10
THE COURIER
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certain it was both dry and good. Perhaps it was he that invented
the Green Damnation. If bo, ho Bhould be what Madame Vault
oasy calls the 'High Priest of the Cult.'"
"I rather suspect,' said Lord Weggie, "that our cosmopolitan
governor, Adam, should have that honor, for undoubtedly the apple
which caused so much trouble, when he ate it, was the great primal
Green Damnation."
"Weggie," exclaimed Mr. Absinthe, with much emotion, "I fear
you are right. If so. I would foreswear the Green Damnation for
ever, I despise Adam. He had the greatest opportunity of any man
for being epigrammatic. Nothing had been said before Yet he
seems to have said nothing. Ho did not even write a book."
'No," said Mrs. Balmoral, "but ho did not have a dictionary."
"There, now," exclaimed Madame Vaulteasy, "that has suggested
the name Webster. He was wonderful and so original. So few
great men who write stop and explain as they go along in the way
he does. And then he was so epigrammatic. I believe everything
ho wrote had a meaning, even his words of one syllable."
"Ah," Bighod Lord Weggie, "one can never hope to equal WebBter.
But then he lived bo long ago. If George Meredith would write a
dictionary he might find readers. He is a sad case. His syntax and
prosody, they Bay, are seriously affected. What wouid you pres
cribe, Frappe, for such a case?"
A grain of common sense; or, if that proved too powerful, a
gramme; or, to commence with, an epigram. Play us something
soothing, we are getting excited. Let it dream itself away in half
tones, in gray minor chords, and brown transitions."
"I will give you a fugue of Bach's."
"Fugues are too much like rounds they make one giddy."
"No good," faultered Lord Weggie, passing his fair, shapely hand
over his weary white face. "I cannot play tonight. The intense
black and white of the keys offend me. Yet I will try, if you will go
away. Music should be heard at a distance the farther off the
better. If one is quite out of hearing, more is left to the imagina
tion." "How far do you wish us to go?" asked Mrs. Balmoral. "The
fartherest ppot from ub would, I Buppose, be heaven."
"I don't think we should be happy there," said Madame Vault
easy, with a dry laugh. "Eternity is too long to be epigrammatic.
How do you thick you would like it, Mr. Absinthe?"
"I expect wo shall bo used to their ways by the time we are ready
to start, for we are adopting their fashions already. There is no
marriage there, you know. Divorce is regenerating the world.
That is a comforting thought. The shock will be less when we are
translated."
"You are not translatable, Frappe," remarked Lord Weggie.
"True genius seldom is," replied Mr. Absinthe. "But death is an
unpleasant subject, even in a farce comedy."
"Do you not think it interesting?" inquired Mrs. Balmoral.
"Far from it. I know many writers that are very dead, and no
one thinks them interesting. Rider Haggard is one of them, in my
opinion. Death suggests disease. Does it not strike you as absurd
that a recently-contracted disease is vulgar, but that one which has
been in the family for generations as a concomitant of wealth is to
be borne with pride and arrogance of spirit?"
"Wealth makes vice even virtuous. Do you not think so, Lord
Weggie?" remarked Madame Vaulteasy.
"I know so little about it," he replied. "I live at present on my
debts."
"Do you over expect to be able to pay them?"
"Oh yes. Where there's a will in one's favor there's always a way."
I never expect to be wealthy," remarked Mr. Absinth. I have
genius, and genius is not current coin. The rate of exchange is high.
I am too liberal. Meanness accumulates riches. Wealth should
only be inherited. A self-made man is the meanest of God's crea-
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tions. I dislike the middle-class. Middle-class men "have middle
class ideas. They are a miserable lot, for thoy respect the law and
take life literally. Happiness knows no law and the law knows no
happiness nor allows any. The middle-class man Knows nothing
unknown to his forefathers. What he says is what the world says.
If anyone can bring himself to say what he thinks he is a genius.
"Frappe," said Lord Weggie, as the two friends strolled toward
their club, "I shall certainly write a novel. I will set down what we
have said this evening. It will be greater than the greatest modern
work, although strictly on the latest lines."
"Are you not afraid." remarked Mr. Absinthe, "that there would
be too much plot in it?"
"There may be too much action in our waliiiug to Mrs. Balmoral's
and back, but we might strike that out."
"But that would destroy the conversation."
"It might improve the novel."
"What you said about Adam," remarked Mr. Absinthe, "is true. It
is exquisitely painful to me to admit the truth of that which I know
you mean as a jest. But the thought makes the Green Damnation
vulgar. Wo will swear to have done with it from tonight."
"But, Frappe!" exclaimed Lord Weggie in horriffied accents, "we
have done away with the Lily, the Sunflower and the Green Carna
tion. If you deprive us of the Green Damnation, what is left?"
"The Epigram-"
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