Sylvia that, so she would go; don't you understand? It was the gardener's horse, that black one with the wrinkled legs. Now, Hugh, I am very glad that the thing has been brought to a crisis; I am going to marry you, you will have to support me and therefore you will have to paint. And, Hugh, I think that since you have caused me so much trouble you ought to let me have a church wedding. HUGH (falling back on the couch): Heavens! I can see myself-standing-knee-deep in orchids! David Hamilton. AT TWENTY. Ah, love, come out with me Behind yon thorn A leprecaun's asleep; Soon with the dawn Awaked, he'll stretch, and leap, and sing, Where he has hid the heart of Spring. Come, let us follow quick! Before he flees And we have lost his form Among the trees That stand so green and golden in the light. For you to dance by-then at noon we'll sit Where some slow-purling stream, half hid from sight Among the lush grass, widens to a pool, So deep and cool, And over all the hum Of honey-laden bees. Ah, come, love, come! Beneath a silver moon, A heap of grey, Our dying fire lies. I heard one say, A lonely shepherd on the hills he was, That 'tis a fairy house and that those bright, Perchance the leprecaun's A-dwelling here And takes his ease, and warms His fingers where The smoke's up-wreathing from his chimney-place. Ere this dream, too, is dead. H. Phelps Putnam. IN CONCERNING DEVILS-GENERAL AND PARTICULAR. the old-fashioned print shop in the days when the trade was orthodox, the Devil had a truly poetic character. But now, civilization and heresy have so invaded our world that most devils have either taken a White mask or been happily rarified into the social conscience. No wonder, though His Majesty of the type and shooting-stick should succumb to the Mechanical Reformation, become spritelike and exist no longer in the Art, save as a wraith in a white apron, I have always had a sincere affection for the Devil: theology without him is like a novel, sans villain; Heaven must needs have black, as a setting for bliss! To begin with an axiom. Gutenberg was a gentleman, and the practice of multiplying bibles from types started life as an Art. Stuck close to the skirts of the Arts, too, and trotted happily down through the centuries till it broke its head against the Nineteenth. Then it became a trade. Now, any man of that century or this one who is brainy and impatient and practical will have the reason in the van of his small talk. Pick out a clean-lipped American who takes time-tables for light reading and politics for recreation, especially if he have affiliations with a Times or a Globe. He will say: Organized labor has done it; and so has the linotype and the auto-feed sextuple at this point you will walk toward the elevator. But I will tell you the real reason why printing has slipped from Art to trade-in four words, without your leaving the armchair:-The Devil has departed! But he isn't dead. He lingers still in certain very remote New England hamlets; chosen spots of typographical rusticity, where the Editor-Printer is still a scholar, and a man of good report. I know a doctor who has a fearful mania for oldfashioned clocks; has been into every old roof tree in northern New Hampshire seeking them out. He has got into such a condition now that he can descry by the build of the chimney and the character of the well-sweep if there is a time-piece within worth his while. I was going to add, ascertain if it were made back of 1750, and if it had two cuckoos painted on the face, but Science is making the age incredulous. Some men will walk over half a continent looking for citradilla bombilla-and so I am merely in accord with the rest. My complaint is devil-mania, I suppose. For being a rare and fast dying species, the devils are to be found in distant districts and protected places. A word historically before I tell of my Stygian discoveries. Firstly, there are no printed records that yield anything but fragmentary superstitions about Gutenberg's devils, and I am not idle enough to weave a Teutonic comment from old manuscripts, and the discarded type fonts of the patriarchs. It is better to begin where history speaks distinctly. Take Benjamin F., for example, who was a devil before he became a patriot. According to Poor Richard's own word, when the journeymen printers or the pressmen, or brother John himself felt indisposed the office atmosphere hinted the old formula: Let the Devil do it! Which was as comprehensive as Hell itself. Most devils are not more than fourteen years of age. If they outlive that, like elderly chimney-sweeps, they lose their demon charm and become merely ugly young men. The one I am thinking of has hair the color of ink, with which it is mixed most of the time, and the whitest of teeth that grin mischief at you whenever they dare from the top of a font cabinet or between the rollers of the printing press; the hair always stands up wildly, showing the child is a devil and not a negro, and the body is sinuous and slender and ever on the wriggle; either hugging a black molasses roller, or performing some nether-world function amid the cams and troughs of the press. You never see one at rest: they either run or leap, or writhe or crawl. The reason they do this is simple: They have such a preposterous lot to do, in no time at all. Here I must beg all journeymen's pardon for digression. A short exegesis on ink is imperative if the layman is to follow the devil into his functions with any subtlety. Picture Carter's |