desisted
only at the scowl of an usher--an object in a celluloid collar and
a claw-hammer coat. My solitary ovation to Master Delorme was an
involuntary and, I think, pardonable protest against the male costume of
our own time.

ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION

EXCEPTING on the ground that youth is the age of vain fantasy, there is
no accounting for the fact that young men and young women of poetical
temperament should so frequently assume to look upon an early demise
for themselves as the most desirable thing in the world. Though one may
incidentally be tempted to agree with them in the abstract, one cannot
help wondering. That persons who are exceptionally fortunate in their
environment, and in private do not pretend to be otherwise, should
openly announce their intention of retiring at once into the family
tomb, is a problem not easily solved. The public has so long listened
to these funereal solos that if a few of the poets thus impatient to
be gone were to go, their departure would perhaps be attended by that
resigned speeding which the proverb invokes on behalf of the parting
guest.

The existence of at least one magazine editor would, I know, have a
shadow lifted from it. At this writing, in a small mortuary basket under
his desk are seven or eight poems of so gloomy a nature that he would
not be able to remain in the same room with them if he did not suspect
the integrity of their pessimism. The ring of a false coin is not more
recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a simulated sorrow.

The Miss Gladys who sends a poem entitled "Forsaken," in which she
addresses death as her only friend, makes pictures in the editor's eyes.
He sees, among other dissolving views, a little hoyden in magnificent
spirits, perhaps one of this season's social buds, with half a score of
lovers ready to pluck her from the family stem--a rose whose countless
petals are coupons. A caramel has disagreed with her, or she would not
have written in this despondent vein. The young man who seeks to inform
the world in eleven anaemic stanzas of _terze rime_ that the cup of
happiness has been forever dashed from his lip (he appears to have but
one) and darkly intimates that the end is "nigh" (rhyming affably with
"sigh"), will probably be engaged a quarter of a century from now in
making similar declarations. He is simply echoing some dysthymic poet of
the past--reaching out with some other man's hat for the stray nickel of
your symp