 This is a LibreVox recording. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. On Something by Hilaer Bellach Of the various sketches in this book some appear for the first time. Others are reprinted by courtesy of the proprietors and editors of the Westminster Gazette, the Clarion, the English Review, the Morning Post, and the Manchester Guardian, in which papers they appeared. CHAPTER I A PLEA for the Simpler Drama It is with the drama as with plastic art and many other things. The plain man feels that he has a right to put in his word. But he is rather afraid that the art is beyond him and he is frightened by technicalities. After all these things are made for the plain man, and his applause in the long run and duly tested by time is the main reward of the dramatist as of the painter or the sculptor. But if he is sensible he knows that his immediate judgment will be crude. However, here goes. The plain man sees that the drama of his time has gradually passed from one phase to another of complexity and thought, coupled with simplicity of incident, and it occurs to him that just one further step is needed to make something final in British art. We seem to be just on the threshold of something which would give Englishmen in the 20th century. Something of the fullness that characterised the Elizabethans. But somehow or other our dramatists hesitate to cross that threshold. It cannot be that their powers are lacking. It can only be some timidity or self-torture which is the business of the plain man to exercise. If I may make a suggestion in this essay to the masters of the craft, it is that the goal of the completely modern thing can best be reached by taking the very simplest themes of daily life, things within the experience of the ordinary citizen, and presenting them in the majestic traditional cadence of that peculiarly English medium, blank verse. As to the themes taken from the everyday life of middle-class men and women like ourselves, it is true that the lives of the wealthy afford more incident, and that there is a sort of glamour about them which is difficult to resist. But with a sufficient subtlety the whole poignancy of the lives led by those who suffer neither the tragedies of the poor nor the exultation of the rich can be exactly etched. The life of the professional middle-class, of the businessman, the dentist, the moneylender, the publisher, the spiritual pastor, nay of the playwright himself, might be put upon the stage, and what a vital change would be here. Here would be a kind of literary drama of which the interest would lie in the struggle, the pain, the danger, and the triumph, which we all so intimately know. And next in the satisfaction, which we now do not have, of the mimic sense, the satisfaction of seeing a mirror held up to a whole audience composed of the very class represented on the stage. I have seen men of wealth and position absorbed in place concerning gambling, cruelty, cheating, drunkenness, and other sports, and so absorbed chiefly because they saw themselves depicted upon the stage. And I ask, would not my fellows and myself largely remunerate a similar opportunity? For though the rich go repeatedly to the play, yet the middle class are so much more numerous that the difference is amply compensated. I think we may take it then that an experiment in the depicting of a professional life would even from the financial standpoint be workable, and I would even go so far as to suggest that a play could be written in which there did not appear one single lord, general, member of parliament, baronet, professional beauty, usurer upon a large scale at least, or cabinet minister. The thing is possible, and I can modestly say that in the little effort appended, as an example to these lines, it has been done successfully. But here must be mentioned the second point in my thesis. I could never have achieved what I have here achieved in dramatic art had I not harked back to the great tradition of the English heroic decosillable, such as our Shakespeare has handled with so felicitous in effect. The play, which I have called The Crisis, and which I designed to be the model of the school founded by these present advices, is specially designed for acting with the sumptuous accessories at the disposal of a great manager, such as Mr. now Sir Henry, Beerbaum Tree, or for the narrower circumstances of the suburban drawing-room. There is perhaps one character which needs any long rehearsal, that of the dog Fido, and luckily this is one which can easily be supplied by mechanical means, as by the use of a toy dog of sufficient size which barks upon the pressure of a pneumatic attachment. In connection with this character, I would have the student know that I have introduced into the dog's part, just before the curtain, a whole line of dactyls. I hope the hint will not be wasted. Such exceptions relieve the monotony of our English trochies. But saving in this instance, I have confined myself throughout to the example of William Shakespeare. Surely the best master, for those who, as I fondly hope, will follow me in the regeneration of the British stage. The Crisis Place the Study at the Vicarage, time 9.15 p.m. Dramatist Persona The Reverend Archibald Heverton, the vicar Mrs. Heverton, his wife Miss Grossvenner, a governess Matilda, a maid Fido, a dog Hermione Colby, daughter of a cottager who takes in washing Miss Harvey, a guest cousin to Mrs. Heverton, a unitarian The Reverend Archibald Heverton is reading the Standard by a lamp with a green shave Mrs. Heverton is hemming a towel Fido is asleep on the rug On the walls are three engravings from Lanseer, a portrait of her late Majesty Queen Victoria, a bookcase with books in it, and a looking glass. Mrs. Heverton, my dear, I hope I do not interrupt you. Helen has given notice. Reverend A. Heverton, looking up suddenly, noticed, who, Helen, given notice, bless my soul, a pause. I never thought that she would give us notice, ponders and frowns. Mrs. Heverton Well, but she has, and now the question is, what shall we do to find another cook? Servants are very difficult to get, size, especially to come into the country to such a place as this, size. No wonder, either, O mercy, when one comes to think of it, one cannot blame them, size. One only knows, I try to do my duty, size profoundly. Reverend A. Heverton, uneasily, well, my dear, I cannot make preferment. Front doorbell rings. Fido, wow, wow, wow. Reverend A. Heverton, patting him to soothe him. There, Fido, there, Fido, wow, wow. Reverend A. Heverton, good dog there, Fido, wow, wow, wow. Reverend A. Heverton, very nervous, there, Fido, wow, wow. Reverend A. Heverton, in an agony, good dog, Fido, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Mrs. Heverton, very excited, oh lord, he'll wake the children. Reverend A. Heverton, exploding. How often have I told you, Dorothy, not to exclaim good lord, apart from manners which have their own importance, blasphemy? And I regard the phrase as blasphemous. Cannot, Mrs. Heverton, uneasily, oh very well, oh very well, exploding in her turn, upon my soul you are intolerable. She jumps up and makes for the door, before she gets to it that there is a knock, and Matilda enters. Matilda, please, ma'am, it's only Mrs. Colby's daughter to say the washing shall be sent tomorrow, and would you check the list again to see, because she thinks she never had two collars of what you sent, but only five, because you marked it seven, and Mrs. Colby says there must be some mistake. Reverend A. Heverton pompously, I will attend to it. Mrs. Heverton, whispering angrily. How can you archibald? You haven't got the ghost of an idea about the washing. Sit down. He does so, to Matilda. Send the girl in here. Mrs. Heverton sits down in a fume. Reverend A. Heverton, I think. Mrs. Heverton snapping. I don't care what you think, groans. Oh dear, I'm nearly off my head. Enter Miss Colby, she bobs. Good evening, ma'am. Mrs. Heverton, by way of reply. Now then, what's all this fuss about the washing? Mrs. Colby. Please, ma'am, the seven collars what you sent, I meant the seven what was marked was wrong, and Mother says you'd have had the washing, only there weren't put five, and would you mind? Mrs. Heverton sharply. I cannot understand a word you say. Go back and tell your mother there were seven. If she sends home five, she pays for two. So there, snorts. Miss Colby sobbing. I'm sure I. Miss Heverton savagely. Don't stand snuffling there. Go back and tell your mother what I say, impudent hussy. Exit Miss Colby sobbing, a pause. Reverend A. Heverton with assumed authority. To return to Helen, tell me concisely and without complaints. Why did she give you notice? A hand bell rings in the passage. Fido. Wow, wow, wow. Reverend A. Heverton giving him a smart kick. Shoo. Fido howling. Peeing, peeing. Reverend A. Heverton controlling himself as well as he can goes to the door and calls to the passage. Miss Grossvanner, louder. Miss Grossvanner, was that bell for prayers? Was that the bell for prayers? Louder. Miss Grossvanner, Miss Grossvanner. Tapping with his foot. Oh, Miss Grossvanner, sweetly and far off. Is that Mr. Heverton? Reverend A. Heverton. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Was that the bell for prayers? Miss Grossvanner again. Yes, that is Mr. Heverton. Oh yes, I think it is. I'll see, I'll ask Matilda. A pause during which the Reverend A. Heverton is in a qualm. Miss Grossvanner rustling back. Matilda says it is the bell for prayers. They all come filing into the study and arranging the chairs. As they enter, Miss Harvey, the guest, treads heavily on Matilda's foot. Miss Harvey. Matilda, was that you? I beg your pardon. Matilda, limping. Granted, I'm sure, Miss. Mrs. Heverton, whispering to the Reverend A. Heverton. Do not read the creed. Miss Harvey is a Unitarian. I suggest some simple form of prayer, some heartfelt word of charity and peace, common to every Christian. Reverend A. Heverton in a deep voice. Let us pray. Curtain, end of chapter one. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Unsumpting by Hilaire Belach. Chapter two on a notebook. A dear friend of mine, John Abdullah Capricorn, to give him his full name, was commandeered by a publisher last year to write a book for ten pounds. The work was far advanced, when an editor offered him fifteen pound, and his expenses to visit the more desperate parts of the Sahara Desert, to which spots he at once proceeded upon a roving commission. Whether he will return or no is now doubtful, though in March we had the best hopes. With the month of May, life becomes hard for Europeans south of the Atlas, and when my poor dear friend was last heard of, he was chancing his popularity with the tribe of Turgs, about two hundred miles south of Toghurt. Under these circumstances, I was asked to look through his notebooks and see what could be done. And I confessed to a pleased surprise. It would have been a very entertaining book had it been published. It will be a very entertaining book if it is published. Capricorn seems to have prepared a hodge-podge of information of human follies, of contrasts, and of blunt stupidities, of which he intended to make a very entertaining series of pages. I have not his talent for bringing such things together, but it may amuse the reader if I merely put in their order one or two of the notes which most struck me. I find first cut out of a newspaper and paste it into the book. Many of his notes are in this form. The following really jovial paragraph. Archdeacon Blunderbuss Blunderbuss is not the real name. I suppress that lest Capricorn's widow should lose her two or three pounds, in case the poor fellow has really been eaten. Archdeacon Blunderbuss was more distinguished as a scholar than as a divine. He was a very poor preacher and never managed to identify himself with any party. Nevertheless, in 1895 the prime minister appointed him to a stall in Shorham Cathedral as a recognition of his great learning and good work at Durham. Two years later, the rectory of St. Fankhums becoming vacant and it being within the gift of the Archdeacon Blunderbuss, he excited general amazement and much scandal by presenting himself to the living. There the paragraph ends. It came in an ordinary society paper. It bore no marks of ill will. It came in the midst of a column of the usual silly adulation of everybody and everything. How it got there is of no importance. There it stood. And the keen eye of Capricorn noted it and treasured it for years. I'll make no comment upon this paragraph. It may be read slowly or quickly according to the tastes of the reader. It is equally delicious either way. The next excerpt I find in the notebook says as follows. More than 15 million visits are paid annually to London pawnbrokers. Jupiter is 1387 times as big as the Earth, but only 300 times as heavy. The world's coal mines yield 400 million tons of coal a year. The value of the pictures in the National Gallery is about 1,250,000 pounds. This tickled Capricorn, I don't know why. Perhaps he thought the style disjointed, or perhaps he had got it into his head that when this information had been absorbed by the vulgar, they would stand much where they stood before and be no nearer the end of man nor the accomplishment of any divine purpose in their creation. Anyhow he kept it and I think he was wise to keep it. One cannot keep everything of that kind that is printed so it is well to keep a specimen. Capricorn had moreover intended to perpetuate that specimen forever in his immortal prose. Pray heaven he may return to do so. I next find the following excerpt from an evening paper. No more gallant gentleman lives on the broad acres of his native England than Brigadier General Sir Hammerthruss Honeybubble, who is one of the few survivors of the great charge at Tamilpukko. A feat of arms, now half forgotten, but with which England rang during the Brazilian war. Brigadier General, or as he then was, playing Captain Hammerthruss Honeybubble, passed through five Brazilian batteries unharmed and came back so terribly hacked that his head was almost severed from his body. Hardly able to keep his seat and continually wiping the blood from his left eye, he rode back to troop at a walk and in spite of pursuit, finally completed his escape. Sir Hammerthruss, we are glad to learn, is still Hale and Hardy in his 93rd year, and we hope he may see many more returns of the day upon his patrimonial estate in the Orgneys. To this excerpt, I find only one marginal note in Capricorn's delicate and beautiful handwriting. What day? But whether this referred to some appointment of his own, I was unable to discover. I next find a certain number of cuttings, which I think cannot have been intended for the book at all, but must have been designed for poor Capricorn's Oxford anthology of bad verse, which just before he left England he was in the process of preparing for the university press. Capricorn had a very fine sense of bad taste in verse, and the authorities could have chosen no one better suited for the duty of editing such a volume. I must not give the reader too much of these lines, but the following quatrain deserves recognition and permanent memory. Napoleon hoped that all the world would fall beneath his sway. He failed in this ambition, and where is he today? Neither the nations of the East nor the nations of the West have thought the thing Napoleon thought was to their interest. That's what it says. This is enormous as philosophy, as history, as rhetoric, as meter, as rhythm, as politics. It is positively enormous. The whole poem is a wonderful poem, and I wish I had space for it here. It is patriotic, and it is written about as badly as a poem could conceivably be written. It is a mournful pleasure to think that my dear friend had his last days in the old country illuminated by such a treasure. It is but one of many, and I think it is the best. Another extract which catches my eye is drawn from the works of one in a distant and far unlined. Yet it was worth preserving. This personage, Tindersturm by name, issued a pamphlet which fell under the regulations, the very strict regulations of the Prussian government, by which any one of its subjects who says or prints anything calculated to stir up religious or racial strife within the state is subject to severe penalties. Now those severe penalties had fallen upon Tindersturm, and he had been imprisoned for some years. According to the paragraph that followed, the extract I am about to give. That the aforesaid Tindersturm did indeed tend to stir up religious and racial strife, nay, went somewhat out of his way to do it, will be clear enough when you read the following lines from his little broadsheet. It is time for us to go for this cat-ish alien sect. If on your way home from the theatre you meet the blue-eyed, toe-haired, lolliping gang, whether they be youths or ladies, go right up to them and give them a smart smack, left and right, a blow in the eye, and lift your foot and give the toe-headed ones a kick. In this way must we begin the business. My fatherland, wake up. To this extract poor Capricorn has added the word excellent, and the same comment he makes upon the following conclusion, to a letter written to a religious paper and dealing with some politician or other who had done something which the correspondent did not like. That his eyes may be opened while he lives is the prayer of yours truly, an earnest member of the fold. From such a series it was a recreation to turn to the little social paragraphs which gave Capricorn such acute and continual joy, as for instance this. Mrs. Harry Bacon wishes it to be known that she has ceased to have any connection whatsoever with the Boudoir Four Lost Dogs. Her address is still Hermione House, Burton on the Water, Fenton Marsh, Worcester. There's much more in the note with which I could while away the reader's time did space permit of it. I find among the very latest entries for instance this. It was a strenuous and thrilling contest. Some terrible blows were exchanged. In the last round however Schmidt landed his opponent a very nasty one under the chin, stretching him out lifeless and breaking his elbow, whereupon the prize was awarded him. To this joyous gem Capricorn has added a whole poison of annotations. He asked at the end which was him important, and he underlines in red ink the word however, perhaps as mysterious a copulative as has ever appeared in British prose. I should add that Capricorn himself was an ardent sportsman and very rarely missed any of the first class events of the Ring, though personally he did not box, and on the few occasions when I have seen the exercise forced upon him in the public streets he showed the greatest distaste to this form of athletics. Lastly I find this note with which I must close. It is taken from the vervetum report of a great case in the courts, now half forgotten, but ten years ago the talk of London. The witness then said that he had been promised an independence for life if he could discover the defendant in the act of enclosing any part of the land or any document or order of his involving such an enclosure. He therefore watched the defendant regularly from June 1896 to the middle of July 1900. He also watched the defendant's father and mother, three boys, married daughter, grandmother, and a grandfather, his two married sisters, his brother, his agent, and his agent's wife, but he had discovered nothing. That such a sentence should have been printed in the English language and delivered by an English mouth in an English witness box was enough for Capricorn. Give him that alone for intellectual food in his desert lodge, and he was happy. Shall I tempt Providence by any further extracts? It's difficult to tear oneself away from such a feast. So let me put in this very last, really the last, by way of savory. There is in black and white, and no one can undo it, not all her piety nor all her wit. It dates from the year 1904 when Heaven knows the internal combustion engine and its possibilities were not exactly new, and I give it word for word. The Duchess is more over a pioneer in the use of the motor-car. She finds it in agreeable and speedy means of conveyance from her county seat to her townhouse, and also a very practical way of getting to see her friends at weekends. She has been heard to complain, however, that a substitute for the pneumatic tire, less liable to puncture than it is, would be a priceless boon. There, there, may they all rest in peace. They have added to the gaiety of mankind. You'll often hear it said that it is astonishing such and such work should be present and enduring in the world, and yet the name of its author not known. But when one considers the variety of good work and the circumstances under which it is achieved, and the variety of taste also between different times and places, one begins to understand what is it first so astonishing. There are writers who have ascribed this frequent ignorance of ours to all sorts of heroic moods to the self-sacrifice or the humility of a whole epic or of particular artists. That is the least satisfactory of the reasons one could find. All men desire, if not fame, at least the one poor inalienable right of authorship. And unless one can find very good reasons indeed why a painter or a writer or a sculptor should deliberately have hidden himself, one must look for some other cause. Among such causes, the first two, I think, are the multiplicity of good work and its chance character. Not that anyone ever does very good work for once and then never again. At least such an accident is extremely rare. But that many a man who has achieved some skills by long labor does now and then strike out a sort of spark, quite individual and separate from the rest. Often you will find that a man who is remembered for but one picture or one poem is worth research. You'll find that he did much more. It is to be remembered that for a long time Ronsard himself was thought to be a man of one poem. The multiplicity of good work also and the way in which accident helps it is a cause. There are bits of architecture and architecture is the most anonymous of all the arts, which depend for their effect today very largely upon situation and the process of time. And there are a thousand corners in Europe intended merely for some utility, which happen almost without deliberate design to have proved perfect. This is especially true of bridges. Then there is this element in the anonymity of good work that a man very often has no idea how good the work is which he has done. The anecdotes such as that famous one of Keats which tells us poets desiring to destroy their work or at any rate casting it aside as of little value are not all false. We still have the letter in which Bernstein closed Scott's Wahe and it is curious to note his misjudgment of the verse. And side by side with that kind of misjudgment we have men picking out for singular affection and with a full expectation of glory some piece of work of theirs to which posterity will have nothing to say. This is especially true of work recast by men in mature age. Writers and painters, sculptors luckily are restrained by the nature of their art unless they deliberately go and break up the work with a hammer. Retouch and change in the years which they have become more critical and less creative what they think to be the insufficient achievements of their youth. Yet it is the vigor and the simplicity of their youthful work which other men often prefer to remember. On this account any number of good things remain anonymous because the good writer or the good painter or the good sculptor was ashamed of them. Then there is this reason for anonymity that at times for quite a short few years the sort of universality of good work in one or more departments of art seems to fall upon the world or upon some district. Nowhere do you see this more strikingly than in the carvings of the first third of the sixteenth century in north and central France and on the Flemish border. Men seemed at that moment incapable of doing work that was not marvelous when they once began to express the human figure. Sometimes their mere name remains. More often it is doubtful, sometimes it is entirely lost. More curious still you often have for this period a mixture of names. You come across some astonishing series of reliefs in a forgotten church of a small provincial town. You know at once that it is work of the moment when the flood of the Renaissance had at last reached the old country of the Gothic. You can swear that if it were not made in the time of Francis I or Henry II it was at least made by men who remember or had seen those times. But when you turn to the names, the names are nobodies. By far the most famous of these famous things or at any rate the most deserving of fame is the miracle of brew. It is the whole world. You would say that either one transcendent genius had modeled every face and figure of those thousands, so individual are they, or that a company of inspired men bringing in their traditions and upbringing from all the commonality of mankind had done such things. When you go to the names all you find is that Coulomb, out of Turin, began the job. That there was some sort of quarrel between his head man and the paymasters. That he was replaced in the most everyday manner conceivable by a Fleming. Van Bohm. And that this Fleming had to help him a better known Swiss, one Met. It is the same story with nearly all this kind of work and its wonderful period. The wealth of detail at Louvirs, Orgizours, is almost anonymous. That of the first named, perhaps quite anonymous. Who carved the wood in St. James' church at Antwerp? I think the name is known for part of it, but no one did the whole or anything like the whole, and yet it is all one thing. Who carved the wood in St. Bertrand de Cormages? We know who paid for it, that is all we know. As for the wood of Rouen, we must contend ourselves with the vague phrase, probably Fleming's Artists. Of the Gothic statues, where they were conventional, however grand the work, one can understand that they should be anonymous, but it is curious to note the same silence where the work is strikingly and particularly individual. Among the kings at Reims are two heads, one of St. Louis, one of his grandson. Had some one famous sculptor done these things, and others, were his work known and sought after, these two heads would be as renowned as anything in Europe. As it is, they are two among hundreds, that the latter 13th or early 14th centuries scattered broadcast. Each probably was the work of a different workman, and the author or authors of each remain equally unknown. I know not whether there is more pathos or more humor or more consolation in considering the significance of ours with regard to the makers of good things. It is full of parable. There is something of it in nature. There are men who will walk all day through a dune wood and come out atheists at the end of it, finding no signature thereupon. And there are others who, sailing over the sea, come back home after seeing so many things, still puzzled as to their authorship. That is one parable. Then there is this, the corrective of ambition. Since so much remains, the very names of whose authors have perished, what does it matter to you or to the world whether your name, so long as your work, survives? Who was it that carefully and cunningly fixed the sights on Gumber Corner, so as to get upon a clear day his exact alignment with Poolgirl, and then the shoulder of Leith Hill, just to miss the two rivers and just to obtain the best going for a military road? He was some engineer or other among the thousands in the Imperial service. He was at Chichester for some weeks and drew his pay and then perhaps went on to London and he was born in Africa or in Lombardy or he was a Breton who was from Lusitania or from the Euphrates. He did that bit of work most certainly without any consideration of fame for engineers, especially when they are soldiers, are singular among artists in this matter. But he did a very wonderful thing and the Roman road has run there for 1500 years, his creation. Someone must have hit upon that precise line and the reason for it. He was exactly right and the thing done was as great and is today as satisfying as that sculptor of Brue or the two boys Marilla painted whom you may see in the Galleria de Wich. But he never thought of anyone knowing his name and no one knows it. Then there is this last thing about anonymous work which is also a parable and a sad one. It shows how there is no bridge between two human minds. How often have I not come upon a corbel of stone carved into the shape of a face and that face had upon it either horror or laughter or great sweetness or vision and I have looked at it as I might have looked upon a living face saved that it was more wonderful than most living faces. He carried it at the soul in mind of the man who made it. But he has been dead these hundreds of years. That corbel cannot be in communion with me for it is of stone. It is dumb and will not speak to me though it compels me continually to ask it questions. Its author also is dumb for he has been dead so long and I can know nothing about him whatsoever. Now so it is with any two human minds. Not only when they are separated by centuries and by silence but when they have their being side by side under one roof and our companions all their years. The End of Chapter 3 This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org On Something by Hilaer Bellach Chapter 4 Anna Van Trump Once there was a man who having nothing else to do and being fond of that kind of thing copied with a good deal of care onto a bit of wood the corner of a Dutch picture in one of the public galleries. This man was not a good artist. Indeed he was nothing but a humpbacked and a very sensitive little squire with about pound three thousand year of his own and great liking for intricate amusements. He was a pretty good mathematician and a tolerable fisherman. He knew an enormous amount about the Muhammedan conquest of Spain and he is I believe writing a book upon that subject. I hope you will for nearly all history wants to be rewritten. Anyhow he, as I have just said did copy a corner of one of the Dutch pictures in one of the galleries. It was a Dutch picture of the 17th century and since the laws of this country are very complicated and the sanctions attached to them very terrible I will not give the name of the original artist but I will call him Van Tromp. Van Troms have always been recognized and there was a moment about 50 years after the artist's death when they had a considerable vogue in the French court. Monsieurs, who was quite ignorant of such things bought a couple and there is a whole row of them in a little pavilion at Louvre Sien's. Van Tromp has something about him that wants positive and elusive. He is full of planes and values and he interprets and renders and the rest of it. Nay, he transfers. About 30 years ago Mr. Mayor of Hilsheim in London thought it his duty to impress upon the public how great Van Tromp was. This he did after taking 13 Van Troms in payment of a bad debt. And he succeeded. But the man I am writing about cared nothing for all this. He simply wanted to see how well he could imitate this corner of the picture. And he did it pretty well. He begrimed it and he rubbed it and then he tickled it up again with a knife and then he smoked it and then he put in some dirty whites which were vivid and he played the fool with white of egg and so forth he had the very tone and manner of the original. And as he had done it on an old bit of wood it was exactly right and he was very proud of the result. He got an old frame from near long acre and stuck it in. And then he took the thing home. He had done several things of this kind imitating miniatures and even enamels. It amused him. When he got home he sat looking at it with great pleasure for an hour or two. He left the little thing on the table of his study and went to bed. Here begins the story. And here therefore I must tell you what the subject of this corner of the picture was. The subject of this corner of the picture which he had copied was a woman in a brown jacket and a red petticoat with big feet showing underneath sitting on a tub and cutting up some vegetables. She had her hair bunched up like an onion. A fashion which as we all know appealed to the Dutch in the 17th century or at any rate to the plebeian Dutch. I must also tell you the name of this squire before I go any further. His name was Hammer, Paul Hammer. He was unmarried. He went to bed at eleven o'clock and when he came down at eight o'clock he had his breakfast. He went into his study at nine o'clock and was very much annoyed to find that some burglars had come in during the night and had taken away a number of small objects which were not without value. And among them, what he most regretted, his little pastiche of the corner of the van Tram. For some moments he stood filled with an acute anger and wishing that he knew who the burglars were and how to get at them. But the days passed and though he asked everybody and even gave some money to the police he could not discover this. He put an advertisement into several newspapers both London newspapers and local ones saying that money would be given if the thing were to be stored and pretty well hinting that no questions would be asked but nothing came. Meanwhile the burglars, whose names were Charles and Lothair Femeral, foreigners but English speaking had found some of their ill acquired goods saleable others unsaleable. They wanted a pound for the little picture in the frame and this they could not get. And it was a bother haggling about it. Lothair Femeral thought of a good plan. He stopped at an inn on the third day of their paragonations, had a good dinner with his brother, told the innkeeper that he could not pay the bill and offered to leave the old master in exchange. When people do this it very often comes off for the alternative is only the pleasure of seeing the man in goal whereas a picture is always a picture. And there is a gambler's chance of it turning up trumps. So the man grumbled and took the little thing. He hung it up in the best room of the inn where he gave his richer customers food. Thus it was that a young gentleman who had come down to ride in that neighborhood though he did not know any of the rich people round about saw it one day and on seeing it exclaimed loudly in an unknown tone. But he very rapidly repressed his emotion and simply told the innkeeper that he had taken a fancy to the dub and would give him thirty shillings for it. The innkeeper who had read in the newspaper of how pictures of the utmost value are sold by fools for a few pence said boldly that his price was twenty pounds whereupon the young gentleman went out gloomily. And the innkeeper thought that he must have made a mistake and was for three or four hours depressed. But in the fourth hour again he was elated for the young gentleman came back with twenty pounds not even in notes but in gold, paid it down and took away the picture. Then again in the fifth hour was the innkeeper a little depressed but not as much as before for it struck him that the young gentleman must have been very eager to act in such a fashion and that perhaps he could have got as much as twenty one pounds for building out and calling it guineas. The young gentleman telegraphed to his father who lived in Wimbledon but who did business in Bond Street saying that he had got hold of a Van Trump which looked like a study for the big Eversley Van Trump in the gallery and he wanted to know what his father would give for it. His father telegraphed back inviting him to spend one whole night under the family roof. This the young man did give the old father's heart to have to do it by the time he had seen the young gentleman's find or travail as he called it he had given his offspring a check for five hundred pounds whereupon the young gentleman left and went back to do some more writing an exercise of which he was passionately fond and to which he had trained several quiet horses. The father wrote to a certain lord of his acquaintance who was very fond of Van Trump's and gave him this replica or study in some ways finer than the original but said it must be a matter for private negotiation so he asked for an appointment and a lord who was a tall red-faced man with a bluff manner made an appointment for nine o'clock the next morning which was rather early for Bond Street but money talks and they met. The lord was very well dressed and when he talked he folded his hands which had gloves on them over the knob of his stick and pressed his stick firmly upon the ground it was a way he had but it did not frighten the old gentleman who did business in Bond Street and the long and short of it was that the lord did not get the picture until he had paid three thousand guineas not pounds mind you for this sum the picture was to be sent round to the lord's house and so it was and there it would have stayed the lord had put the greater part of his money into a company which was developing the resources of the south Shetland Islands and by some miscalculation or other the expense of this experiment proved larger than the revenues obtainable from it his policy as I need hardly tell you was to hang on and so he did because in the long run the property must pay and so it would if they could have gone on shelling out forever but they could not and so the whole affair was wound up and the lord lost a great deal of money under these circumstances he be thought him of the toiling millions who never see a good picture and who have no more vivid appetite than the hunger for good pictures he therefore lent his collection of van tromps with the least possible delay to a public gallery and for many years they hung there while the lord lived in great anxiety but with a sufficient income for his needs in the delightful scenery of the pennines at some distance from a railway station surrounded by his tenants at last even these the tenants I mean were not sufficient and a gentleman in the government who knew the value of van tromps proposed that these van tromps should be bought for the nation but a lot of cranks made a frightful row both in parliament and out of it so that the scheme would have fallen through had not one of the van tromps to wit that little copy of a corner which was obviously a replica or of a study for the best known of the van tromps been proclaimed false quite suddenly by a gentleman who doubted its authenticity where upon everybody said that it was not genuine except three people who really counted and these included the gentleman who had recommended the purchase of van tromps by the nation so enormous was the row upon the matter that the picture reached the very pinnacle of fame and an Australian then travelling in England was determined to get that van tromps for himself and did this Australian was a very simple man good and kind and childlike and frightfully rich when he had got the van tromps he carried it about with him and at the country houses where he stopped he used to pull it out and show it to people it happened that among other country houses he stopped once at the hunchback squires whose name as you will remember was Mr. Hammer and he showed him the van tromps one day after dinner Mr. Hammer was by this time an old man and he had ceased to care much about the things of this world he had suffered greatly and he had begun to think about religion also he had made a good deal of money in Egyptians for all this was before the slump and he was pretty well ashamed of his pastiches so one way or another the seeing of that picture did not have the effect upon him which you might have expected for you the reader have read this story in five minutes if you have had the patience to get so far but he Mr. Hammer had been changing and changing for years and I tell you he did not care a dump what happened to the wretched thing only when the Australian who was good and simple and kind and hearty showed him the picture and asked him proudly to guess what he had given for it then Mr. Hammer looked at him with a look in his eyes full of that not mortal sadness which accompanies irremediable despair I do not know he answered gently and with a sob in his voice I paid for that picture said the Australian in the accent and language of his native climb no less than a sum of seventy five hundred pounds and I'd pay it again tomorrow saying this the Australian hit the table with the palm of his hand in a manner so manly that an aged retainer who was putting coals upon the fire allowed the coal scuttle to drop but Mr. Hammer ruminating in his mind all the accidents and changes and adventures of human life its complexity its unfilled desires its fading but not quite perishable ideals well knowing how men are made happy and how unhappy ventured on no reply two great tears gathered in his eyes and he would have shed them perhaps to be profusely followed by more he was nearly breaking down when he looked up and saw on the wall opposite him seven pastiches which he had made in the years gone by there was a Titian and a George Morland and a Chardon two cows after Cooper and an impressionist picture after some Frenchman whose name he had forgotten you like pictures he said to the Australian the tears still standing in his eyes I do said the Australian with conviction will you let me give you these said Mr. Hammer the Australian protested that such things could not be allowed but he was a simple man and at last he consented for he was immensely pleased it is an ungracious thing to make conditions said Mr. Hammer and I won't make any only I should be pleased if in your island home I don't live on an island said the Australian Mr. Hammer remembered the map of Australia and the water all rounded but he was too polite to argue no of course not he said you live on the mainland I forgot but anyhow I should be so pleased if you would promise me to hang them all together these pictures with your Van Tromp all in a line I really should be so pleased why certainly said the Australian a little bewildered I will do so Mr. Hammer if it can give you any pleasure the fact is said Mr. Hammer in a breaking voice I had that picture once and I intended to hang side by side with these it was in vain that the Australian on hearing this poured out self-approaches offered with an expansion of soul to restart and then more prudently attempted a negotiation Mr. Hammer resolutely shook his head I am an old man he said and I have no heirs it is not for me to take but to give if you will do what an old man begs of you and accept what I offer if you will do more and of your courtesy keep all these things together which were once familiar to me it will be enough reward the next day therefore the Australian sailed off to his distant continental home carrying with him not only the Chardon, the Titian, the Cooper the Impressionist picture and the rest but also the Van Tromp and three months after they all hung in a row the great new copper room at Waramuga what happened to them later on and how they were sold altogether as the Waramuga collection I will tell you when I have the time and you have the patience farewell the end of chapter 4 On Something by Hilaire Belock chapter 5 his character a certain merchant in the City of London having retired from business purchased for himself a private house upon the heights of Hampstead and proposed to devote his remaining years to the education and the establishment in life of his only son when this youth whose name was George had arrived at the age of nineteen in nineteen his father spoke to him after dinner upon his birthday with regard to the necessity of choosing a profession he pointed out to him the advantages of a commercial career and notably that of a form of useful industry which is known as banking showing how in that trade a profit was to be made by lending the money of one man to another and often of a man's own money to himself without engaging one savings or fortune George to whom such matters were unfamiliar listened attentively and it seemed to him with every word that dropped from his father that a wider and wider horizon of material comfort and worldly grandeur was spreading out before him he had hitherto had no idea that such great rewards were attached to services so slight in themselves and certainly so valueless to the community the career sketched out for him by his father appealed to him most strongly and when that gentleman had completed his advice he assured him that he would follow it in every particular George's father was overjoyed to find his son so reasonable he sat down at once to write the note which he had planned to an old friend and a connection by marriage Mr. Repton of Repton and Greening he posted it that night and bade the lad prepare for the solemnity of a private interview with the head of the firm upon tomorrow before George left the house next morning his father laid before him with the pomp which so great an occasion demanded certain rules of conduct which should guide not only his entry into life but his whole conduct throughout its course he emphasized the value of self-respect of a decent carriage of discretion of continuous and tenacious habits of industry of promptitude and so forth when urged by I know not what demon whose pleasure it is ever to disturb the best plans of men the old gentleman had the folly to add the following words as he rose to his feet and laid his hands heavily upon his son's shoulders Above all things George tell the truth I was young and now I am old I have seen many men fail some few succeed and the best advice I can give to my dear only son is that on all occasions he should fearlessly and manfully tell the truth without regard of consequence believe me it is not only the whole root of character but the best basis for a successful business career even today having so spoken the old man more moved than he cared to show went upstairs to read his newspaper and George beautifully dressed went out by the front door towards the tube pondering very deeply the words that George had just used I cannot deny that the impression they produced upon him was extraordinary far more vivid than men of mature years can easily conceive it is often so in early youth when we listen to the voice of authority some particular chance phrase will have an unmeasured effect upon one a worn flag and platitudes solemnly spoken and at a critical moment may change the whole of a career and so it was with George as you will shortly perceive for as he rumbled along in the tube his father's words became a veritable obsession with him he saw their value ramifying in a multitude of directions he perceived the strength and accuracy of them in a hundred aspects he knew well that the interview he was approaching was one in which this virtue of truth might be severely tested but he gloried in the opportunity and he came out of the tube into the fresh air within a step of Mr. Repton's office with set lips and his young temper braced for the ordeal when he got to the office there was Mr. Repton a kindly old gentleman wearing large spectacles and in general appearance one of those genial types from which our caricaturists have constructed the national figure of John Bull it was a pleasure to be in the presence of so honest a man despite of George's extreme nervousness he felt a certain security in such company moreover Mr. Repton smiled paternally at him before putting him the few questions which the occasion demanded he held George's father's letter between two fingers of his right hand moving it gently in the air as he addressed the lad I'm very glad to see you George he said in this old office I've seen you here before term as you know but not on such important business term he laughed genially so you want to come and learn your trade with us do you your punctual I hope term he added his honest eyes full of good nature and jest George looked at him in rather a gloomy manner hesitated a moment and then under the influence of an obvious effort said in a choking voice no Mr. Repton I'm not hey what said Mr. Repton puzzled and a little annoyed by the young man's manner I was saying Mr. Repton that I am not punctual I have dreamy fits which sometimes make me completely forget an appointment and I have a silly habit of cutting things too fine which makes me miss trains and things I think I ought to tell you while I'm about it but I simply cannot get up early in the morning there are days when I manage to do so under the excitement of a coming journey for some other form of pleasure but as a rule I postpone my arising till the very latest possible moment George having thus delivered himself closed his lips and was silent huh said Mr. Repton it was not what the boy had said so much as the impression of oddness which affected that worthy man he did not like it and he was not quite sure of his ground he was about to put another question when George volunteered a further statement I don't drink he said and at my age it's not easy to understand what the vice of continual drunkenness may be but I shouldn't wonder if that would be my temptation later on and it is only fair to tell you that young as I am I have twice grossly exceeded in wine on one occasion not a year ago the servants at a house where I was stopping carried me to bed they did said Mr. Repton yes said George they did then there was a silence for the space of at least three minutes my dear young man said Mr. Repton rising do you feel any aptitude for a city career none said George decisively pray said Mr. Repton who had grown up children of his own and could not help speaking with a touch of sarcasm he thought it good for boys in the lunatech stage pray said he looking quizzically down at the unhappy but firm-minded George as he sat there in his chair is there any form of work for which you do feel an aptitude yes certainly said George confidently and what is that said Mr. Repton his smile beginning again the drama said George without hesitation the poetic drama I ought to tell you that I've received no encouragement from those who are the best of this art though I have submitted my work to many since I left school some have said that my work was commonplace others that it was imitative all have agreed that it was dull and they have unanimously urged me to abandon every thought of such composition nevertheless I am convinced that I have the highest possible talents not only in this department of letters but in all you believe yourself said Mr. Repton with a touch of severity to being an exceptional young man George nodded I do he said quite exceptional I should have used a stronger term had I been speaking in the matter myself I think I have genius or rather I am sure I have and what is more genius of a very high order well said Mr. Repton saying I don't think we should get any forwarder have you been working much lately he asked anxiously examinations or anything no said George quietly I always feel like this indeed said Mr. Repton who was now convinced that the poor boy had intended no discurtecy well I wonder whether you would mind taking back a note to your father no not at all said George courteously Mr. Repton in his turn wrote a short letter in which he begged George's father not to take a fence at an old friend's advice he called through his memory the long and faithful friendship between them pointed out that outsiders could often see things which members of a family could not and wound up by begging George's father to give George a good holiday not alone he concluded I don't think that would be quite safe but in company with some really trustworthy man a little older than himself who won't get on his nerves and yet will know how to look after him he must get right away for some weeks and after that I should advise you to keep him at home and let him have some gentle occupation don't encourage him in writing I think he would take kindly to gardening but I won't write anymore I will come and see you about it bearing that missive back did George reach his home all this passed in the year 1895 and that is why George is today one of the best electrical engineers in the country instead of being a banker and that shows how good always comes one way or another of telling the truth to the end of chapter 5 this is a LibraVox recording all LibraVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org On Something by Hilaire Belock Chapter 6 On Thrupenny Bits Philip, king of Macedon destroyer of the liberties of Greece and father to Alexander who tamed the horse Bussopheles called for the tutor of that lad one Aristotle surnamed the teacher of the human race to propound to him a question that had greatly troubled him for in counting out his money which was his habit upon a washing day when the queen's appetite for afternoon tea and honey had rid him of her presence he discovered mixed with his treasures such an intolerable number of Thrupenny Bits as very nearly drove him to despair On this account King Philip of Macedon destroyer of the liberties of Greece said for Aristotle his hangar on as one capable of answering any question whatsoever and said to him when he had entered with a profound abesience come Aristotle answer me straight what is the use of a Thrupenny Bit dreaded sire said Aristotle standing in his presence with respect the Thrupenny Bit is not to be despised men famous in no way for their style nor even for their learning have maintained life by inscribing within its narrow boundaries the Lord's Prayer, the Creed and the Ten Commandments those have used it as a comparison in the classes of astronomy to illustrate the ankles subtended by certain of the orbs of heaven the moon whose waxing and waning is doubtless familiar to your majesty is indeed but just hidden by a Thrupenny Bit held between the finger and the thumb of the observer extended at the full length of any normal human arm go on said King Philip with some irritation go on go on the Thrupenny Bit your majesty illustrates as does no other coin the wisdom and the aptness of the dual decimal system to which the Macedonians have so wisely clung in common with the peoples of Scythia and of Thrace and the dumb animals while the two brilliant Hellenes ran wild in the false simplicity of the decimal system the number 12 your majesty yes yes I know said King Philip impatiently I've heard it a thousand times it has already persuaded me to abandon the dual decimal method and to consign to the severest tortures anyone who mentions it in my presence again my ten fingers are good enough for me go on go on sovereign lord continued Aristotle the Thrupenny Bit has further been proved in a thousand ways as an adjuvator and prime helper for the gods for many a man too niggeredly to give sixpence he was proud to give a copper has dropped this coin among the offerings at the temple and it is related of a clergyman in Arma a town of which your majesty has perhaps never heard that he would frequently address his congregation from the rails of the altar pointing out the excessive number of Thrupenny bits which have been offered for the sustenance of the hierarchy threatening to summon before him known culprits and to return to them again the Thrupenny Bit most powerfully disciplines the soul of man for it tries the temper as does no other coin being small thin wayward given to hiding and very often useless when it is discovered learn also king of Macedon that the Thrupenny Bit is a value in ritual phrases and particularly so in objugations and the calling down of curses and in the settlement of evil upon enemies and in the final expression of contempt for to compare some worthless thing to a farthing to a penny or to a tuppence has no vigor left in it and it has long been thought ridiculous even among provincials a thread bear worn and worthless sort of sneer but the Thrupenny Bit has a sound about it very valuable to one who would insist upon his superiority thus were some rebel or some demagogue of Athens for example to venture upon the criticism of your majesty's excursions into philosophy in order to bring those august theses into contempt his argument would never find emphasis or value unless he were to terminate its last phrase by a snap of the finger and the mention of the Thrupenny Bit King Philip of Macedon most prudent of men learn further that a Thrupenny Bit of the foolish will often seem a mere expenditure of three pence to the wise may represent a saving of that sum for how many occasions are there not in which the inconsequent and lavish fool the spendthrift, the young heir the commander of cavalry the empty gilded boy will give a six pence to a messenger where a Thrupenny Bit would have done as well for silver is the craving of the poor not in its amount but in its nature for nature and number are indeed two things the one on the one hand I know all about that said King Philip I did not send for you to get you off upon those rails which have nothing whatever to do with Thrupenny Bits be concrete I pray you good Aristotle he continued and yawned stick to things as they are and do not make me remind you how once you said that men had 36 women only 34 teeth do not wander in the void arbiter of hellas said Aristotle gravely when the king had finished his tirade the Thrupenny Bit has not only all that character of usefulness which I have argued in it from the end it is designed to serve but one may also perceive this virtue in it in another way which is by observation for you will remember how when we were all boys the fourpenny bit of a cursed memory still lingered and how as against it the Thrupenny Bit has conquered which is indeed a parable taken from nature showing that whatever survives is destined to survive for that is indeed in a way as you may say the end of survival precisely said King Philip frowning intellectually I follow you I have heard many talk in this manner but none talk as well as you do continue good Aristotle continue your majesty the matter needs but little exposition though it contains the very marrow of truth said the philosopher holding up in a menacing way the five fingers of his left hand and taking them off with the forefinger of his right for it is first useful second beautiful third valuable fourth magnificent and fifthly consonant to its nature quite true said King Philip following carefully every word that fell from the wise man's lips for he could now easily understand very well then Cyrus said Aristotle in a livelier tone charmed to have captivated the attention of his sovereign I was saying that which survives is proved worthy of survival as of a man and a shark or of Athens and Macedonia or in many other ways now the Thrupenny Bit having survived to our own time has so proved itself in that test and upon this all men of science are agreed then also King Philip consider how the Thrupenny Bit in another and actual way not a pure reason but if I may say so in a material manner commends itself for is it not true that whereas all other nations whatsoever being by nature servile will use a nickel piece or some other denomination for whatever is small but it is not a bronze being dained by the gods for the command of all the human race have very tenaciously clung to the Thrupenny Bit through good and through evil repute and have even under the sternest penalties enforce it upon their conquered subjects for when your majesty discovered and if you will remember that the people of Euboea in manifest contempt to your crown paid back your majesty's treasure all their taxes in the shape of Thrupenny Bits at this moment King Philip gave a loud shout uttering in Greek the word Eureka which signifies to those who drop their H's I've got it got what said the philosopher startled into a commondition by the unexpected interjection of the despot get out said King Philip you suppose that any rambling Don is going to take up my time when by sheer accident his verbosity has started me on a true scent out Aristotle out or stay take this note with you to the captain of the guard and King Philip hastily scribbled upon a parchment and order for the immediate execution of the whole of the inhabitants of Euboea saving such as could redeem themselves at the price of 10 drachma or said some upon no account whatsoever to be paid in coin containing so much as one Thrupenny Bit but the offended philosopher had departed and being well wound up could not any more than any other member of the academies cease from spouting so that King Philip was intolerably aggravated to hear him as he waddle down the palace stairs still the claiming in a loud tone and sixteenthly the Thrupenny bit has about it this noble quality that it represents an eloquent part of that some which is paid to me daily from the royal treasury in silver a medal upon which we have always insisted and seventeenthly but King Philip banged the door end of chapter 6 this is a LibraVox recording all LibraVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org on something by Hilaire Bellock chapter 7 on the hotel at Palma and a proposed guide-book the hotel at Palma is like the Savoy but the cooking is a great deal better it's large and new its decorations are in the modern style with twiddly lines its luxury is greater than that of its London competitor it has an eager willing porter and a delightful landlord you do what you like in it one of these books was an English guide-book I read it it was full of lies so gross and palpable that I told my host how abominably it reduced his country and advised him to beat the book well and then burn it over a slow fire it said that the people were superstitious it is false they have no taboo about days they play about on Sundays they have no taboo about drinks they have no taboo about drinks they drink what they feel inclined which is wine when they feel inclined which is when they are thirsty they have no taboo book Bible or Koran no damned psychical rubbish no damned folklore no triply damned mumbo jumbo of social ranks kind really good simple-minded dukes would have a devil of a time in Palma avoided my dears today if anything the people of Palma have not quite enough superstition they play there for love money and amusement no taboo talking of love about love the book said they were poor the populace is three or four times as rich as ours they own their own excellent houses and their own land no one has but all the meat and fruit and vegetables and wine he wants and musical instruments as well in fact the book told the most frightful lies and was a worthy companion to other guidebooks it moved me to plan a guidebook of my own in which the truth should be told about all places I know it should be called Guide to Northumberland Sussex, Chelsea, the French Frontier South Holland, the Solent Lombardy, the North Sea, and Rome with a chapter on part of Cheshire and some remarks on the United States of America in this book the fault would lie in its two great scrappiness but the merit in its exactitude thus I would inform the reader that the best time to sleep in Siena is from nine in the morning till three in the afternoon and that the best place to sleep is the north side of St. Dominic's ugly brick church there again I would tell him that a man who keeps the Turks head at Vellone in Normandy was only outwardly and professedly an atheist but really and inwardly a papest I would tell him that it sometimes snowed in Lombardy in June for I have seen it and that any fool can cross the Alps blindfold and that the sea is usually calm not rough and that the people of Dax are the most horrible in all France and that Lourdes contrary to the general opinion does work miracles for I have seen them I would also tell him of the place where the harper plays to you during the dinner and of the grubby little inn at Ternousen on the Shelt where they charge you just anything they please for anything five shillings for a bit of bread or half a crown for a napkin all these things and hundreds of others of the same kind would I put in my book and at the end should be a list of all hotels in Europe where at the date of publication the landlord was nice for it is the character of landlords which makes all the difference and that changes as do all human things there you could see first like a sort of primate of hotels the railway hotel at York then the end at Lebrer or in Landez then the swan at Pethorth its mild ale and the white heart of Storington then the rest of them all the six or seven hundred of them from the moment of Chateau Thierry to the feathers of Ludlow a truly noble remainder of what was once England the feathers of Ludlow where the beds are of honest wood with curtains to them and where a man may drink half the night with the citizens to the success of their engines and the putting out of all fires for there are in West England three little inns in three little towns all in a line and all beginning with an L Ledbury, Ludlow, and Leo Minster all with feathers all with orchids round and I cannot tell which is the best then my guidebook will go on to talk about harbors it will prove how almost every harbour was impossible to make in a little boat but it would describe the difficulties of each so that a man in a little boat might possibly make them it would describe the rush of the tide outside Margate and the still more dangerous rush outside Shorham and the absurd bar at Little Hampton that strikes out of the sea and the place to lie in New Haven and how not to stick upon the platters outside Harwich and the very torturous entry to Poole and the long channel into Christchurch past Henge and Spurry Head and the enormous tides of south Wales and why you often have to beach at Britain Ferry and the terrible difficulty of mooring the sad changes of Little Yarmouth and the single black boy at Calais which is much too far out to be of any use and how to wait for the tide in the swim and also what no book has ever yet given an exact direction of the way in which one may roll into Orford Haven on top of a spring tide if one has luck and how if one has no luck one sticks on the gravel and is pounded to pieces then my guidebook would go on to tell of the way in which to make men pleasant to you according to their climate and country of how you must not hurry the people of Aragon and how it is your duty to bargain with the people of Catalonia and how it is impossible to eat at Deraka and how careful one must be with gloomy men who keep bins at the very top of lens especially if they're silent under Shavoy and how one must not talk religion when one has got over the Scotch border with some remarks about Jedburg and the terrible things that happened to a man there who would talk religion though he had been plainly warned then my guidebook would go on to tell how one should climb ordinary mountains and why one should avoid feats and how to lose a guide which is a very valuable art for when you have lost your guide you need not pay him my book will also have a note for the chapter on the proper method of frightening sheep dogs when they attempt to kill you with their teeth upon the everlasting hills this my good and new guidebook oh how it blossoms in my head as I write would further describe what trains to go to what places and in what way the boredom of them can best be overcome and which expresses really go fast and I should have a footnote describing those lines of steamers on which one can travel for nothing if one puts a sufficiently bold face upon the matter my guidebook would have directions for the pacifying of Arabs a trick which I learned from a past master a little way east of Batana in the year 1905 I will also explain how one can tell time by the stars and by the shadow of the sun upon what sort of food one can last longest and how best to carry it and what rides propitiate if they are solemnized in a due order the half-malicious fairies which haunt men when they are lost in lonely valleys right up under the high peaks of the world and my book should have a whole chapter devoted to Ulysses for you must know that one day I came into Nibbon where I had never been before and I saw written up in large letters upon a big ugly house Ulysses lodging for man and beast so I went in and saw the master who had a round bullet head and cropped hair and I said to him what are you landed then after all your journeys and do I find you at last you of whom I have read so much and seen so little but with an oath he refused me lodging this tale is true as would be every other tale in my book what a fine book it will be The End of Chapter 7 This is a LibraVox recording all LibraVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibraVox.org On Something by Hilaire Bellock Chapter 8 The Death of Wandering Peter I will confess and I will not deny that the chief pleasure I know is the contemplation of my fellow beings he spoke thus in his bed in the inn of a village upon the river Yon beyond Ozer in which bed he lay a-dying but though he was dying he was full of words what energy what cunning what desire what desire what desire what energy what cunning what desire I have often been upon the edge of a steep place such as a chalk pit or a cliff above a plain and watch them down below hurrying around turning about laying down putting up leading making organizing driving considering directing exceeding and restraining upon my soul I was proud to be one of them I have said to myself lift up your heart you also are one of these for though I am he continued a wandering man and lonely given to the hills and to empty places yet I glory in the workers on the plain as might a poor man in his noble lineage from these I came to these in my old age I would have returned at these words the people about his bed fell to sobbing when they thought how he would never wander more but Peter wander wide continued with a high heart how pleasant it is to see them plow first they cunningly contrive an arrangement that throws the earth aside and tosses it into the air and then since they are too weak to pull the same they use great beasts oxen or horses or even elephants and impose them with their will so that they patiently haul this contrivance through the thick clods they tear up and they put into furrows and they transform the earth nothing can withstand them birds you will think could escape them by flying up into the air it is an error upon birds also my people impose their view they spread nets food bait trap and lime they hail stones and shot and arrows at them they cause some by a perpetual discipline to live near them to lay eggs and to be killed at will of this sort are hens, geese, turkeys, ducks and guinea fowls nothing eludes the careful planning of man moreover they can build they do not build this way or that as adult necessity forces them not they they build as they feel inclined they hew down they saw through and how marvelous is a song they trim timber they mix lime and sand they excavate the recesses of the hills all the fine fellas they can at whim make your chambers or the tower prison or my aunt's new villa at Wimbledon which is a joke of theirs or St. Pancras station or the Crystal Palace or Westminster Abbey or St. Paul's or Bond Scores they are agreeable to every change in the wind that blows about the world it blows gothic and they say by all means and there is your gothic a thing dreamt of and done it suddenly veers south again and blows from the Mediterranean the jolly little fellows are equal to the strain and up goes em boys and at and the louvre and all the renaissance it blows every how is though in anger at seeing them so ready they care not at all they build the Eiffel Tower the Queen Anne House the Mary Jane House or modern style house the Carlton the Ritz the Grand Pelé the Trocadero Olympia Euston the Midhurst Sanatorium and Old Bietz Palace in Park Lane they are not to be defeated they have immortal certitudes have you considered their lines and their drawings and their cunning plans said wandering Peter they are astonishing there put a bit of charcoal into my dog's mouth or my pet monkey's paw would he copy the world not he but men my brothers they take it in hand and make war against the unspeaking forces the trees and the hills are of their own showing and the places in which they dwell by their own power become full of their own spirit nature is made more by being their model for in all they draw paint or chisel they are in touch with heaven and with hell they write Lord the intelligence of their men and Lord the beauty of their women they write unimaginable things they write epics they write lyrics they write riddles and marching songs and drinking songs and rhetoric and chronicles and allergies and pathetic memories and in everything that they write they reveal things greater than they know they are capable said Peter wonder-wide in his dying enthusiasm of so writing that the thought enlarges upon the writing and becomes far more than what they have written they write that sort of verse called stop short which when it is written makes one think more violently than ever as though it were an introduction to the realms of the soul and then again they write things which gently mock themselves and are a consolation for themselves against the doom of death but when Peter wonder-wide said that word death the howling and the boo-hooing of the company assembled about his bed grew so loud that he could hardly hear himself think for there was present the mayor of the village and the priest of the village and the mayor's wife and the adjutant mayor or deputy mayor and the village consular and the roadmender and the schoolmaster and the cobbler and all the notabilities as many as could crush into the room and none but the doctor was missing and outside the house was a great crowd of the village folk and they were busy and begging for the news of him and mourning so that great and so good a man should find his death in so small a place Peter wonder-wide was thinking very fast and his life was going out with his breath but his heart was still so high that he continued although his voice was failing look you good people all in your little passage through the daylight get to see as many hills and rivers, fields, books men, horses, ships and precious stones as you can possibly manage to do or else stay in one village and marry in it and die there for one of these two fates is the best fate for every man either to be what I have been a wanderer with all the bitterness of it or to stay at home and hear in one's garden the voice of God for my part I have followed out my fate and I propose in spite of my numerous iniquities by the recollection of my many joys in the glories of this earth as by corks to float myself in the sea of nothingness until I reach the regions of the blessed and the pure in heart for I think when I am dead Almighty God will single me out on account of my accoutrement and my tear-up leathers and the things that I shall be talking of concerning Ireland and the Paragord and my boat upon the narrow seas and I think he will ask Saint Michael who is the clerk and registrar of battling men who it is that stands thus ready to speak unless his eyes betray him of so many things then Saint Michael will forget my name although he will know my face he will forget my name because I never stayed long enough in one place for him to remember it but Saint Peter because he is my patron saint and because I have always had a special devotion to him will answer for me and will have no argument for he holds the keys and he will open the door and I will come in and when I am inside the door of heaven I shall freely grow those wings and nascent of which have bothered my shoulder blades with birth pains all my life long and more especially since my 30th year I say friends and companions all that I shall grow a very satisfying and supporting pair of wings and once I am so furnished I shall be received among the blessed and I shall at once begin to tell them as I told you on earth all sorts of things that are false and true with regard to the countries through which I carried forward my homeless feet and in which I have been given such fulfillment for my eyes when Peter Wanderwide had delivered himself of these remarks which he did with great dignity and fire for one incest extremity he gasped a little coughed and died I need not tell you what salinity has attended his burial nor with what fervor but it is worth knowing that the poet of that place who was rival to the chief poet in Ozer himself gathered up the story of his death into a rhyme written in the dialect of that valley of which rhyme this is an English translation when Peter Wanderwide was young he wandered everywhere he would and all that he approved was sung and most of what he saw was good when Peter Wanderwide was thrown by death himself beyond Ozer he chanted in heroic tone to priests and people gathered there if all that I have loved and seen be with me on the judgment day I shall be saved the crowd between from Satan and his foul array Almighty God will surely cry Saint Michael who is this that stands with Ireland in his dubious eye and Paragord between his hands and on his arms the stirrup thongs and in his gate the narrow seas and in his mouth Burgundian songs but in his art the Pyrenees Saint Michael then will answer right but not without angelic shame I seem to know his face by sight I cannot recollect his name Saint Peter will befriend me then because my name is Peter too I know him for the best of men that ever walloped Barley brew and though I did not know him well and though his soul were clogged with sin I hold the keys of heaven and hell be welcome Noble Peterkin then shall I spread my native wings and tread secure the heavenly floor and tell the blessed doubtful things of Al Duran and Paragord this was the last and solemn jest of where he Peter wander wide he spoke it with a failing zest and having spoken it he died the end of chapter 8 this is a Libravox recording all Libravox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libravox.org On Something by Hilaire Belock Chapter 9 The Tree of Knowledge The nation known to history as the Nepdelo Seclumenizenoi or more shortly the Nepoi inhabited a fruitful and prosperous district consisting in a portion of the mainland in certain islands situated in the Pyrocholian Sea and had there for countless centuries enjoyed a particular form of government which it is not difficult to describe or it was religious and arranged upon the principal that no ancient custom might be changed lest such changes should come about through the lapse of time or the evil passions of men the citizens of the aforesaid nation had them very clearly engraved in a dead language and upon bronze tablets they fixed upon the doors of their principal temple where it stood upon a hill outside the city and it was their laudable custom to entrust the interpretation of them not to aged judges but to little children for they argued that we increase in wickedness with years and that no one is safe from the aged but that children are alone of the articulately speaking race truth tellers therefore upon the first day of the year which falls in that country at the time of sowing they would take one hundred boys of ten years of age chosen by lot they would make these hundred who had previously for one year received instruction in their sacred language write each a translation of the simple code engraved upon the bronze tablets it was invariably discovered that these artless compositions varied only according to the ability of the lads to construe and that some considerable proportion of them did accurately show forth in the vernacular of the time the meaning of those ancestral laws they had further a magistrate known as the archon whose business it was to administrate these customs and to punish those who broke them and this archon when if he proposed something contrary to custom in the opinion of not less than a hundred petitioners was judged by a court of children in this fashion for thousands of years did the Nepoi proceed with their calm and ordinary lives enjoying themselves like so many grigs and utterly untroubled by those broils and imaginations of state which disturbed their neighbors there was a legend among them upon which the whole of this constitution was based that a certain hero one melik being a stature and no less than 93 inches around the chest had landed in their country 150,000 years previously and finding them very barbarous slaying one another and unacquainted with the use of letters the precious metals or the art of usury had instructed them in civilization endowed them with letters a coinage, police lawyers, instruments of torture and all the other requests from the great state and had finally drawn up for them this code of law or custom which they carefully preserved engraved upon the tablets of bronze which were set upon the walls of the chief temple on the hill outside the city within the temple itself its great shrine and so to speak its very cause of being was the hero's tomb he lay therein covered with plates of gold and it was confidently asserted that at some unknown time in the future he would come out to rule them forever in a millennial fashion though heaven knows they were happy enough as it was among our customs was this that certain appointed officers would at every change in the moon proclaim the former existence in virtue of melik his residence in the tomb and his claims to authority to enter the tomb indeed was death but there was proof of the whole story in documents which were carefully preserved in the temple and which were from time to time consulted and verified the whole structure of napoian society reposed upon the sanctity of this story upon the presence of the hero in his tomb and of his continued authority for with this was intertwined or rather upon this was based the further sanctity of their custom things so proceeded without hurt or cloud until upon one most unfortunate day a certain man bearing a vulgar name of megalocrates which signifies a person whose health requires the use of a wide headgear discovered that a certain herb which grew in great abundance in their territory and had hitherto been thought useless would serve almost every purpose of the table sufficing according to its preparation for meat, bread, vegetables and salt and if properly distilled for liquor that would make the napoi even more drunk than did their native spirits from this discovery ensued a great plenty throughout the land the population very rapidly increased the fortunes of the wealthy grew to double treble and four times those which had formerly been known the middle classes adopted a novel accent in speech and a gate hitherto unusual while great numbers of the poor acquired the power of living upon so small a proportion of foul air, dull light stagnant water and mangy crusts as would have astonished their nicer forefathers meanwhile this great period of progress could not but lead to further discoveries and the napoi had soon produced whole colleges in which were studied the arts useful to mankind and constantly discovered a larger and larger number of surprising and useful things at last the napoi though this perhaps will hardly be credited were capable of traveling underground flying through the air conversing with men a thousand miles away in a moment of time and committing suicide painlessly whenever there arose occasion for that exercise it may be imagined with what referenced the authors of all these boons the members of the learned colleges started and how their opinions had in the eyes and ears of the napoi an unanswerable character now it so happened that in one of these colleges a professor of more than ordinary position emitted one day the opinion that Mellick had lived only half as long ago as was commonly supposed in proof of this he put forward the undoubted truth that if Mellick had lived at the time he was supposed to have lived twice as long ago as he the professor said that he had lived the more old fashioned and stupid of the napoi murmured against such opinions and though they humbly confessed themselves unable to discover any flaw in the professor's logic they were sure he was wrong somewhere and they were greatly disturbed but the opinion gained ground and what is more this fruitful and intelligent surmise upon the part of the professor a whole series of further theories upon Mellick each of which contradicted the last but one and the latest of which was always of so limpid and so self evident of truth as to be accepted by whatever was intelligent and energetic in the population and especially by the young unmarried women of the wealthier classes in this manner the epic of Mellick was reduced to five to three to two one thousand years then to five hundred and at last to one hundred and fifty but here was a trouble the records of the state which had been carefully kept for many centuries showed no trace of Mellick's coming during any part of the time but always referred to him as a long distant forerunner there was not even any mention of a man twelve foot high nor even of one a little over ninety three inches around the chest at last it was proposed by an individual of great courage that he might be allowed to open the tomb of Mellick and afterwards if they so pleased suffer death this privilege was readily granted to him by the Archon the worthy reformer therefore prized open the sacred shrine and found within it absolutely nothing whatsoever upon this there arose among the Nepoi all manner of schools and discussions some saying this and some that but none with a certitude of old their customs fell into disrepute and even the very professors themselves were occasionally doubted when they laid down the law upon matters in which they alone were competent as for instance when they asserted that the moon was made of peculiarly delicious edible substance which increased in savor when it was preserved in the storerooms of the housewives or when they affirmed with the appearance of truth that no man did evil and that willful murder arson cruelty cruelty to the innocent and the weak and deliberate fraud were of no more disadvantage to the general state or to men single than the drinking of a cup of cold water so things proceeded until one day when all custom and authority had fallen into this really lamentable delicousness fleets were observed upon the sea manned by men at arms the admiral of which sent a short message to the archon proposing that the people of the country should send to him and his one half of their yearly wealth forever or so the message proceeded take the consequences upon the archon communicating this to the people there arose at once an infinity of babble some saying one thing and some another some proposing to pay neighboring savages to come in others saying it would be cheaper to compromise with a large sum but the most part agreeing that the wisest thing would be for the archon and his great aunt to go out to the fleet in the little boat and persuade the enemies admiral as they could surely easily do that while most human acts were of doubtful responsibility and not really wicked yet the invasion and above all the impoverishment of the net poi was so foul wrong that it certainly called down upon its fengish perpetrators the fires of heaven while the archon and his great aunt were rowing out in the little boat a few doddering old men and superstitious females slunk off to consult the bronze tablets and there found under schedule 12 these words if an enemy threatens the state you shall arm and repel him in their superstition the poor old chaps with their half daft female devotees accompanying them tottered back to the crowds to persuade them to some ridiculous fanaticism or other based on no better authority than the non-existent melloc and his absurd and exploded authority judge of their horror when as they neared the city they saw from the height whereon the temple stood that the invaders had landed and having put to the sword all the inhabitants without exception the inventory of the goods and to settle the place as conquerors the admiral summoned this remnant of the nation and hearing what they had to say treated them with the greatest courtesy and kindness and penchant them off for their remaining years during which period they so instructed him and his fighting men in the mysteries of their religion as quite to convert them and in a sense to found the Napoleon state over again but it should be mentioned that the admiral by way of precaution changed that part of the religion which related to the tomb of melloc and situated the shrine in the very center of the crater of an active volcano in the neighborhood which by night and day at every season of the year belched forth molten rock so that none could approach it within fifteen miles The end of Chapter 9