her from shrieking aloud at their pretense and hypocrisy, they would have mocked her, too. But they did not know; they would not know that long after she was gone, and now they thought she was praying. She stared at the black stone; a vision of a white face came against it and faded. She stood up to face the half-circle of solemn watchers. Her long shadow swayed against the wall; the black beads fell heavily upon the white robe. She turned swiftly, defiantly, ready to speak, but she remained silent, staring into the half-darkness. She was alone.
WOMAN FROM ELIZABETH DOWN TO ANNE
MARY ELIZABETH MAYS
WHEN grandmother was a girl-in the good days when Queen Elizabeth ruled the land-women were patterns of ladylike perfection. They did not paint their faces; cut their hair short; smoke pipes; dance to excess; gamble at cards; swear; ride astride; go to dinner parties given by men friends at the Apollo Tavern, or ride up and down the town till the narrow streets "were encumbered with the rumbling and rolling of coaches." But her children and grandchildren. Oh !-we lift our hands in horror. If young they danced all night and half the day; if old, they gambled at cards all day and half the night, and if about middle age they combined more than a sufficiency of both vices. All in vain were the efforts of the Jaco bean Reformers to persuade these ladies that a woman's place was the home, where her one aim should be to gain praise as a good housewife . Nor could grandmother's pleasing fiction of how happy she had been in her immaculate youth, accomplish much. And as for the ranting and raving of King James, he might have spared his breath.
When James came to the throne, he was fully alive to the importance of woman's position in England. He knew what an important part they had played in court intrigue during the previous reign. Queen Elizabeth by her own dominating personality had raised the status of her sex to an unprecedented height, herself typifying the one ideal woman. Society women took their pattern from the queen, and in her court, they wielded great power, occupying many positions usually discharged by men. James resolved it should not be so in his reign. Even if he were too weak to resist strong masculine wills, he was too strong to be twittled around the little finger of a woman. He disliked the sex both individually and collectively, but as a choice of two evils, preferred an ignorant woman to a wise one as being less dangerous. When a "learned maid," who could speak and write pure Latin, Greek and Hebrew was presented to the king, he listened unmoved to the catalogue of her attainments and merely asked sourly, "But can she spin?"
But James' will was not woman's will. What if he had gotten
his power by Divine Right, the little she had usurped was more potent to her because it had been gained by her own contrivances and hers alone. Furthermore she did not intend that it should be lost now that a king, not a queen, ruled the country. She had . other ambitions, such as desiring to be a stateswoman and know all the news or to censure poets, and authors and styles, and compare them.* Just to show James and the rest of his sex that frivolous amusements were not enough to satisfy her, she decided to form a college or a club, on the order of the saloons fashionable in France, where subjects of interest might be discussed and entertainment might be given to the wits and braveries.
Women were so used to being petted, spoilt, and worshipped that they had come to regard men as slaves to do their bidding; never before had woman been so worshipped, and gallants glorying in their slavery besought earnestly for a favor whereby they might demonstrate to the world their thraldom. "If he get any remnant of hers, a busk - point, a feather of her fan, a shoe-tye, a lace, a ring, a bracelet of her hair, he wears it for a favour on his arm, in his hat, on finger, or next to his heart." A gentleman spent many anxious hours practicing "the trick to make my lady laugh when she's disposed." A really proficient servant "often let his tongue run away with him, vowing in flowery and rhetorical language to weep seas, live in fire, eat rocks, tame tigers, anything in fact to win his mistress' love.
It was the ambition of every girl to have her praises sung until she would become immortal. When, in return, for some trifling favor the lady asked, "Will you write me a sonnet?" the gentleman promised to compose one, in so high a style "that no man living shall come over it, for in most comely truth no man ever had such beauty to inspire him." On close application, however, he often found the task quite as difficult as eating rocks or taming tigers. Luckily for those, there were professional scribblers, ready to compose a sonnet to a lady's eyebrow or liken her beauty to suns, stars, moons. Here Sir Thomas Overbury got the start that landed him in the tower. No one could blame Carr, if for no other reason, Overbury boasted publicly that it was his letters that won Frances Howard for Carr.
*Ben Jonson.
Sir John Suckling found other ways of entertaining "the ladies of quality (all beauties and young)" by making a magnificent entertainment for them, which cost hundreds of pounds, "here" were all the rarities that this part of the world could afford, and the last service of all was silk stockings and garters, and I think also gloves. Stockings, garters, and gloves seem to have been the conventional gift from gentleman to lady, even if the lady were the wife of one's best friend.
The ladies exacted almost slavish homage from their admirers, who must always be ready "to man" their ladies to plays at the theatres; squire them to card parties; escort them out hunting or hawking; accompany them at shuttlecock; wait on them at bowls or archery; and partner them at balls and masks.
Moreover not content with ordering them about, the ladies copied and aped them in every possible way. Women had long before taken unto themselves the much coveted privilege of feathers in their hats, and once let the men evolve a new fashion and hang it! before it was out of the tailor's shop the ladies would have copied it. Next they took to cropping their hair, bought men's beaver hats , wore daggers on their hats, and even breeches when at hounds.
King James decided to act as an arbitrator of fashion. He hated the huge hoop farthingales ladies wore to make their dresses stand out and complained that this "impertinent garment" took up all the room in his court. His dislike of them became so intense that he finally issued a proclamation saying that henceforth no farthingales were to be worn at court. King and courtiers thought that ended farthingales; but no, smiling sweetly they continued to curtesy in mock obedience to the king; and to wear yellow ruffs around their necks that Mrs. Turner had introduced and which were so despicable. When Mrs. Turner was hanged for being an accomplice, supplying the poison, in the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, "It was ordered that" as she being the person who had brought yellow starched ruffs into vogue, she should be hanged in that dress. Even the hangman and his assistants wore yellow ruffs, and the ladies paid their respects to Mrs. Turner by banishing ruffs after the hanging.
Royal disapproval was equally ineffective, as formerly in the
case of the women, when King James, who hated "the most divine tobacco" tried to prevent smoking. Ladies affected horror when Sir Walter Raleigh first introduced it into polite society, but desirous to do everything that men did and strengthened in their purpose by their doctors prescribing the newly discovered tobacco as a cure for all ills, they were soon "every whit as keen as their menfolk" to take lessons in the art of smoking. We are informed that the ladies found very much solace in their longstemmed pipes with carved silver bowls. Pepy's says that once while he was at the theatre "sitting behind in a dark place, a lady spit backward upon me by mistake, not seeing me, but after seeing her to be a very pretty lady, I was not troubled at it at all."
Husbands of this age became very weak-kneed from trying to stretch purses so far beyond their limits, King James would have us believe. The "wife wore the breeches" and the man of the house put aside his business to become her slave as she willed and during certain seasons she willed that there was no place so good for him to carry her "muff, dog, and fan," about as in London. So up to London they went to live, whether they were able or not, for nowhere else was the new fashion to be had. My lady wanted plumes, fannes, silver taffetas, China silk, Naples silk, Genoa velvet, branched satins, gold chamblets, and nets wrought with silver and gold-not to forget the masques, which one man said "be the only show of modesty the ladies have"that of concealing their countenances. And no matter how small the purse, it was expected to meet and overcome all the obstacles in the way of my lady getting this finery.
No wonder? Who could blame the wretches? It is whispered that the men tried to become effeminate. Though it was not "vain glory" for a man and his glass to confer in his own chamber, matters had come to a pretty pass when he took to carrying one about with him. Then the time the men spent on their clothes! They wore whole manors on their backs and did not walk, but jited and danced.*
Another source of great worry to the moralist of the day was the ladies' insistance upon going to the theatre. There they saw Richard Burbage, "their mortal God on earth," acting in the plays
*Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy.
of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, who created such characters as Portia-putting all sorts of ideas in the women's head as if they weren't already bad enough.
Why King James' daughter, Elizabeth, was right up with the twentieth century in matters of wedding ceremony. She would not have the word "obey" in her marriage service; Lady Hatton went us a step further and refused to bear her husband's name.
Something had to be done and done quickly; so King James called upon the church to support him in a campaign to make husbands the masters of their wives. Scribes outlined the perfect woman "of great modesty and temperance," those virtues appearing especially in her conduct to her husband. Never should she answer him back, "for bad language, though always uncomely in a woman, is most monstrous and ugly when it appears before the presence of her husband." A wife's chiefest virtue is a good husband, whom she followeth not less willingly than the hyacinth follows the sun.* Women must stop this "all day adressing to pleasure other men abroad" and going "like sluts at home" not caring to please their husbands whom they should.t
*Sir Thomas Overbury. tBurton.
WAVES
GENEVA , H. BENNETT
Silently
They steal upon the sands, Stealthily,
Like a summer shower, They come and then recede. Each in its turn has one moment. To whisper to the sky and break into foam, Casting a crystal mist above it. Then back the cooling water creeps, As silently, mysteriously as it came. A sister wave rolls in, And on into eternity.
WESTHAMPTON EDITORIAL
JUSTas there is no one who knows everything, so there is no one thing which every one knows. Some know one thing, others another. The mind reasons about certain things, the heart divines others, but there are times when it is easier for the heart to divine than for the mind to reason. It takes less time, less energy; less blame is attached to the heart for an error in calculation than to the mind. A bough is broken by the wind; the mind knows. A cloud drifts before the moon on the wings of the breeze; the heart divines.
What do we want? Solitude, peace and quiet? A tolling bell in the morning; a clear, gay bell ringing in the evening? We cannot have peace and solitude or even quiet. That time is passed, and now we want movement, even if it is a struggling movement. And all that movement is counted for naught if it does not work for something more perfect. Nor can passivity accomplish our desire, unless it were a perfecting of an inner calm without expression which after all must be counted nothing. Neither wanting nor waiting will bring it, but doing, writing expressing.
If "the way to perfection is through a series of disgusts," many things should have been perfect long ago and many things will yet be perfect.
J.C. A.
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