bosom bleed. This maid, this weaker vessel, has movements
swift and free, and she can run and wrestle, and she can climb a tree.
And it she shows a yearning to emulate the whites, our good old customs
spurning, pursuing vain delights, O idol stern and oaken, take thou thy
sceptre dread, and may the same be broken upon her silly head."

"This bridegroom," said the maiden, "untutored is and rude, but still
he is not laden with habits vain and lewd. I hope to see him trundle
each evening to his kraal, and not blow in his bundle for long cold
pints of ale. With my consent he'll never get next the slot machine,
or use his best endeavor to burn up gasoline. No tailor hath arrayed
him, no valet hath defaced! He stands as Nature made him,
broad-chested, slim of waist! And he can swim the Niger, or rob a
lion's lair, or whip a full-grown tiger at Reno or elsewhere! And if
he would abandon our simple heathen ways, and learn to place his hand
on some foolish white men's craze, O idol, in your dudgeon, obey his
bride's behest! Take up your big spiked bludgeon, and swat him
galley-west!"

THEORY AND PRACTICE

In public I talk of Milton and give him ecstatic praise, and say that I
love to ponder for hours o'er his living lays; I speak of his noble
epic, that jewel which proudly shines, and quote from his splendid
sonnets (I know maybe twenty lines); but when I am home John Milton is
left on the bookcase shelf; he's rather too dull for reading--you know
how it is yourself; to lighten the weight of sorrow that over my spirit
hangs, I dig up the works of Irwin or Nesbit or Kendrick Bangs.

I talk much of Thomas Hardy when I'm with the cultured crowd, and say
that few modern writers so richly have been endowed; I speak of his
subtle treatment of life and its grim distress, and quote from "The
Trumpet Major" or spiel a few lines from "Tess." But when I am in my
chamber, where no one can see me read, remote from the highbrow people
and all that the highbrows need, I never have known a longing to reach
for the Hardy tomes; I put in a joyous evening with Watson and Sherlock
Holmes.

I talk a good deal of Wagner in parlor and drawing room, and speak of
the gorgeous fabrics he wove on his wondrous loom, the fabrics of sound
and beauty, the wonderful scroll of tone, and say that this mighty
genius remains in a class alone. I whistle "The Pilgrims' Chorus," and
chortle of "Lohengrin," and say that all other music is merely