10
THE COURIER
ON BEING NATURAL
A TRILBY CONVERSATION.
Written for The Courier.
Young poets are melancholy, but so are old ones for that matter.
The most perfect poem in the English language is an elegy.
TeunyBon's greatcsc poem is a dirge; "The Raven" is a wild despair
ing cry for something lost, never to return again; Dante wrote fear
ful things; Milton has no smiles in all his works; Byron was misan
thropic and morose, and Cowper was gloomy and sad.
Hamlet, the darling of the stage of the worla, was wrapped in a
melancholy as black as death itself.
It is said of the most perfect man the world has ever known "He
was a man of sorrow, and acquainted with grief." It is recorded of
him that ho wept and prayed and sighed, but never that he smiled.
Sorrow is univeral. Joy is but an accident vouchsafed to a few.
It may be the result of temperament, but where does temperament
come from?
If we were the makers of our own temperaments we might then
do as we pleased. But our temperaments are left to us as an heri
tage. If we are so constituted as to sing like the nightingale
instead of the lark, I beleve it is better to sing as the nightingale.
The nightingale would only make a miserable failure as a lark.
The tenderest, the sweetest things of life are dashed with pathos.
Even the cheerful Bongs'sftln poets who wrote on beds of suffer
ing are the most pathetic of Ml. The very thought that they wrote
them in all that suffering and hardship is the reason we like them.
As long as the human heart is constituted as it is the melancholy
and pathetic poems will be read. The cheerful oongs soon die.
They are transient. Few can understand them, but the whole
human race can understand pathos and suffering.
Mind I do not say that this is right, but it is the way of the
world.
William Reed Dunrov.
EPIGRAMMATIC TO THE END.
The flower of aestheticism and promulgator of the epigram has
lately been biting the dust, and punishment for his shocking crimes
seems about to overtake him. But thus far at least this humanized
essence of Jin de Steele frivolity and vice has not shown any pertur
bation. His answers to questions propounded by counsel during
last week's trial read like sentences from "A Woman of No Impor
tance" or "An Ideal Husband." Referring to the publication
'Pftilosopby for the Young' Wilde was asked if he believed what he
had written, he answered, "I rarely write what I believe is true."
The realization of self he said in his testimony is the primal end of
man. Speaking of the man Allen's inability to understand the
purport of the famous letter, Wilde said; "Art is rarely intelligible
to the criminal classes." When asked whether the articles in the
Chameleon were not immoral, he replied, "They were worse, they
were badly written."
"You think that because you once stood next door to a book
store that you are literary. "You are one of them kind of ducks that
reads the book notices and stand around and talk about literature.
That 'grandeur that was Greece' dido of yours only proves you've
read the pictures" said the bass wood boy, "and I'm
willing to bet you didn't know any more about the
French than my friend, the headless lady. During the
German opera you'll be saying 'sprechen sie deutsch' to the coons
that pass, and talk wise about Seigfried and the bird, when you
don't really know whether Seigfried is the leading lady or a rival of
Sapolio. You talk about 'Trilby!' Why, if I were to insist you'd
believe he was a woman.".
"Hey," said the dude cigar sign across the street to the tough boy
in bass wood, with a patch over his eye and striped green trousers,
who stood in front of a saloon next to the papier mache group.
"Hey," said the faded dude with the long sheet-iron legs, "What
are the old parties jabbering about?"'
"About Trilby," responded the bass wood youth.
"What? the new corn cure? Has the old 'uns got corns?'
"Naw, you glittering idiot. Trilby's a girl in a story. If you'd
listen more to the barbers that buy cigarettes over there, you'd be
more in the literary push. Everybody's went up against Trilby.
The bar-keep, he's played her a whirl. The cop, he made a killin
there, and the lady who brings the pitcher over for suds in the
evening, she went against it, but I heard her tell the barkeep that
she lose. She said there was too jnuch oogley googgley hog latin
for her to keep the straight of what was the game and who was
bein' tagged."
The old dummies were still talking, but the pretty boy at the
cigar store paid no attention to ihem. Se was interested in the
story. After some persuasion ho got the bass wood young man to
tell more about it.
"Well, you see it was this way," began the young man with the
bass wood patch over his eye: "As far as I can make out this
Trilby she was a living picture, or something in that line, with a
pair of pegs so fine that they looked like an 'after taking advertise
ment. Well, she gets a artist on her string they calls 'Billy the Kid'
or something, and she was working him fine for beer an' car fare an'
fireman's annual balls an' theatres, when all of a sudden Bill he
come on to her playing in the living pictures. They had to put
side blinds on him for a week or two before they could get him to
drive, either single or double. But after awhile Trilby sh etamed
him so he come right up and eat out of her hand, and then along
comes a fellow that the barkeep calls Swengally, and he makes a
few passes at the lady card and he has her up his sleeve before uilly
the Kid knew whose deal it was. This Swengally fellow, he had a
plugger named O! I disremember what but the two of 'em they
got that solid with Trilby that they taught her to sing like a steam
piano. Then they started a troupe, or a comedy company, or some
thing, and went on the road. Swengally, he was perfesser, the
plugger played the fiddle and the lady with the pretty pegs
she does a song and dance turn or something, This old Swengally
he was old bizniss with Trilby, and when he hollered it was law.
He was the button and she done the rest. He got her' so she was
great people; seemed like all he had to do to start her off was to set
the think wheels in his head going and away she went, and when he
wanted her to stop he just cut off the current."
"She must have been hit pretty hard, I don't think," said the
tin legs.
"Hit nothing," replied the bass wood boy,"just scared up, that's
all. He beat her regular, you know, and she loved him. Nothing
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