es who seek spiritual advice, and one
has called to ask his help against phantoms who have the appearance of
decayed corpses, and try to get into bed with her at night. He has driven
her away with one furious sentence, "Very bad taste on both sides."

* * * * *

I am sitting in a Cafe with two French Americans, one in the morning,
while we are talking wildly, and some are dancing, there is a tap at the
shuttered window; we open it and three ladies enter, the wife of a man of
letters, who thought to find no one but a confederate, and her husband's
two young sisters whom she has brought secretly to some disreputable
dance. She is very confused at seeing us, but as she looks from one to
another understands that we have taken some drug and laughs; caught in our
dream we know vaguely that she is scandalous according to our code and to
all codes, but smile at her benevolently and laugh.

* * * * *

I am at Stuart Merrill's, and I meet there a young Jewish Persian scholar.
He has a large gold ring, seemingly very rough, made by some amateur, and
he shows me that it has shaped itself to his finger, and says, "That is
because it contains no alloy--it is alchemical gold." I ask who made the
gold, and he says a certain Rabbi, and begins to talk of the Rabbi's
miracles. We do not question him--perhaps it is true--perhaps he has
imagined at all--we are inclined to accept every historical belief once
more.

* * * * *

I am sitting in a Cafe with two French Americans, a German poet
Douchenday, and a silent man whom I discover to be Strindberg, and who is
looking for the Philosopher's Stone. The French American reads out a
manifesto he is about to issue to the Latin Quarter; it proposes to
establish a communistic colony of artists in Virginia, and there is a
footnote to explain why he selects Virginia, "Art has never flourished
twice in the same place. Art has never flourished in Virginia."

Douchenday, who has some reputation as a poet, explains that his poems are
without verbs, as the verb is the root of all evil in the world. He wishes
for an art where all things are immoveable, as though the clouds should be
made of marble. I turn over the page of one of his books which he shows
me, and find there a poem in dramatic form, but when I ask if he hopes to
have it played he says:--"It could only be played by actors before a black
marble w