r many it is tragic to be young and beautiful and a
woman. Luckily, they do not know it, and they never will. But in
courage, and curiosity, and loveliness, how they put us all to
shame. I see them, flashing by in a subway train, golden sphinxes,
whose riddles (as Mr. Cabell said of Woman) are not worth solving.
Yet they are all the more appealing for that fact. For surely to be
a riddle which is not worth solving, and still is cherished as a
riddle, is the greatest mystery of all. What strange journeys lie
before them, and how triumphantly they walk the precipices as though
they were mere meadow paths.

My eyes were touched with Truth, and I saw them as they are,
beautiful and brave. And sometimes I think that even Time must be
sated with loveliness; that he will not crumble them or mar their
gallant childishness; that he will leave them, their bright dresses
fluttering, as I have seem them in the subway many a summer day.

[Illustration]

DEMPSEY vs. CARPENTIER

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong; but as
Frank Adams once remarked, the betting is best that way. The event
at Boyle's Thirty Acres in Jersey City was the conclusive triumph of
Reality over Romance, of Prose over Poetry. To almost all the
newspaper-reading world--except the canny fellows who study these
matters with care and knowledge--Carpentier had taken on something
of the lustre and divinity of myth. He was the white Greek god, he
was Mercury and Apollo. The dope was against him; but there were
many who felt, obscurely, that in some pregnant way a miracle would
happen. His limbs were ivory, his eyes were fire; surely the gods
would intervene! Perhaps they would have but for the definite
pronouncement of the mystagogue G.B. Shaw. Even the gods could not
resist the chance of catching Shaw off his base.

We are not a turncoat; we had hoped that Carpentier would win. It
would have been pleasant if he had, quite like a fairy tale. But we
must tell things as we see them. Dempsey, in a very difficult
situation, bore himself as a champion, and (more than that) as a man
of spirit puzzled and angered by the feeling that has been rumoured
against him. Carpentier entered the ring smiling, perfectly at ease;
but there was that same sunken, wistful, faintly weary look about
his eyes that struck us when we first saw him, at Manhasset, three
weeks ago. It was the look of a man who has had more put upon him
than he can rightly