IN times of stress or change institutions are examined and their efficiency017lack of it observed. Traditions are weighed in the balance and their significance judged. The institutions alone which are alive and active in their respective functions are worthy of perpetuation. The tradition which is an expression of a real quality in the character of a people is the only one deserving a place in the life of that people. No matter how strong in previous college generations an organization or publication has been, it must fulfill a real purpose to justify its existence in this generation.
Such a purpose we feel THE MESSENGERhas. There is in students some thoughtfulness, some ability to c~ystallize in words, ideas and experiences which are rich in college days. A literary magazine for the expression of these ideas and experiences we inherit from sixty years of student endeavor. An examination of THE MESSENGERfiles will reveal a magazine with nine issues a year, alive with the vitality of thought and feeling. For the three issues a year that are our present allowance, we can do no less than sincere and vigorous writing. To justify our inheritance of THE MESSENGERwe must establish that we are the intellectual heirs of earlier writers and readers. Ideas and experiences are ours. Expression alone is needed.
-L.L.
I hunted with them beside me Fora time;
We found much game ... It was a long while They smiled and killed their birds
As I watched the flying wings. I did not know I had to kill: The hawk to me seemed a gentle Fear/ ul creature . . . Soon they left me to hunt alone and The wood was thick and dark, Yet there was peace for a time.
There was Truth
Like a foreign bird
Like a greater hawk
Coming out of the loneliness Out of the weariness that sought Him.
I saw Him at a great height: His quills rustled the tree tops and dropped leaves At my feet.
Ou //Uitin f {#a'l,s
FLORENCE RHEA TALLEY
No form of literature is quite so comfortable and quite so stimulating as the familiar essay. The scholarly thinker has to torture his brain with heavy cogitations before he can produce any results. The poet must be filled with the frenzy of divine madness; then take what he has received from the gods and temper it for human use. There are no such demands on the familiar essayist. When he dips his pen in the ink-well, Pegasus does not soar to the clouds; he is content to amble in the fields and nibble grass.
The informal writer is like a curious small boy who peeps into a mouse-hole to see if the mouse is at home, and explores the cellar for whatever mouldy treasures he may find. The . youngster of the nursery rhyme, who put Pussy down the well, had the makings of a good essayist. His was the curiosity that peers into the mystery of conduct, and the other little boy, though doubtless inspired by the most humanitarian motives, a matter-of-fact fellow incapable of appreciating this naive experiment.
From the moment we tear our rattle to pieces to see what makes the funny noise, some of us remain potential essayists. The urge for investigation still endures, though studied decorum may keep us from demolishing the surroundings. We are like a school-boy who turns his apple and surveys it from all sides before sticking in his teeth for the next juicy bite.
It is native interest and not rudeness that prompts a man, at the first introduction, to pursue us with a relentless storm of questions as to our private lives: where do we live, what is our business, do we like tennis? His only fault is his curiosity, and that, granting some talent, would make him a true 5
essayist. He sees every man, not as a standard product of some cosmic factory, wearing a broadcloth coat and having a certain social status, but as a unique creature who feels and thinks like no one else in the world, who combs his hair and polishes his shoes in a manner peculiar to him alone.
Akin to the questioning man is that person who exudes information about his house, his books, his work. His range is only more limited. Instead of finding in his friends and neighbors a source of interest, he focuses upon the small region within his own being. A worthwhile subject, no doubt, but one that must be pursued with care lest he turn from a study of life to the foolish state of gazing vacantly, like Narcissus, at his image in the pool and running the risk of falling into the water.
The cornucopia on the spangly Christmas tree may lead to a new world of speculation. A creative mind could give us ten million fertile thoughts, covering the whole of this world and part of the next, all revolving around a little paper cornucopia. It is through such side doors that the essayist enters into his philosophy.
We are not so far beneath the poet and the sage. Where they are concerned with the "What?" and "Why?" of Heaven and Hell, we contemplate the "What?" and "Why?" of this world. If our subject chances to take us into heavenly topics, so much the better, though we avoid Hell.
The world becomes quite familiar when we have studied it long enough. And knowing it so well, how can we treat it with anything but toleration? The world may have its quirks and cross moments, but so have we. There is none of us who would cast off a friend for one moment's ill-temper, so long as we are bound by mutual memories of old companionship. Then why should we fret at the whimsical tantrums of this old friend, World? Is it not much more sensible to lie on the floor by the fire and trace patterns in the carpet, or perchance, to pick up pencil and paper and, the task not being hard, to write a familiar essay?
BEVERLEY BATES
I have lived for centuries in this place, Where the pale dust goes slowly around
In the long, sharp shafts of far-reaching sun That have sought-and seeking have found A way through my closed and narrow window. Life comes to me like the distant sound Of children playing late in evening. Long dark ivy hangs to the ground
From the purple vase, and is dim and greyed By the dust, going slowly around.
Characters
KENNETH wARE • • . . . Socony Agent
ALEC DRACHENFELS, Buyer for Socony and recently arrived from England
CHANG Fu LIANG • • • • Inn-keeper
LIANG TAI-TAI • • • • The old grandmother
TsAI MING • • Chinese soldier-bandit
Scene: Chinese inn in Tian.
Time: 7:20 P. M. The present.
(The curtain rises on the interior of a hot, filthy Chinese inn. The floor is merely the hard packed ground over which are scattered scraps of food and bones which the lean cur lying in the far corner has left. A sturdy board table is shoved against the center back wall with benches pushed carelessly from the sides as if a meal has just been finished. Sticky bowls of rice, empty, greasy platters, a plate with two ricecakes on it and two pairs of wooden chopsticks remain exposed to the buzzing, persistent flies. At front left is a door leading to a little anti-room, used perhaps for sleeping. A tattered bamboo screen, serving as a sort of partition between the two rooms, is tied up at the top of the door. To the left of the table is another open door leading out into a stiflingly bare courtyard lined by even more stifling rooms. At the right of the table is a small paper-covered window. Along the right wall runs a kong, made of bricks; above it is another window out of which the paper has been torn. On the 8
MAllYDEE LOWE
edge of this kong Ware and Drachenfels are sitting, utterly weary and dejected.)
Ware (Wipes his striking sun-burned features with a huge silk handkerchief): "God! What a country."
Drach: "What infernal weather!"
Ware: "The weather? Yes, and these confounded Chinks."
Drach: "Why have you stuck out in this rotten country so beastly long?"
Ware: "You're new and unexperienced, but you'll learn. You'll hate the place, the smells, the yelling, naked kids, the dead witheredness of the country, the dust and the murky water. You'll live in horror at the contageous diseases,afraid to touch anything, afraid to even breathe decently, but you can't leave. I've tried for six long years. I'm still here."
Drach: "I couldn't stand it. It's horrible, this land with its sordidness and its idiotic superstitions."
Ware: "You'll see. Where could the inn-keeper be? (calls across the inner court) Chang Fu Liang! Chang Fu Liang!
Drach: "You know the chap?" (uninterested).
Ware: "Last winter I was stranded here for five hours. Liang' s a pretty decent fellow for a Chinese when he's not in the fantastic clutches of his opium pipe."
Drach: "When will those muleteers get here? I don't fancy this place" (in exasperation knocks the flies away with his open hand).
Ware: "Possibly in an hour or two, they're always late."
Drach: "Eternal asses! Look Ken, isn't that the old man himself?"
Liang (a huge man with pouchy cheeks and small, gleaming eyes. He is wearing a long, dirty coat. His hair is entirely hidden under a tight black skull cap. He shufHesin, waving an enormous black fan before his dripping face) :
"Ah! Klenny ! I no know you belong here. Velly glad to see you.''
Drach (Aside): "Friendly old devil, imagine him speaking English." -
Ware: "How are you Chiang? We were supposed to change muleteers here. The ones we hired in Tsianan deserted us down the road about fifteen li and we had to walk."
Drach: "Damnably hot walk, I'd say."
Ware: "Right, and now the other men haven't showed up."
Liang: "I savvy velly well, you two belong mushly dly. I fetched you something nice to dlink. Yes?"
Drach: "Maybe so, but chop-chop bring us something to eat."
Liang: "I fixee, I fixee, I likee you velly much. I go talkee to Tai-Tai" (he has been piling up the dirty dishes from the table and ends by sweeping the crumbs off on the floor with an old wet towel).
Pl are (as Liang goes out the court door): "If we're in luck we may have a cup of tea in half an hour."
Drach: "The chap speaks fairly well. How'd he learn it in this god-forsaken place?"
Ware: "He sells supplies to the foreigners who spend the summer months in Tai Shan."
Drach (points out the open window) : "Is that rather tall peak Tai Shan?"
Ware: "The highest one is (with awe), the scared mountain of China."
Drach (moderately curious) : "Is it true that the ripping philosopher, Confucius, looked from up there over the checkered plains of his beloved country entreating the gods for a fruitful season?"
Ware (lights a cigarette and passes one to Alec, who refuses it for one of his own long foreign brands): "That's the 10
legend of this section. The people still make pilgrimages every year to worship the shrine of his memory."
Drach: "Rather a tiresome trip, I should say (with a superior air). Silly custom. Ah! here comes the chow" (rises quickly as an old shrivelled woman enters on her tiny feet. She is Liang Tai-Tai, the venerable and wise grandmother. Her hair is thin and pulled straight back from the parched, dry skin of her forehead. Her eyes are two darting beads. In her hands she carries a wooden tray filled with bowls of various sorts of food; boiled and sweetened fish and duck, rice, bean-curd, soy beans, bamboo sprouts and a pot of steaming tea. She can talk no English and flashes the two men a toothless grin as she sets her dishes on the table).
Ware (Ken eats skillfully with his chopsticks, while Alex uses the little China spoon placed at the edge of the table) : "Tastes pretty good." (Takes a huge bite out of a steaming moa-moa).
Drach (Liang Tai-Tai exits slowly thru the courtyard mumbling to herself): "It's odd stuff." (Pours and drinks a cup of tea.)
Ware ( as steps are heard running toward the outer door) : "Wonder who that is?"
Drach: "Perhaps it's our coolies." (Eats a little faster.)
Ware: "Possibly. (A rather youngish Chinese man stumbles in the room, blinded for a minute by the sudden darkness. He wears a torn and faded grey uniform of Wu Pei Fu's army. His face is scratched and darkened by a three day's stubble. One arm hangs loosely at his side while his sleeve is slit half-way exposing the bare, dark skin.) (He slumps over on the kong, breathing in huge gasps.) "Um! he looks interesting." (Calling loudly.) "Liang! come here."
Drach: "Jove! the poor fellow is rather down and out. Looks as though he's been running for miles."
Liang (enters hurriedly): "What belong matter, Klenny. You no likee chow Tai-Tai fixee?" (Sees the immobile man 11
on kong and asks him in Chinese, what he wants and what his name is.)
Ming: "Tsai Ming." (In a barely audible whisper. He looks up furtively and his eyes are two burning coals of feverish horror.)
Ware (visibly shocked): "Here, Liang, give me a hand." ( the two of them direct Ming into the anti-room at the left.) "Better see about fixing his arm. I think it's badly hurt."
Drach (as Ken enters the room brushing his hands against the side of his breeches) : "No chance of a decent doctor within miles. Ken, did you see his eyes? Enough to put the fear of God in any man."
Ware (musing): "Wonderwhoheis?"
Drach (angrily): "How in the devil should I knowforget him. Lights a cigarette and sighs deeply." (Is lost in his own thoughts.) "Good God, man, snap out of it. We'll be gone from here in a minute and that Ming chap will be just another slinky Chink."
Ware (lights his own cigarette) : "I've seen that man before."
Drach: "You're beastly mind is playing you tricks. Forget him."
Ware (a low moan is heard from within as Liang tiptoes into the center room, his flabby face flushed and moist. He signals for quiet and with the mangled cur lopping after him, exits at left rear): "Can't shake the idea out." (His puzzled frown is removed by a flash of quick understanding. Excitedly.) "I've got it."
Drach (impatiently): "Got what?"
Ware (grinds his cigarette out on the floor and faces Alec) : "The Red Wall!"
Drach ( stretches his lean form, dressed in brown linen breeches and tan silk shirt, to a more comfortable position) : "My dear fellow, have you lost your senses? Sit down, stop dashing back and forth like that."
Ware (almost shouting): "It was the Red Wall."
Drach: "I thought all the walls in this damned country were red." (Tries to change the subject.) "Where in hell are those filthy muleteers?"
Ware (shrugs impatiently): "That man, Ming, that man with those ghastly eyes. God I How could I have forgotten even for a minute the fearful terror that blazed so vividly in those sunken eyeballs?" (shudders involuntarily).
Drach (in amused scorn): "Lord, Ken, have a smoke."
Ware (the cigarette hangs loosely between his tanned fingers) : "The horror of that morning made an imprint deep and raw. It was a cool morning, the air was crisp and the clouds were just beginning to lift."
Drach: "Say, my dear chap, this sounds unique. Mind telling me the significance of the Red Wall?-''
Ware (paces the floor) : "I'm sorry but I've warned you of the magnetic current beneath the oiled surface of this heathen land. I've been gradually sucked by a strength far greater than my own within the ancient circle of black . superstition."
Drach (horrified): "Are you inferring that you, an American, believe this native hoo-doo?"
J·Vare: "There is something buried down here ( touches his heart) that I can't quite grasp. It slips but never vanishes completely. There is a part of me that responds to the fear that haunts those who live within the bounds of the Sun land."
Drach: "You sound rather like an ignorant coolie."
Ware: "It's in me and I can't escape that intangible dread that restrains me. Call me a heathen if you wish, maybe I am."
Drach (to the wall): "Bally rot." (Again to Ware curiously): "Not at all, but what of the Red Wall?"
Ware (walks to the matting to see if the man is still sleeping): "The Wall? Or course. It up there." (Points out 13
the open window half way up Tai Shan.) "I found him there."
Drach (impatiently): "Who? Where?"
Ware: "Tsai Ming there on the rocks."
Drach: "When was this?"
Ware: "During the summer six years ago on Tai Shan. I had walked miles hopelessly lost, my shoes were in shreds, my feet bruised and swollen."
Drach: "But what of the Red Wall?"
Ware {stares silently at the rude interruption, then continues): "I had yelled and shouted but only my hollow echo answered. The sun had risen in a flood of color-still I had no recognition of the surrounding cliffs. The rocks had become worse and worse and the path entirely invisible." (Alec listens only mildly, crossing one knee after the other.) "It was then I stumbled upon Ming."
Drach (nods in the direction of the anti-room): "That chap in there? What in God's name was he doing up there?"
Ware (disregards Alec's queries): "He wasn't dead, only badly stunnecl. He opened his eyes. No, they weren't eyes, but two smouldering pits of Hades.- The intensity of their brilliance charred a sizzling path into my soul. (Brushes the dripping hair from his forehead with a lifeless hand.) "God! It was awful."
Drach: "What did you do?" (in a hoarse whisper).
Ware: "I ran as if the seven devils of the great Khan might have been after me."
Drach (in utter amazement): "You left him?"
Ware (simply): "I ran." (More excitedly.) "I couldn't bear it. I would have gone mad. (Breathes almost inaudib1y.) "God! It was too awful."
Drach (still puzzled): "Was that all? Why is he here now?"
Ware (pushes back the forgotten dishes) : "It's a long story. Later I was back here and asked about his identity."
Drach: "He lived here?"
Ware: "Yes, this too was the native city of Confucius. The boy's ancestry traced back to the famous family of the Ming dynasty."
Drach (with marked enthusiasm): "I've read ripping that during the time of Confucius?"
Ware (smiles indulgently): "You know your historical facts well."
Drach (negligently): "The Flowery King .dom with its centuries of vast wisdom and secluded civilization is a fascinating subject."
Ware: "Fatally fascinating. (Returns to the Mings.) "Confucius decreed that the eldest son of the Ming's should be sacrificed every five years to appease his wandering spirit left on earth."
Drach: "Beastly demand. They haven't carried it out?"
Ware (seriously): "Ah, but they have. The human offering is accepted only during the dark minutes between the setting of the second new moon and the rising of the sun."
Drach (looks out at the mountain): "Won't any place serve to fulfil the fearful order, if fulfil it they must?"
Ware ( strikes a match to his cigarette. The room has grown quite dark and the insects are flying into the crude lamp that old Liang Tai-Tai had placed earlier on the table): "Confucius stood above those rocks when he prayed for the peace of his country and thus they are as sacred to the Chinese h . ,, as 1sgrave.
Drach (pensively): "What part does the Red Wall play in this drama of human sacrifice?"
Ware: "The Republic built the wall above the rocks to prevent people from throwing themselves off."
15 Drach: "The Republic?"
Ware: "It is trying to break a lot of old superstitions."
Drach: "Has it been successful?"
Ware: "In many ways, yes, in others, not in the least. It can't blot out the beliefrooted deep in the mellow centuries of an ancient race. And now Tsai Ming is in there half dead with exhaustion. He escaped his destined fate once by a slim chance of fortune but tonight is the second new moon of the fifth year."
Drach (Musingly): "Wonder what the chap will do? Probably die"
Ware: "He won't die. He might in some other country, but in China he will live, either to sacrificehis soul at the altar of Confucius or be twisted by the wailing cries of the lost spirit. He will know no peace. That is China."
Drach: "So (rather with awe) that is China." (The silence between the two men is broken by the massive entrance of Chang Fu Liang. He is still carrying his black fan and his face is hugely grotesque in the flickering lamp light.)
Liang: "Klenny, you two belong in bled. Coolie men no dome till morning time." (He picks up the lamp in his fat, greasy hand and pushes the men out the courtyard door before him.)
EPILOGUE
The curtain rises after a brief interlude signifying the passing of five hours. The air is close and foul. The room is a thick choking wave of blackness. The only relief is the thin silver cycle of the new moon seen dimly through the haze beyond the window. A hound howls dismally in the distance followed by intense silence. A low moan permeates above the motionless stillness to fade weakly away. The bamboo matting rustles faintly and a face, pale with the palor of death is discernible for an instant in the door. The light pat-pat of bare feet on the beaten earth is heard and a swift, shrouded shadow slips across the front of the stage. Silence spreads its suffocating blanket over the scene. Far away a locust cricks-eternal sentinel of the advancing dawn.
::J>,i"flAllan, fi, J./.inuef t
SUB COOK MCCLUR:S
Bottle and spoon, Cotton and glass, Here, in this room, Death is to pass.
Somewhere a bell Far as the moon, Floats a farewell Sad as a tune.
Hear in the stark Silence the clock
Utter no prayerNothing beyondSharp, without care, Sever the bond.
Breaking the dark's Numberless locks.
Others shall hear
Silent a rose Clocks that shall pass, Down through the years You have been grass.
Breathes out its bloomN one ever knows Butterflies' tomb;
Better resign
Life in a breath, Than you should whine Down to your death-
Bottle and spoon, Cotton and glass, Here, in this room, Death is to pass.
SUE COOK MCCLURE
When in the eerie
Hours of the night
Whippoorwills cry In hush of starlight-
Lonely you touch A foot to the stair, Climb to the top And find me not there-
If to the tune
Of music afar, Wistful, perfumed As goblin guitar's,
You should recall A glamored refrain, F ainly for bid
The rush of old pain-
If should occur
Reversal of mind, You should regret A madness resigned,
Count me not one
To have you to friend: Curtains are down, The play at an end.
Think not we become A tranquil dust Whom the earth has claimed With ancient lust: We have gone, and go, Because we must.
Tall above our mounds
The yew trees swingIs a tree in wind A soothing thing? We are not appeased When starlings sing.
ls it strange we hate Who thrust apart Sword and wielding hand, The lip and heart, Agents of the soul's Consummate art?
Impotent we shed Our angry tears, Watch the gay and strong March down the years To their heritage Of dusty biers.
Plaintive ghosts, we lie Quiescent, since we must: Who is there can cry The gallantry of dust?
A1.utd c:£t-eiu? J
SUE COOK MCCLURE
The opera's catastrophe The throat knows melodies Employs orchestral strings, From sorrow wrenched and torn But do not think less tragedy By old futilities In unobtrusive things: Begot, conceived, and borne;
The crone broods tragedy Of youth and bloom outgrown, Confronts reality Of dust beneath a stone;
And ash the transience Of fire and flame perceives, Regrets impermanence Of mortal syntheses;
No granite flaunts the spot The butterfly has died, And musty graves in hearts Are easy dust to hide.
The opera's catastrophe Employs orchestral stringsThink not of smaller tragedy The dirge on muted strings.
PAGE JOHNSTON
ALTHOUGH not an incentive to a sunny disposition, one of my favourite pastimes is brooding over my pet aversions. Mothers discourage them, say they are petty and prejudiced . . I say they are the natural reaction to the so many disagreeable things and stupid people in the world. Then, too, they are so entirely personal. There is something about crouching in the corner of a sofa and growling about them that affords a unique satisfaction. Peculiar, that-when I am really the world's most obstinate optimist. I refuse to believe that life, and a glorious life at that, was not put here for my especial benefit, to be revealed in. Oh, I revel, all right, but I do it behind the backs of my pet aversions. I'd hate to have them catch me being inconsistent.
Little things could be listed for pages, larger ones expostlated upon for volumes, when all the time they're the kind of things that should only go in diaries, which I don't keep. Yet, hence vain deluding joys, let's loathe for awhile.
A sense of humor is the criterion by which I measure practically everyone. Indeed, it the one deciding factor in whether or not, and how much, I like a person. On meeting someone for the first time, something goes dead in me to hear him or her use an old, old expression that was not hilarious the second time it was voiced. I hate people who tell stale jokes and laugh themselves, and people who think themselves genuinely clever when they genuinely are not. That is always fatal. Faith, hope and humor, and the greatest of these is humor.
Above all, heading any list, are the people who invariably say the Obvious Thing. It occurred to me one day that it 21
was entirely that quality in a person which constituted boredom, for me. The kind who says only what you thought two minutes ago, and who supplements at the end of every clever remark an all too unnecessary explanation. An obvious person asks, on seeing you help yourself to butterbeans for the third time, "Do you like butterbeans?"; who sees you puton your hat and coat and reach for the doorknob and asks if you are going out, who hears you swearing intense dislike for the Phi Kaps, and asks if you are going to the Phi Kap dance. It's so stupid of them! In a different category, perhaps, but along the same line, are the people who sit with you through an exquisitely enacted scene in a movie, or a throbbing piece of drama, or a classically beautiful piece of music, and, to keep things from becoming awkward, they think, chirp, "Pretty, wasn't?" The Criminal Code ought to exclude murder as murder under such conditions.
Sentimentality. At the mere mention of the word, something inside me reacts as it would to liquid sugar going drip, drip, drip. Of all the romantic people in the world I am the most romantic; sentiment, silent sentiment I cherish. But sentimentality, ugh! Baby-talk, or any chocolate-covered expressions of affection I cannot abide. People who fall "really in love, darling, it's divine" every two weeks, and people who eulogize upon the beauty of a person's soul, fi.vt minutes after hearing of their death, when silence would be the only thing tolerable. Radio programs which devote themselvesto "songs that remind you of the only person on earth who can soothe away the cares of a weary world and in her arms caress away the griefs and woes of sadness-mother."
Mammy songs that musically correspond to soggy, luke warm milk toast. Mediocre one-act plays that deaf with the tremendous struggle of some great man's widow. Flowery eulogies of any kind, particularly when the person in question is dead. All these I loathe and they leave me, in the mind of most people, a cold, unfeeling stoic. I offer no 22
explanation. Only those who feel as I do can understand, or ever will.
Having dealt with the two things that would cause me to die of misery if ever the world were converted into stages of them, the little things in life rise up and smite me. I am unduly merciless, as in most cases the fault is only a personal idiosyncrasy, and less annoying, perhaps, than mine to them. But as freedom of speech is herewith allowed, may I hereby swear an eternal hatred of mathematics. No matter what the present status of women, no matter to what extent our brains need exercise, I fail to see any legitimate excuse for our being forced to know that that Binomial Formula for (x + y) is true for every positive integral value of n, or, for that matter, the radically different ways Livy and Cicero used the ablative of attendant circumstance. I hate girls who, when asked to answer if they have read to page 351, blithely chirp, "423." On second thought, I hate people who chirp at all. I hate people who should know better and still say, "can't hardly" and "refer back." I hate purple and Mondays just on general principles. I hate bright fingernail polish on hands that have never been manicured. I hate to go to bed immediately after a dance. I want to tear all over town, and even when I am finally brought home, I prowl around downstairs-anything rather than go to bed. I cannot tolerate Women's Federation of Welfare Union speeches that directly follow a Glen Gray program on the radio. I despise 7 A. M. If you are made to get up then, it's not even light enough to be intelligent; if _ you wake up by accident, it's too late to go back sound to sleep; and if you come in then, it's unthinkably worse than either. To get in bed and watch the sun (the hypocrite! you know it's still nignt !) chiseling in, almost convinces you the last few hours have been a nightmare. I hate Jane Austen, and modern art that shows fat naked women in parks, cocoanut, and some people's incessant, and obviously incurable, passion for earrings. I hate hair that needs combing, but 23
never will be, for fear the curl, artificial at that, will come out. I hate people who solemnly promise they haven't looked at the lesson, and in class are the shining light. I hate slapstick comedies and morons who laugh at them. I hate busybodies who take on themselves affairs that are no one's business. I hate people who call their fraternal relative "bru-u-uther." I hate perfume and candy before breakfast. I hate Tiger Rag played within thirty minutes of the end of a dance. I hate people who, in class, answer rhetorical questions, and take the opportunity of speaking to introduce an entirely new train of thought. I hate vulgarity, crudeness, lack of refinement in general. I hate turnips, parsnips, Dentyne chewing-gum, wintergreen mints, affected sophistication that doesn't fool anyone for an instant, debutantes who don't speak to girls they went to High School with, and eighteen or nineteen--year-old youths with futility complexes. I hate so many things-at this rate I will become everyone else's pet aversion. But I might add that there is no pet aversion equal to writing essays on Sunday nights!
"Love is the Sweetest Thing-" I KNOW what I love in this world, where love is so hard to keep. I love many little things that other people seldom see, and vast ones that can bring forth only silent appreciation. Often I feel that life is too good, and that I have not the _ fullness to accept its offers, but I go along, loving as I go, and give my heart in homage.
My first love above all else is laughter. I have a little creed that I live by: I believe in God, the Father, Love, and Laughter. It is the third essential of life, to me, and I am yet to find the occasion when laughter was not one way of expressing myself. Too exact an explanation would prove me sacriligious, stoical, sarcastic, bitter, and dozens of other probable things which my natural self-defense refuses to admit.
Laughter is far too generally thought of only in connection with humour-to laugh with someone is to laugh about some third party that amuses; to laugh at someone implies ridicule -when laughter, to me, is the only possible vocal expression of appreciation and realization of love and of beauty. Happiness, when looks do not suffice,finds its only medium in soft, thrilling laughter; gay music can be responded to in no way so feelingly as with spontaneous, merry laughter; excitement can be kept on the safe side of the breaking point by genuinely happy laughter. True, there is the laughter of scorn, hysteria, ridicule, self-consciousness,and conceit, but there is the marvelous laughter of loving things, found in a world unknown to anyone but myself and that one person whom I love, and who laughs with me. Together, we laugh with life.
I love woolly dogs, with wise looks on their faces and mischievous tails. I love butterbeans, colored linen handkerchiefs, and sunburn. I'm terribly fond of indifferent men; really I am. They're far more attractive than the ever-attentive kind, and far more faithful, once you can depend on them. Am I imponderable? I love to write letters; on monogrammed stationary in green ink, or on note book paper in pencil, and know that they are going to be read as I write them, gay or disgusted, sincere or ridiculous.
People. Their emotions and actions naturally embody everything I might discuss in detail, but taken as a unit they are a fascinating object of speculation. Being one myself, I could hardly help being interested in them. They are such funny creatures, all acting under the same governance, all composed of the same essential qualities, mental and physical, their difference lying in how much they lose in themselves,and how much they take from others. I like to think I can look in their minds and sense their reactions, to guess their motives, to see through their susceptibility, and to envy their intellect. I like to wonder what they think of life, 25
whether they take it as an opportunity given them by nature to prove what they are worth, or an experience forced on them to prove what fools they are. Really, there are some people who have an unfailing genius for recognizing the right moment to make fools of themselves. I could be called bitter, I suppose, for I do laugh so much at people. They seem to exaggerate everything, when "it is impossible to exaggerate anything except the importance of nothing." I love people; I really should. They're why I'm here.
I love to walk at a good consistant pace for miles and talk, to a very good friend, if there happens to be one convenient, or sometimes preferably, to myself. I love pitchers with impudent snouts, and minute black velvet hats. I love skies and ships and radios in open roadsters. I love dreams and creamy clouds and excitement. I love date pudding, angora sweaters, and roses, large and full, even if they do give me hay fever.
Among my foremost loves, there are the unrivalled pleasures of seeing a play, reading a play, and, most of all, being in one. Here is offered the only experience in life that allows me actually to be someone else, to assume, for an evening, the mind and heart of someone not myself, to exult in the feeling that Page Johnston simply does not exist, and that in her place, someone else is living, and breathing, and feeling. I doubt if there had ever been a little girl, with any room in her heart at all for glamour, who has not longed, if only for a moment, to be an actress. I am no exception, for deep in my heart I know I may die smiling, but never completely satisfied if I have not played, and played well, "Juliet," "Joan of Arc," and "Private Lives."
I feel, instinctively, that to mention a love, a real love for music, I am trespassing on property, where to trespass is sheer brazenness on my part. Musical appreciation, some think, is naturally for those who sing or play themselves. Let them think that, and be wrong. No one knows better than I that I have never sung five consecutive notes on the same key in 26
my life, or that it took me seven months of lessons to get beyond one, two, one, two, one two, three. Seventeen years have taughtme to sing only in the tub, when driving alone, and at football games; but nothing will ever take out of me the feeling that if I can't hear music in my mind, my aspect on life has become dangerously dark. I sing off key, yet I am hearing a four part harmony; I can't play a note, yet in bed at night, I lead the Philadelphia Symphony in "The Nutcracker Suite," and outdo Wayne King on triple sax arrangements for "I Love You Truly." My plea to the world is," Stop up your ears, run for dear life, if I happen to sing, but let me love my music!"
I love dances, with glamorous evening dresses, and rhinestone bracelets, and the lake at college on an autumn day. I love to creep into clean sheets, and stretch out, and ache deliciously. I love the rustling of leaves in the cool summer, white bathing suits, and sailing. I love people who do ridiculous things, and foolishness that demands intelligence. Over one gardenia, I lose all gift of expression, so coolly virginal, yet so exquisitely enticing.
Solitude is a lovely thing, if used to its best advantage. Most people waste it, and do when they are alone things they could do in front of crowds. I save the time that I can be entirely alone, and read aloud, very softly, poems that I love, of Keats, Brooke and Millay, some of Shakespeare, and my favourite dramatic roles. I write nonsense and, curiously enough, my English compositions. I would never dream of writing my most personal letters anywhere but where I am alone, utterly, so I can say them aloud, as I would if he were there. On very still nights, I perch on the window sill, and hug my knees and watch the moon and the stars in a breathless sky; or if the sky is lonely, too, I whisper to it, and think of beautiful things. I run and sit cross-legged in the middle of the bed and say ridiculous speeches to an impossible looking animal, named Plumpy, who quite intelligently agrees 27
with every word I say. I get out my scrap book and think amusing things, that wouldn't amuse other people at all, but they would invariably ask questions if they were there and heard me laugh. I wish there were far more time in the world just to be alone. There are so many occasions when your own is the only company tolerable.
One day, I'm going to have a room all my own, attractive and rather small, but with a huge open fireplace, and countless large, squashy pillows-Rows of bookshelves on one complete side, a radio-victrola at one end, a piano at the other. A sofa of fathomless depth is going to be covered with rich cretonne and stand facing the fireplace, which has windows on either side with deep rose curtains touching the floor. One row of shelves is to be kept exclusively for Harper's Bazaar, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Vogue, The Readers' Digest, Country Life, House Beautiful, and my reigning love,-T he New Yorker. On the other shelves there are going to be gorgeously bound copies of Noelcowardiana, holding the most conspicuous position; Keats, Millay, Brooke, Alice in Wonderland, Dumas, Shakespeare, Hemingway, Barry, an occasional Huxley, and multitudes of plays will leave only enough space to be filled with the best sellers written by my very best friends, for my friends are going to be that kind of people I shall have delightful little teas up here, when it's cold and snowing outside, and confidences will become very precious and often hushed. Somewhere in this room, I'm not quite sure yet, there is going to be an enormous stuffed poopsie-cat.
I love Virginia in October, the sound of rushing water, the radio on Sunday night, and soapsuds. I love blue, Spring, and Leslie Howard, moonlight, and emeralds. It's delightful to discover personality in someone I had given up for hopeless, and to go to Collegian staff meetings. I love white dresses and sunsets, cool milk, and friends. Yes, I know what I love in this world, where love is so hard to keep. I love Life.
l<eview.s.
Collected Poems
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
(Published by the Macmillan
Company, 1933)
The Irish Renaissance has given us few things better than the poetry of William Butler Yeats. In his latest volume of collected works, which contains his 1933 group of poems, we find, along with some forced verses, passages of such fine poetic sensibility as to place him among the great English 1yricists.
Yeats draws his inspiration from the mystic folk-lore of the ancient Celts, who
" ... in old times, before the harps began,
Poured out wine for the high invisible ones." Like them, he feels very acutely the presence of the supernatural. The Ever-living Ones, however, are not merely creatures of inhuman power, but eternal spirits transcending space and time. The aim of every mortal is ·to penetrate through the world of actuality into the spiritual world of the Ever-living. In this, Yeats' philosophy resembles Keats'; yet he goes farther than Keats in his reconciliation between dreams and actuality. Though he is not sure that a man who joins the band of the invisible will not fail of happiness in his loss of mortal satisfaction, he still longs to pass beyond the material world until:
"We grow immortal, And that old harp awakens of itself
To cry aloud to the grey birds, and dreams
That have had dreams for father, live in us."
Yeats is primarily a lyric poet. Even his narrative and dramatic work is lyric in thought and mood, for the myth29
ological characters are simply symbols of parts of the writer's sensibility. This peculiar symbolism of his crystallizes in fine, clear imagery every intensity of emotion.
Often Yeats' verse attains that high degree of spontaneity in which the feeling seems to express itself without effort in magical perfection of phrase. There is pure poetry in the dreamy melancholy of
"We have falling into the dreams the Ever-living Breathe on the burnished mirror of the world, And then smoothe out with ivory hands, and sigh, And find their laughter sweeter to the taste For that brief sighing."
Again, his genius flashesforth like lightening in the sonnet which closes:
"And now we stare astonished at the sea, And a miraculous strange bird shrieks at us."
Through William Butler Yeats the Irish spirit has found its best interpretation in modern times. He has penetrated the mystery of the unseen and brought back the magical days of the old gods.-F.
R. T.
No Second Spring JANET BEITH
(Published by Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1933)
No Second Spring, the first published novel of Janet Beith, began life with the advantage (or handicap) of a $20,000 award. Few novels have sufficient merit to justify such an amount; therefore most reviewers read the book with an eye, not to its intrinsic value, but to whether it is worth $20,000. It seems the task of this reviewer to disregard the award, and since Miss Beith' s earlier novels were destroyed unpublished, to consider No Second Spring solely for its own merit.
Here is a novel poignant in its artistic simplicity. The reader is led to a Victorian parsonage where he finds all the mediocrity and stuffinessof not quite old enough things. On 30
the wall hang the portraits of one Hamish MacGregor and his wife, Allison. In the face of the one are the fire, righteousness, pride, and bigotry of a famous minister and the founder of a great family. In the face of the other is reflected a joy in life not to be expected in one to whom the years meant only constant child-bearing. The latter portrait is unfinished, and both are initialed A. S.-1882. With such a prologue the story begins to unfold.
Through storm and cold the minister, with his wife and three children, travels to a northern parish on a desolate seacoast. There they meet with frozen land, physical discomfort, and spiritual failure. When Allison MacGregor has established a home which the minister feels he has wrested from the world, there comes to them a wandering painter, Andrew Simons, whose wide experience and keen intellect make him a welcome companion of Hamish MacGregor. During Hamish's professional visit to London, Andrew discovers that he loves Allison, and that she cares for him. Allison renounces this love on account of her devotion for her children, and Andrew leaves the home. Hamish returns and with him seems to come a germ which results in the death of the children. An epilogue finds Allison fifteen years later, shaken by a chance sight of Andrew, facing a world as desolate as the stormy passage of the first episode.
Suppression of all irrelevant detail, compression of significant material, and simplicity of expression are qualities of style making this a distinguished first novel. But it is a first novel. The bitterness which marks thoughtful youth in contrast with understanding age destroys not one child but three. Allison with all her sensitivity and truth achieves only fragile peace. Andrew and Hamish are portrayed more with strength than with complexity. And renunciation to the more mature philosopher means beauty and deepening of emotion, not the final loss of all rapture, not forever "No Second Spring."-L.
