 To Be Are Not To Be, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., read by Mark Nelson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. To Be Are Not To Be. Everything was perfectly swell. There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars. All diseases were conquered, so was old age. Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers. The population of the United States was stabilized at forty million souls. One bright morning in the Chicago lying in hospital, a man named Edward K. Whaling Jr. waited for his wife to give birth. He was the only man waiting. Not many people were born a day any more. Whaling was fifty-six, a mere stripling in a population whose average age was one hundred and twenty-nine. X-rays had revealed that his wife was going to have triplets. The children would be his first. Whaling was hunched in his chair, his head in his hand. He was so rumpled, so still and colorless as to be virtually invisible. His camouflage was perfect, since the waiting room had a disorderly and demoralized air, too. Chairs and ashtrays had been moved away from the walls. The floor was paved with spattered drop-cloths. The room was being redecorated. It was being redecorated as a memorial to a man who had volunteered to die. A sardonic old man, about two hundred years old, sat on a stepladder, painting a mural he did not like. Back in the days when people aged visibly, his age would have been guessed at thirty-five or so. Aging had touched him that much before the cure for aging was found. The mural he was working on depicted a very neat garden. Men and women in white, doctors and nurses, turned the soil, planted seedlings, sprayed bugs, spread fertilizer. Men and women in purple uniforms pulled up weeds, cut down plants that were old and sickly, raked leaves, worried refuse to trash burners. Never, never, never, not even in medieval Holland nor old Japan had a garden been more formal, been better tended. Every plant had all the loam, light, water, air and nourishment it could use. A hospital orderly came down the corridor, singing under his breath a popular song. If you don't like my kisses, honey, here's what I will do. I'll go see a girl in purple, kiss the sad world to the loo. If you don't want my lovin', why should I take up all this space? I'll get off this old planet, let some sweet baby have my place. The orderly looked in at the mural and the muralist. Looks so real, he said. I can practically imagine I'm standing in the middle of it. What makes you think you're not in it? said the painter. He gave a satiric smile. It's called the happy garden of life, you know. That's good of Dr. Hitz, said the orderly. He was referring to one of the male figures in white, whose head was a portrait of Dr. Benjamin Hitz, the hospital's chief obstetrician. Hitz was a blindingly handsome man. Lots of faces still to fill in, said the orderly. He meant that the faces of many of the figures in the mural were still blank. All blanks were to be filled with portraits of important people, on either the hospital staff or from the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Termination. Must be nice to be able to make pictures that look like something, said the orderly. The painter's face curdled with scorn. You think I'm proud of this dog, he said. You think this is my idea of what life really looks like? What's your idea of what life looks like, said the orderly. The painter gestured at a foul drop cloth. There's a good picture of it, he said. Frame that, and you'll have a picture, a damn sight more honest than this one. You're a gloomy old duck, aren't you? said the orderly. Is that a crime? said the painter. Automat, birdland, cannery, cat-box, de-lauser, easy-go, goodbye mother, happy hooligan, kiss me quick, lucky pier, sheep-dip, wearing blender, weep no more, and why worry. To be or not to be was the telephone number of the municipal gas chambers of the Federal Bureau of Termination. The painter thumbed his nose at the orderly. When I decide it's time to go, he said, it won't be at the sheep-dip. Do it yourself, or eh? said the orderly. Messy business, grandpa. Why don't you have a little consideration for the people who have to clean up after you? The painter expressed with an obscenity his lack of concern for the tribulations of his survivors. The world could do with a good deal more, mess, if you ask me, he said. The orderly laughed and moved on. Wailing, the waiting father, mumbled something without raising his head, and then he fell silent again. A coarse, formidable woman strode into the waiting room on spike heels. Her shoes, stockings, trench coat, bag, and overseas cap were all purple. The purple, the painter called, the color of grapes on judgment day. The medallion on her purple musette bag was the seal of the service division of the Federal Bureau of Termination. An eagle perched on a turnstile. The woman had a lot of facial hair. An unmistakable mustache, in fact. A curious thing about gas chamber hostesses was that no matter how lovely and feminine they were when recruited, they all sprouted mustaches within five years or so. Is this where I'm supposed to come, she said to the painter? A lot would depend on what your business was, he said. You aren't about to have a baby, are you? They told me I was supposed to pose for some picture, she said. My name's Leora Duncan. She waited. And you dunk people, he said. What, she said? Skip it, he said. That sure is a beautiful picture, she said. Looks just like heaven or something. Or something, said the painter. He took a list of names from his smock pocket. Duncan, Duncan, Duncan, he said, scanning the list. Yes, here you are. You're entitled to be immortalized. See any faceless body here you'd like me to stick your head on? We've got a few choice ones left. She studied the mural bleakly. Gee, she said, they're all the same to me. I don't know anything about art. A body's a body, eh? he said. All righty. As a master of fine art, I recommend this body here. He indicated a faceless figure of a woman who is carrying dried stalks to a trash burner. Well, said Leora Duncan, that's more of the disposal people, isn't it? I mean, I'm in service, I don't do any disposing. The painter clapped his hands and mocked delight. You say you don't know anything about art, and then you prove in the next breath that you know more about it than I do. Of course the sheave carrier is wrong for a hostess. A snipper, a pruner, that's more your line. He pointed to a figure in purple who was sawing a dead branch from an apple tree. How about her? He said. You like her at all? Gosh, she said, and she blushed and became humble. That, that puts me right next to Dr. Hitz. That upsets you, he said. Good gravy, no, she said. It's, it's just such an honor. Ah, you admire him, eh? he said. Who doesn't admire him, she said, worshiping the portrait of Hitz. It was the portrait of a tanned, white-haired, omnipotent Zeus, two hundred and forty years old. Who doesn't admire him, she said again. He was responsible for setting up the very first gas chamber in Chicago. Nothing would please me more, said the painter, than to put you next to him for all time, sawing off a limb that strikes you as appropriate. That is kind of like what I do, she said. She was demure about what she did. What she did was make people comfortable while she killed them. And while Liora Duncan was posing for her portrait, into the waiting-room bounded Dr. Hitz himself. He was seven feet tall, and he boomed with the importance, accomplishments, and the joy of living. Well, Miss Duncan, Miss Duncan, he said. And he made a joke. What are you doing here, he said? This isn't where people leave, this is where they come in. We're going to be in the same picture together, she said shyly. Good, said Dr. Hitz heartily, and say, isn't that some picture? I sure am honored to be in it with you, she said. Let me tell you, he said, I'm honored to be in it with you. Without women like you, this wonderful world we've got wouldn't be possible. He saluted her and moved toward the door that led to the delivery rooms. Guess what was just born, he said. I can't, she said. Triplets, he said. Triplets, she said. She was exclaiming over the legal implications of triplets. The law said that no newborn child could survive unless the parents of the child could find someone who would volunteer to die. Triplets, if they were all to live, called for three volunteers. Do the parents have three volunteers, said Leora Duncan? Last I heard, said Dr. Hitz, they had one, and were trying to scrape another two up. I don't think they made it, she said. Nobody made three appointments with us. Nothing but singles going through to-day, unless somebody called in after I left. What's the name? Wailing, said the waiting father, sitting up, red-eyed and frowsy. Edward K. Wailing, Jr., is the name of the happy father-to-be. He raised his right hand, looked at a spot on the wall, gave a hoarsely wretched chuckle. Present, he said. Oh, Mr. Wailing, said Dr. Hitz, I didn't see you. The invisible man, said Wailing. They just phoned me that your triplets have been born, said Dr. Hitz. They're all fine, and so is the mother. I'm on my way in to see them now. Hooray, said Wailing, emptily. You don't sound very happy, said Dr. Hitz. What man in my shoes wouldn't be happy, said Wailing. He gestured with his hands to symbolize carefree simplicity. All I have to do is pick out which one of the triplets is going to live, then deliver my maternal grandfather to the happy hooligan and come back here with the receipt. Dr. Hitz became rather severe with Wailing, towered over him. You don't believe in population control, Mr. Wailing, he said. I think it's perfectly keen, said Wailing, taughtly. Would you like to go back to the good old days, when the population of the earth was twenty billion, about to become forty billion, then eighty billion, then one hundred and sixty billion? Do you know what a droplet is, Mr. Wailing, said Hitz? Nope, said Wailing, sulkily. A droplet, Mr. Wailing, is one of the little knobs, one of the little pulpy grains of a blackberry, said Dr. Hitz. Without population control, human beings would now be packed on this surface of this old planet like droplets on a blackberry. Think of it! Wailing continued to stare at the same spot on the wall. In the year 2000, said Dr. Hitz, before scientists stepped in and laid down the law, there wasn't even enough drinking water to go around, and nothing to eat but seaweed. And still, people insisted on their right to reproduce like jack rabbits, and their right, if possible, to live forever. I want those kids, said Wailing quietly. I want all three of them. Of course you do, said Dr. Hitz. That's only human. I don't want my grandfather to die either, said Wailing. Nobody's really happy about taking a close relative to the cat-box, said Dr. Hitz, gently, sympathetically. I wish people wouldn't call it that, said Leora Duncan. What, said Dr. Hitz? I wish people wouldn't call it the cat-box, and things like that, she said. It gives people the wrong impression. You're absolutely right, said Dr. Hitz. Forgive me. He corrected himself, gave the municipal gas chambers their official title, a title no one ever used in conversation. I should have said Ethical Suicide Studios, he said. That sounds so much better, said Leora Duncan. This child of yours, whichever one you decide to keep, Mr. Wailing, said Dr. Hitz. He or she is going to live on a happy, roomy, clean, rich planet, thanks to population control. In a garden like that mural there, he shook his head. Two centuries ago, when I was a young man, it was a hell that nobody thought could last another twenty years. Now, centuries of peace and plenty stretch out before us as far as the imagination cares to travel. He smiled luminously. The smile faded as he saw that Wailing had just drawn a revolver. Wailing shot Dr. Hitz dead. There's room for one, a great big one, he said. And then he shot Leora Duncan. It's only death, he said to her as she fell. There, room for two. And then he shot himself, making room for all three of his children. Nobody came running, nobody seemingly heard the shots. The painter sat on the top of his stepladder, looking down reflectively on the sorry scene. The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born and once born demanding to be fruitful, to multiply and to live as long as possible, to do all that on a very small planet that would have to last forever. All the answers that the painter could think of were grim. Even grimmer surely than a cat-box, a happy hooligan, an easy go. He thought of war, he thought of plague, he thought of starvation. He knew that he would never paint again. He let his paintbrush fall to the drop-closs below. And then he decided he had had about enough of life in the happy Garden of Life too, and he came slowly down from the ladder. He took Wailing's pistol, really intending to shoot himself. But he didn't have the nerve. And then he saw the telephone booth in the corner of the room. He went to it, dialed the well-remembered number. To be are not to be. Federal Bureau of Termination said the very warm voice of a hostess. How soon could I get an appointment? he asked, speaking very carefully. We could probably fit you in late this afternoon, sir, she said. It might be even earlier if we get a cancellation. All right, said the painter, fit me in, if you please. And he gave her his name, spelling it out. Thank you, sir, said the hostess. Your city thanks you, your country thanks you, your planet thanks you. But the deepest thanks of all is from future generations. THE END OF TO BE OR NOT TO BE by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. and emerged from the gloom of the cloudy evening into the light that fell across the pavement from the window of a small shop. It was a projecting window, and on the inside were suspended a variety of watches, pinch-beck, silver, and one or two of gold, all with their faces turned from the streets as if churlishly disinclined to inform the wayfarers what a clock it was. Seated within the shop, side long to the window with his pale face bent earnestly over some delicate piece of mechanism on which was thrown the concentrated luster of a shade-lamp, appeared a young man. What can Owen Warland be about? muttered old Peter Hovenden, himself a retired watchmaker, and the former master of this same young man whose occupation he was now wondering at. What can the fellow be about? These six months past I have never come by a shop without seeing him just as steadily at work as now. It would be a flight beyond his usual foolery, to seek for the perpetual motion, and yet I know enough of my old business to be certain that what he is now so busy with is no part of the machinery of a watch. Perhaps Father, said Annie, without showing much interest in the question, Owen is inventing a new kind of time-keeper. I am sure he has ingenuity enough. Oh, child! he is not the sort of ingenuity to invent anything better than a Dutch toy, answered her father, who had formerly been put to much fixation by Owen Warland's irregular genius. A plague on such ingenuity. All the effect that ever I knew of it was to spoil the accuracy of some of the best watches in my shop. He would turn the sun out of its orbit and derange the whole course of time if, as I said before, his ingenuity could grasp anything bigger than a child's toy. Hush, Father, he hears you, whispered Annie, pressing the old man's arm. His ears are as delicate as his feelings, and you know how easily disturbed they are. Do let us move on. So Peter Hovenden and his daughter Annie plotted on without further conversation, until, in a by-street of the town, they found themselves passing the open door of a black smith's shop. Within was seen the forage, now blazing up and illuminating the high and dusky roof, and now confining its luster to a narrow precinct of the coal-strewn floor, according as the breath of the bellows was puffed forth or again inhaled into its vast, leathered lungs. In the intervals of brightness it was easy to distinguish objects in the remote corners of the shop and the horseshoes that hung upon the wall. In the momentary gloom the fire seemed to be glimmering amidst the vagueness of unenclosed space. Moving about in this red glare and alternate dusk was the figure of the black smith, well worthy to be viewed and so picturesque an aspect of light and shade, where the bright blaze struggled with the black night, as if each would have snatched his comely strength from the other. Anon he drew a white hot bar of iron from the coals, laded on the anvil, uplifted his arm of might, and was soon enveloped in the myriads of sparks which the strokes of his hammers scattered into the surrounding gloom. Now that is a pleasant sight, said the old watchmaker. I know what it is to work in gold, but give me the worker an iron after all is said and done. He spends his labor upon a reality. What say you, daughter Annie? Pray don't speak so loud, Father, whispered Annie. Barbara Danforth will hear you. And what if he should hear me, said Peter Hovenden. I say again it is a good and wholesome thing to depend upon main strength and reality, and to earn one's bread with the bare and brawny arm of a black smith. A watchmaker gets his brain puzzled by his wheels within a wheel, or loses his health or the nicety of his eyesight, as was my case, and finds himself at middle age, or little after, past labor at his own trade and fit for nothing else, yet too poor to live at his ease. So I say once again, give me main strength for my money, and then, how it takes the nonsense out of a man. Did you ever hear of a black smith being such a fool as Owen Warland yonder? Well said, Uncle Hovenden, shouted Robert Danforth from the forge in a full, deep, merry voice that made the roof re-echo. And what says Miss Annie to that doctrine? She, I suppose, will think it a gentler business to tinker up a lady's watch than to forge a horseshoe or make a grid-iron. Annie drew her father onward without giving him time for reply. But we must return to Owen Warland's shop and spend more meditation upon his history and character than either Peter Hovenden, or probably his daughter Annie, or Owen's old school fellow Robert Danforth would have thought due to so slight a subject. From the time that his little fingers could grasp a penknife, Owen had been remarkable for a delicate ingenuity, which sometimes produced pretty shapes in wood, principally figures of flowers and birds, and sometimes seemed to aim at the hidden mysteries of mechanism. But it was always for purposes of grace and never with any mockery of the useful. He did not, like the crowd of schoolboy artisans, construct little windmills on the angle of a barn or watermills across the neighboring brook. Those who discovered such peculiarity in the boy as to think it worth their while to observe him closely, sometimes saw reason to suppose that he was attempting to imitate the beautiful movements of nature as exemplified in the flight of birds or the activity of little animals. It seemed, in fact, a new development of the love of the beautiful, such as might have made him a poet, a painter, or a sculptor, and which was as completely refined from all utilitarian coarseness as it could have been in either of the fine arts. He looked with singular distaste at the stiff and regular processes of ordinary machinery. Being once carried to see a steam engine in the expectation that his intuitive comprehension of mechanical principles would be gratified, he turned pale and grew sick as if something monstrous and unnatural had been presented to him. This horror was partly owing to the size and terrible energy of the iron labourer. For the character of Owen's mind was microscopic, and tended naturally to the minute, in accordance with his diminutive frame and the marvellous smallness and delicate power of his fingers. Not that a sense of beauty was thereby diminished into a sense of prettiness. The beautiful idea has no relation to size, and may be as perfectly developed in a space too minute for any but microscopic investigation as within the ample verge that is measured by the arc of the rainbow. But at all events, this characteristic minuteness in his objects and accomplishments made the world even more incapable than it might otherwise have been of appreciating Owen Warlin's genius. The boy's relatives saw nothing better to be done, as perhaps there was not, than to bind him apprentice to a watchmaker, hoping that his strange ingenuity might thus be regulated and put to utilitarian purposes. Peter Hevendon's opinion of his apprentice has already been expressed. He could make nothing of the lad. Owen's apprehension of the professional mysteries it is true was inconceivably quick, but he altogether forgot or despised the grand object of a watchmaker's business and cared no more for the measurement of time than if it had been merged into eternity. So long, however, as he remained under his old master's care, Owen's lack of sturdiness made it possible by strict injunctions and sharp oversight to restrain his creative eccentricity within bounds. But when his apprenticeship was served out, and he had taken the little shop which Peter Hevendon's failing eyesight compelled him to relinquish, then did people recognize how unfit a person was Owen Warlin to lead old blind father time along his daily course. One of his most rational projects was to connect a musical operation with the machinery of his watches, so that all the harsh dissonances of life might be rendered tuneful, and each flitting moment fall into the abyss of the past in golden drops of harmony. If a family clock was entrusted to him for repair, one of those tall ancient clocks that have grown nearly allied to human nature by measuring out the lifetime of many generations, he would take it upon himself to arrange a dance or funeral procession of figures across its venerable face, representing twelve mirthful or melancholy hours. Several freaks of this kind quite destroy the young watchmaker's credit with that steady and matter-of-fact class of people who hold the opinion that time is not to be trifled with, whether considered as the medium of advancement and prosperity in this world, or preparation for the next. His custom rapidly diminished, a misfortune, however, that was probably reckoned among his better accidents by Owen Warlin, who was becoming more and more absorbed in his secret occupation, which drew all his science and manual dexterity into itself, and likewise gave full employment to the characteristic tendencies of his genius. This pursuit had already consumed many months. After the old watchmaker and his pretty daughter had gazed at him out of the obscurity of the street, Owen Warlin was seized with the fluttering of the nerves, which made his hand tremble too violently to proceed with such delicate labour as he was now engaged upon. It was Annie herself, murmured he. I should have known it by this throbbing of my heart before I heard her father's voice. Ah, how it throbs! I shall scarcely be able to work again on this exquisite mechanism to-night. Annie, dearest Annie, thou should us give firmness to my heart and hand, and not shake them thus. For if I strive to put the very spirit of beauty into form and give it motion, it is for thy sake alone. Oh, throbbing heart, be quiet! If my labour be thus thwarted, there will come vague and unsatisfied dreams which will leave me spiritless to-morrow. As he was endeavouring to settle himself again to his task, the shop door opened and gave admittance to no other than the stalwart figure which Peter Hummonton had paused to admire as seen amid the light and shadow of the blacksmith's shop. Robert Danforth had brought a little anvil of his own manufacture, and peculiarly constructed, which the young artist had recently bespoken. Owen examined the article and pronounced it fashioned according to his wish. Why, yes, said Robert Danforth, his strong voice filling the shop as with the sound of a base vile, I consider myself equal to anything in the way of my own trade, though I should have made but a poor figure at yours with such a fist as this, had it he laughing as he laid his vast hand beside the delicate one of Owen. But what then, I put more main strength into one blow of my sledgehammer than all that you have expended since your apprentice? Is not that the truth? Very probably, answered the low and slender voice of Owen, strength is an earthly monster, I make no pretensions to it. My force, whatever there may be of it, is altogether spiritual. Well, but Owen, what are you about? asks his old school fellow, still in such a hearty volume of tone that it made the artist shrink, especially as the question related to a subject so sacred as the absorbing dream of his imagination. Folks do say that you are trying to discover the perpetual motion. The perpetual motion? Nonsense, replied Owen Warland, with the movement of disgust, for he was full of little petulances. It can never be discovered. It was a dream that made delude men whose brains are mystified with matter, but not me. Besides, if such a discovery were possible, it would not be worth my while to make it, only to have the secret turned to such purposes as are now affected by steam and water-power. I am not ambitious to be honoured with the paternity of a new kind of cotton machine. That would be droll enough, cried the blacksmith, breaking out into such an uproar of laughter that Owen himself and the bell-glasses on his workboard quivered in unison. No, no, Owen, no child of yours will have iron joints and sinews. Well, I won't hinder you any more. Good night, Owen, and success, and if you need any assistance, so far as a downright blow of hammer upon Anvil will answer the purpose. I am your man. And with another laugh the man of main strength left the shop. How strange it is, whispered Owen Warland to himself, leaning his head upon his hand, that all my musings, my purposes, my passion for the beautiful, my consciousness of power to create it, a finer, more ethereal power of which this earthly giant can have no conception. All, all look so vain and idle whenever my path is crossed by Robert Danforth. He would drive me mad where I to meet him often. His hard, brute force darkens and confuses the spiritual element within me. But I, too, will be strong in my own way. I will not yield to him. He took from beneath the glass a piece of minute machinery which he set in the condensed light of his lamp, and, looking intently at it through a magnifying glass, proceeded to operate with a delicate instrument of steel. In an instant, however, he fell back in his chair and clasped his hands with a look of horror on his face that made its small features as impressive as those of a giant would have been. Heaven, what have I done? exclaimed he. The vapor, the influence of that brute force, it has bewildered me and obscured my perception. I have made the very stroke, the fatal stroke, that I have dreaded from the first. It is all over, the toil of months, the object of my life. I am ruined. And there he sat in strange despair until his lamp flickered in the socket and left the artist of the beautiful in darkness. Thus it is that ideas which grow up within the imagination and appear so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men call valuable are exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the practical. It is requisite for the ideal artist to possess a force of character that seems hardly compatible with its delicacy. He must keep his faith in himself while the incredulous world assails him with its utter disbelief. He must stand up against mankind and be his own soul disciple, both as respects his genius and the objects to which it is directed. For a time Owen Warland succumbed to this severe but inevitable test. He spent a few sluggish weeks with his head so continually resting in his hands that the townspeople had scarcely an opportunity to see his countenance. When at last it was again uplifted to the light of day, a cold, dull, nameless change was perceptible upon it. In the opinion of Peter Hovendon, however, and that order of sagacious understandings who think that life should be regulated, like clockwork, with leaden weights, the alteration was entirely for the better. Owen now indeed applied himself to business with dogged industry. It was marvellous to witness the obtuse gravity with which he would inspect the wheels of a great old silver watch, thereby delighting the owner, in whose fob it had been worn till he deemed it a portion of his own life, and was accordingly jealous of its treatment. In consequence of the good report thus acquired, Owen Warland was invited by the proper authorities to regulate the clock in the church steeple. He succeeded so admirably in this matter of public interest that the merchants gruffly acknowledged his merits on change. The nurse whispered his praises as she gave the potion in the sick chamber. The lover blessed him at the hour of a pointed interview, and the town in general thanked Owen for the punctuality of dinnertime. In a word, the heavy weight upon his spirits kept everything in order, not merely within his own system, but wheresoever the iron accents of the church clock were audible. It was a circumstance, though minute, a characteristic of his present state, that, when employed to engrave names or initials on silver spoons, he now wrote the requisite letters in the plainest possible style, omitting a variety of fanciful flourishes that adhere to for distinguished his work in this kind. One day, during the era of this happy transformation, old Peter Hoventon came to visit his former apprentice. Well, Owen, said he, I'm glad to hear such good accounts of you from all quarters, and especially from the town clock yonder, which speaks in your commendation every hour of the twenty-four. Only get rid altogether of your nonsensical trash about the beautiful, which I, nor nobody else, nor yourself to boot, could ever understand. Only free yourself of that, and your success in life is as sure as daylight. Why, if you go on in this way, I should even venture to let you doctor this precious old watch of mine. Though, except my daughter Annie, I have nothing else so valuable in the world. I should hardly dare to touch it, sir, replied Owen, in a depressed tone, for he was weighed down by his old master's presence. In time, said the latter, in time you will be capable of it. The old watchmaker, with the freedom naturally consequent on his former authority, went on inspecting the work which Owen had in hand at the moment, together with other matters that were in progress. The artist, meanwhile, could scarcely lift his head. There was nothing so antipodal to his nature as this man's cold, unimaginative sagacity, by contact with which everything was converted into a dream except the densest matter of the physical world. Owen groaned in spirit and prayed fervently to be delivered from him. But what is this? cried Peter, having done abruptly, taking up a dusty bell-glass beneath which appeared a mechanical something as delicate and minute as the system of a butterfly's anatomy. What have we here? Owen! Owen! There is witchcraft in these little chains and wheels and paddles. See, with one pinch of my finger and thumb I am going to deliver you from all future peril. For heaven's sake! screamed Owen Warland, springing up with wonderful energy, as he would not drive me mad, do not touch it. The slightest pressure of your finger would ruin me forever. Aha! young man! and is it so? said the old watchmaker, looking at him with just enough penetration to torture Owen's soul with the bitterness of worldly criticism. Well, take your own course, but I warn you again that in this small piece of mechanism lives your evil spirit. Shall I exercise him? You are my evil spirit! answered Owen, much excited. You and the hard course world, the leaden thoughts and the despondency that you fling upon me are my clogs, else I should long ago have achieved the task that I was created for. Peter Hovendon shook his head, with the mixture of contempt and indignation which mankind, of whom he was partly a representative, deemed themselves entitled to feel towards all simpletons who seek other prizes than the dusty one along the highway. He then took his leave with an uplifted finger and a sneer upon his face that haunted the artist's dreams for many a night afterwards. At the time of his old master's visit Owen was probably on the point of taking up the relinquished task, but by this sinister event he was thrown back into the state once he had been slowly emerging. But the innate tendency of his soul had only been accumulating fresh vigor during its apparent sluggishness. As the summer advanced he almost totally relinquished his business, and permitted father time, so far as the old gentleman was represented by the clocks and watches under his control, to stray at random through human life, making infinite confusion among the train of bewildered hours. He wasted the sunshine, as people said, in wandering through the woods and fields and along the banks of streams. There, like a child, he found amusement in chasing butterflies or watching the motions of water insects. There was something truly mysterious in the intentness with which he contemplated these living play things as they sported on the breeze or examined the structure of an imperial insect whom he had imprisoned. The chase of butterflies was an apt emblem of the ideal pursuit in which he had spent so many golden hours. But would the beautiful idea ever be yielded to his hand, like the butterfly that symbolized it? Sweet doubtless were these days and congenial to the artist's soul. They were full of bright conceptions which gleamed through his intellectual world as the butterflies gleamed through the outward atmosphere and were real to him, for the instant, without the toil and perplexity and many disappointments of attempting to make them visible to the sensual eye. Alas, that the artist, whether in poetry or whatever other material, may not content himself with the inward enjoyment of the beautiful, but must chase the flitting mystery beyond the verge of his ethereal domain, and crush its frail being in seizing it with a material grasp. No one Warland felt the impulse to give external reality to his ideas as irresistibly as any of the poets or painters who have arrayed the world in a dimmer and fainter beauty imperfectly copied from the richness of their visions. The night was now his time for the slow progress of recreating the one idea to which all his intellectual activity referred itself. Always at the approach of dusk he stole into the town, locked himself within his shop, and wrought with patient delicacy of touch for many hours. Sometimes he was startled by the rap of the watchmen who, when all the world should be asleep, had caught the gleam of lamplight through the crevices of Owen Warland's shutters. Daylight to the morbid sensibility of his mind seemed to have an intrusiveness that interfered with his pursuits. On cloudy and inclement days therefore he sat with his head upon his hands, muffling, as it were, his sensitive brain and a mist of indefinite musings, for it was a relief to escape from the sharp distinctness with which he was compelled to shape out his thoughts during his nightly toil. From one of these fits of torpor he was aroused by the entrance of Annie Hovindan, who came into the shop with the freedom of a customer, and also with something of the familiarity of a childish friend. She had worn a hole through her silver thimble and wanted Owen to repair it. But I don't know whether you will condescend to such a task, said she, laughing, now that you are so taken up with the notion of putting spirit into machinery. Where did you get that idea, Annie? said Owen, starting in surprise. Oh, out of my own head! answered she, and from something that I heard you say, long ago, when you were but a boy and I a little child. But come, will you mend this poor thimble of mine? Anything for your sake, Annie, said Owen Warland, anything, even were it to work at Robert Danforth's forge. And that would be a pretty sight, retorted Annie, glancing, with imperceptible slightness at the artist's small and slender frame. Well, here's the thimble. But that is a strange idea of yours, said Owen, about the spiritualization of matter. And then the thought stole into his mind that this young girl possessed the gift to comprehend him better than all the world besides. And what a help and strength would it be to him in his lonely toil if he could gain the sympathy of the only being whom he loved. To persons whose pursuits are insulated from the common business of life, who are either in advance of mankind or apart from it, there often comes a sensation of moral cold that makes the spirit shiver as if it had reached the frozen solitudes around the pole. What the prophet, the poet, the reformer, the criminal, or any other man with human yearnings but separated from the multitude by a peculiar lot, might feel poor Owen felt. Annie, cried he, growing pale as death at the thought, how gladly would I tell you the secret of my pursuit? You, me thinks, would estimate it rightly. You, I know, would hear it with a reverence that I must not expect from the harsh material world. Would I not? To be sure I would, replied Annie Hevendon, lightly laughing. Come, explain to me quickly what is the meaning of this little whirly gig so delicately wrought that it might be a play thing for Queen Mab. See, I will put it in motion. Hold! exclaimed Owen. Hold! Annie had but given the slightest possible touch with the point of a needle to the same minute portion of complicated machinery which has been more than once mentioned, when the artist seized her by the wrist with a force that made her scream aloud. She was affrighted at the convulsion of intense rage and anguish that writhed across his features. The next instant he let his head sink upon his hands. Go, Annie, remembered he. I have deceived myself and must suffer for it. I yearned for sympathy and thought and fancied and dreamed that you might give it me, but you lacked the talisman, Annie, that should admit you into my secrets. That touch has undone the toil of months and the thought of a lifetime. It was not your fault, Annie, but you have ruined me. Poro in Warland. He had indeed erred, yet pardonably, for if any human spirit could have sufficiently reverenced the processes so sacred in his eyes it must have been a woman's. Even Annie Hovinton, possibly might not have disappointed him had she been enlightened by the deep intelligence of love. The artist spent the ensuing winter in a way that satisfied any persons who had hitherto retained a hopeful opinion of him that he was, in truth, irrevocably doomed to inutility as regarded the world and to an evil destiny on his own part. The decease of a relative had put him in possession of a small inheritance, thus freed from the necessity of toil and having lost the steadfast influence of a great purpose, great at least to him, he abandoned himself to habits from which it might have been supposed the mere delicacy of his organization would have availed to secure him. But when the ethereal portion of a man of genius is obscured the earthly part assumes an influence the more uncontrollable, because the character is now thrown off the balance to which Providence had so nicely adjusted it, and which, in coarser natures, is adjusted by some other method. Owen Warland made proof of whatever show of bliss may be found in riot. He looked at the world through the golden medium of wine and contemplated the visions that bubble up so gaily around the brim of the glass, and that people the air with shapes of pleasant madness which so soon grossed ghostly and forlorn. Even when this dismal and inevitable change had taken place the young man might still have continued to coiff the cup of enchantments, though it's a vapor did but shroud life in gloom and fill the gloom with spectres that mocked at him. There was a certain irksanness of spirit which, being real, and the deepest sensation of which the artist was now conscious, was more intolerable than any fantastic miseries and horrors that the abuse of wine could summon up. In the latter case he could remember, even out of the midst of his trouble, that all was but a delusion. In the former the heavy anguish was his actual life. From this perilous state he was redeemed by an incident which more than one person witnessed, but of which the shrewdest could not explain or conjecture the operation on Owen Warland's mind. It was very simple. On a warm afternoon of spring, as the artist sat among his riotous companions with the glass of wine before him, a splendid butterfly flew in at the open window and fluttered about his head. Ah! exclaimed Owen, who had drank freely. Are you alive again, child of the sun and playmate of the summer breeze, after your dismal winter's nap? Then it is time for me to be at work. And leaving his empty glass upon the table he departed and was never known to sip another drop of wine. And now again he resumed his wanderings in the woods and fields. It might be fancied that the bright butterfly, which had come so spirit-like into the window as Owen sat with the rude revelers, was indeed a spirit commissioned to recall him to the pure, ideal life that had so etherealized him among men. It might be fancied that he went forth to seek the spirit in its sunny haunts, for still, as in the summertime gone by, he was seen to steal gently up wherever a butterfly had alighted and lose himself in contemplation of it. When it took flight his eyes followed the winged vision as if its airy track would show the path to heaven. But what could be the purpose of the unseasonable toil which was again resumed as the watchmen knew by the lines of lamplight through the crevices of Owen Whirland's shutters? The town's people had won comprehensive explanation of all these singularities. Owen Whirland had gone mad. How universally efficacious, how satisfactory, too, and soothing to the injured sensibility of narrowness and dullness is this easy method of accounting for whatever lies beyond the world's most ordinary scope. From St. Paul's days down to our poor little artist of the beautiful the same talisman had been applied to the elucidation of all mysteries in the words or deeds of men who spoke or acted too wisely or too well. In Owen Whirland's case the judgment of his town's people may have been correct. Perhaps he was mad. The lack of sympathy that contrast between himself and his neighbors which took away the restraint of example was enough to make him so. Or possibly he had got just so much of ethereal radiance as served to bewilder him in an earthly sense by its intermixture with the common daylight. One evening, when the artist had returned from a customary ramble and had just thrown the luster of his lamp on the delicate piece of work so often interrupted but still taken up again as if his fate were embodied in its mechanism, he was surprised by the entrance of old Peter Tovenden. Owen never met this man without a shrinking of the heart. Of all the world he was most terrible by reason of a keen understanding which saw so distinctly what it did see and disbelieved so uncompromisingly in what it could not see. On this occasion the old watchmaker had merely a gracious word or two to say. Owen, my lad, he said. We must see you at my house tomorrow night. The artist began to mutter some excuse. Oh, but it must be so, quote Peter Tovenden, for the sake of the days when you were one of the household. What, my boy? Don't you know that my daughter Annie is engaged to Robert Danforth? We are making an entertainment in our humble way to celebrate the event. That little monosyllable was all he uttered. Its tone seemed cold and unconcerned to an ear like Peter Tovenden's, and yet there was in it the stifled outcry of the poor artist's heart which he compressed within him like a man holding down an evil spirit. One slight outbreak, however imperceptible to the old watchmaker, he allowed himself. Raising the instrument with which he was about to begin his work, he let it fall upon the little system of machinery that had, anew, cost him months of thought and toil. It was shattered by the stroke. Owen Warland's story would have been no tolerable representation of the troubled life of those who strived to create the beautiful if, amid all other thwarting influences, love had not interposed to steal the cunning from his hand. Outwardly he had been no ardent or enterprising lover. The career of his passion had confined its tumult and vicissitudes so entirely within the artist's imagination that Annie herself had scarcely more than a woman's intuitive perception of it. But, in Owen's view, it covered the whole field of his life. Forgetful of the time when she had shown herself incapable of any deep response, he had persisted in connecting all his dreams of artistic success with Annie's image. She was the visible shape in which the spiritual power that he worshipped, and on whose altar he hoped to lay a not unworthy offering, was made manifest to him. Of course he had deceived himself. There were no such attributes in Annie Hovendan as his imagination had endowed her with. She, in the aspect which she wore to his inward vision, was as much a creature of his own as the mysterious piece of mechanism would be where it ever realized. Had he become convinced of his mistake, through the medium of successful love, had he won Annie to his bosom, and there beheld her fade from angel into ordinary woman? The disappointment might have driven him back, with concentrated energy upon his sole remaining object. On the other hand, had he found Annie what he fancied, his lot would have been so rich in beauty that out of its mere redundancy he might have wrought the beautiful into many a worthier type than he had toiled for. But the guys in which his sorrow came to him, the sense that the angel of his life had been snatched away and given to a rude man of earth and iron, who could neither need nor appreciate her ministrations. This was the very perversity of fate that makes human existence appear too absurd and contradictory to be the scene of one other hope or one other of fear. There was nothing left for Owen Warland but to sit down like a man that had been stunned. He went through a fit of illness. After his recovery his small and slender frame assumed an obtusor garniture of flesh than it had ever before worn. His thin cheeks became round. His delicate little hand, so spiritually fashioned to achieve fairy task work, grew plumper than the hand of a thriving infant. His aspect had a childishness such as might have induced a stranger to pat him on the head, pausing, however, in the act to wonder what manner of child was here. It was as if the spirit had gone out of him, leaving the body to flourish in a sort of vegetable existence. Not that Owen Warland was idiotic. He could talk, and not irrationally. Somewhat of a babbler indeed did people begin to think him, for he was apt to discourse at weary some length of marvels of mechanism that he had read about in books, but which he had learned to consider as absolutely fabulous. Among them he enumerated the man of brass, constructed by Alper des Magnus, and the brazen head of Fryer Bacon, and coming down to later times the automata of a little coach and horses, which it was pretended had been manufactured for the Dauphin of France. Together with an insect that buzzed about the ear like a living fly, and yet was but a contrivance of minute steel springs. There was a story, too, of a duck that waddled and quacked and ate. Though, had any honest citizen purchased it for dinner, he would have found himself cheated with the mere mechanical apparition of a duck. But all these accounts, said Owen Warland, I am now satisfied are mere impositions. Then, in mysterious way, he would confess that he once thought differently. In his ideal and dreamy days he had considered it possible, in a certain sense, to spiritualize machinery, and to combine with the new species of life and motion thus produced a beauty that should attain to the ideal which nature has proposed to herself and all her creatures, but has never taken pains to realize. He seemed, however, to retain no very distinct perception either of the process of achieving this object or of the design itself. I have thrown it all aside now, he would say. It was a dream such as young men are always mystifying themselves with. Now that I have acquired a little common sense it makes me laugh to think of it. Poor, poor, and fallen Owen Warland. These were the symptoms that he had ceased to be an inhabitant of the better sphere that lies unseen around us. He had lost his faith in the invisible, and now prided himself, as such unfortunates invariably do, in the wisdom which rejected much that even his eye could see, and trusted confidently in nothing but what his hand could touch. This is the calamity of men whose spiritual part dies out of them and leaves the grosser understanding to assimilate them more and more to the things of which alone it can take cognizance. But in Owen Warland the spirit was not dead nor passed away. It only slept. How it awoke again is not recorded. Perhaps the torped slumber was broken by a convulsive pain. Perhaps, as in a former instance, the butterfly came and hovered about his head and re-inspired him, as indeed this creature of the sunshine had always a mysterious mission for the artist, re-inspired him with the former purpose of his life. Whether it were pain or happiness that thrilled through his veins, his first impulse was to thank heaven for rendering him again the being of thought, imagination, and keenest sensibility that he had long ceased to be. Now, for my task, said he, never did I feel such strength for it as now. Yet strong as he felt himself, he was incited to toil the more diligently by an anxiety lest death should surprise him in the midst of his labours. This anxiety, perhaps, is common to all men who set their hearts upon anything so high, in their own view of it, that life becomes of importance only as conditional to its accomplishment. So long as we love life for itself, we seldom dread the losing it. When we desire life for the attainment of an object, we recognize the frailty of its texture. But side by side with this sense of insecurity there is a vital faith in our invulnerability to the shaft of death while engaged in any task that seems assigned by providence as our proper thing to do, and which the world would have caused a mourn for should we leave it unaccomplished. Can the philosopher, big with the inspiration of an idea that is to reform mankind, believe that he is to be beckoned from this sensible existence at the very instant when he is mustering his breath to speak the word of light? Should he perish so, the weary ages may pass away, the worlds whose life's sand may fall drop by drop before another intellect is prepared to develop the truth that might have been uttered then. But history affords many an example where the most precious spirit at any particular epoch manifested in human shape has gone hence untimely. Without space allowed him, so far as mortal judgment could discern to perform his mission on the earth. The prophet dies and the man of torpid heart and sluggish brain lives on. The poet leaves his song half-sung, or finishes it beyond the scope of mortal ears in a celestial choir. The painter, as Alston did, leaves half his conception on the canvas to sadden us with its imperfect beauty, and goes to picture forth the whole if it be no irreverence to say so in the hues of heaven. But rather such incomplete designs of this life will be perfected nowhere. This so frequent abortion of man's dearest projects must be taken as proof that the deeds of earth, however etherealized by piety or genius, are without value except as exercises and manifestations of the spirit. In heaven all ordinary thought is higher and more melodious than Milton's song. Then would he add another verse to any strain that he had left unfinished here? But to return to Owen Warland it was his fortune, good or ill, to achieve the purpose of his life. Pass we over a long space of intense thought, yearning effort, minute toil and wasting anxiety succeeded by an instant of solitary triumph. Let all this be imagined, and then behold the artist on a winter evening seeking admittance to Robert Danforth's fireside circle. There he found the man of iron with his massive substance thoroughly warmed and atempered by domestic influences. And there was Annie, too, now transformed into a matron with much of her husband's plain and sturdy nature, but imbued as Owen Warland still believed, with a finer grace, that might enable her to be the interpreter between strength and beauty. It happened likewise that old Peter Hovendon was a guest this evening at his daughter's fireside, and it was his well-remembered expression of keen, cold criticism that first encountered the artist's glance. "'My old friend Owen!' cried Robert Danforth, starting up and compressing the artist's delicate fingers within a hand that was accustomed to gripe bars of iron. This is kind and neighborly to come to us at last. I was afraid your perpetual emotion had bewitched you out of the remembrance of old times.' "'We are glad to see you,' said Annie, while a blush reddened her matronly cheek. It was not like a friend to stay away from us so long.' "'Well, Owen!' inquired the old watchmaker, as his first greeting. How comes on the beautiful? Have you created it at last?' The artist did not immediately reply, being startled by the apparition of a young child of strength that was tumbling about in the carpet, a little personage who had come mysteriously out of the infinite, but with something so sturdy and real in his composition that he seemed moulded out of the densest substance which earth could supply. This hopeful infant crawled towards the newcomer and settled himself on end, as Robert Danforth expressed the posture, stared at Owen with a look of such sagacious observation that the mother could not help exchanging a proud glance with her husband. But the artist was disturbed by the child's look, as imagining a resemblance between it and Peter Hovendan's habitual expression. He could have fancied that the old watchmaker was compressed into this baby shape, and looked out of those baby eyes, and repeating, as he did now, the malicious question, "'The beautiful, Owen! How comes on the beautiful? Have you succeeded in creating the beautiful?' "'I have succeeded,' replied the artist, with a momentary light of triumph in his eyes and a smile of sunshine, yet steeped in such depth of thought that it was almost sadness. "'Yes, my dear friends, it is the truth. I have succeeded.' "'Indeed!' cried Annie, a look of maiden mirthfulness peeping out of her face again. And is it lawful now to inquire what the secret is?' "'Surely it is to disclose it that I have come,' answered Owen Warland. "'You shall know, and see, and touch, and possess the secret. For Annie, if by that name I may still address the friend of my boyish years. Annie, it is for your bridal gift that I have wrought this spiritualized mechanism, this harmony of motion, this mystery of beauty. It comes late indeed. But it is as we go onward in life when objects begin to lose their freshness of hue and our souls their delicacy of perception that the spirit of beauty is most needed. If—forgive me, Annie, if you know how to value this gift, it can never come too late.' He produced as he spoke what seemed a jewel-box. It was carved richly out of ebony by his own hand and inlaid with a fanciful tracery of pearl, representing a boy in pursuit of a butterfly which, elsewhere, had become a winged spirit and was flying heavenward, while the boy or youth had found such efficacy in his strong desire that he ascended from earth to cloud and from cloud to celestial atmosphere to win the beautiful. This case of ebony the artist opened and bade Annie place her fingers on its edge. She did so, but almost screamed as a butterfly fluttered forth and a lighting on her finger's tip sat waving the ample magnificence of its purple and gold-speckled wings as if in prelude to a flight. It is impossible to express by words the glory, the thunder, the delicate gorgeousness which were softened into the beauty of this object. Nature's ideal butterfly was here realized in all its perfection. Not in the pattern of such faded insects as flit among earthly flowers, but of those which hover across the meads of paradise for child angels and the spirits of departed infants to disport themselves with. The rich down was visible upon its wings. The luster of its eyes seemed instinct with spirit. The firelight glimmered around this wonder that candles gleamed upon it, but it glistened apparently by its own radiance and illuminated the finger an outstretched hand on which it rested with a white gleam like that of precious stones. In its perfect beauty the consideration of size was entirely lost. Had its wings overreached the firmament, the mind could not have been more filled or satisfied. Beautiful! Beautiful! exclaimed Annie. Is it alive? Is it alive? Alive, to be sure it is, answered her husband. You suppose any mortal has skill enough to make a butterfly or would put himself to the trouble of making one when any child may catch a score of them in a summer's afternoon? Alive! Certainly! But this pretty box is undoubtedly of our friend Owen's manufacture, and really it doesn't credit. At this moment the butterfly waved its wings anew with the motion so absolutely lifelike that Annie was startled and even awestricken, for in spite of her husband's opinion she could not satisfy herself whether it was indeed a living creature or a piece of wondrous mechanism. Is it alive? she repeated more earnestly than before. Judge for yourself, said Owen Warland, who stood gazing in her face with fixed attention. The butterfly now flung itself upon the air, fluttered round Annie's head and soared into a distant region of the parlor, still making itself perceptible to sight by the starry gleam in which the motion of its wings enveloped it. The infant on the floor followed its course with his sagacious little eyes. After flying about the room it returned in a spiral curve and settled again on Annie's finger. But is it alive? exclaimed she again, and the finger on which the gorgeous mystery had alighted was so tremulous that the butterfly was forced to balance himself with his wings. Tell me if it is alive, or whether you created it. Wherefore ask who created it, so it be beautiful? replied Owen Warland. Alive? Yes, Annie. It may well be said to possess life, for it is absorbed to my own being into itself, and in the secret of that butterfly, and in its beauty, which is not merely outward but deep as its whole system, is represented the intellect, the imagination, the sensibility, the soul of an artist of the beautiful. Yes, I created it. But—and here his countenance somewhat changed. This butterfly is now to me what it was when I beheld it afar off in the daydreams of my youth. Be it what it made, it is a pretty thing, said the blacksmith, grinning with childish delight. I wonder whether it would condescend to alight on such a great clumsy finger as mine. Hold it hither, Annie. By the artist's direction Annie touched her finger's tip to that of her husband's, and after a momentary delay the butterfly fluttered from one to the other. It polluted a second flight by a similar yet not precisely the same waving of wings as in the first experiment. Then, ascending from the blacksmith's stalwart finger, it rose in a gradually enlarging curve to the ceiling, made one wide sweep around the room, and returned with an undulating movement to the point once it had started. Well that does beat all nature, cried Robert Danforth, bestowing the heartiest praise that he could find expression for, and indeed, had he paused there, a man of finer words and nicer perception could not easily have said more. That goes beyond me, I confess. But what then? There is more real use in one downright blow of my sledgehammer than in the whole five years' labor that our friend Owen has wasted on this butterfly. Here the child clapped his hands and made a great babble of indistinct utterance, apparently demanding that the butterfly should be given him for a plaything. Owen Warland, meanwhile, glanced side-long at Annie to discover whether she sympathized in her husband's estimate of the comparative value of the beautiful and the practical. There was amid all her kindness towards himself, amid all the wonder and admiration with which she contemplated the marvelous work of his hands in incarnation of his idea, a secret scorn. Too secret, perhaps, for her own unconsciousness, and percept only to such intuitive discernment as that of the artist. But Owen, in the latter stages of his pursuit, had risen out of the region in which such a discovery might have been torture. He knew that the world, and Annie, as the representative of the world, whatever praise might be bestowed, could never say the fitting word nor feel the fitting sentiment which should be the perfect recompense of an artist who, symbolizing a lofty moral by material trifle, converting what was earthly to spiritual gold, had won the beautiful into his handiwork. Not at this latest moment was he to learn that the reward of all high performance must be sought within itself, or sought in vain. There was, however, a view of the matter which Annie and her husband, and even Peter Hovenden, might fully have understood, and which would have satisfied them that the toil of years had here been worthily bestowed. Owen Warland might have told them that this butterfly, this plaything, this bridal gift of a poor watchmaker to a blacksmith's wife, was, in truth, a gem of art that a monarch would have purchased with honors and abundant wealth, and have treasured it among the jewels of his kingdom as the most unique and wondrous of them all. But the artist smiled and kept a secret to himself. Father, said Annie, thinking that a word of praise from the old watchmaker might gratify his former apprentice, do come and admire this pretty butterfly? Let us see, said Peter Hovenden, rising from his chair, with a sneer upon his face that always made people doubt, as he himself did in everything but a material existence. Here is my finger for it to alight upon. I shall understand it better when once I have touched it. But to the increased astonishment of Annie, when the tip of her father's finger was pressed against that of her husband, on which the butterfly still rested, the insect drooped its wings and seemed on the point of falling to the floor. Even the bright spots of gold upon its wings and body, unless her eyes deceived her, grew dim, and the glowing purple took a dusky hue, and the starry luster that gleamed around the glass-mouth's hand became faint and vanished. It is dying! It is dying! cried Annie in alarm. It has been delicately wrought, said the artist calmly. As I told you, it has imbibed a spiritual essence. Call it magnetism or what you will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery, its exquisite susceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him who instilled his own life into it. It has already lost its beauty, and a few moments more its mechanism would be irreparably injured. Take away your hand, father! entreated Annie, turning pale. Here is my child. Let it rest on his innocent hand. There, perhaps, its life will revive and its colors grow brighter than ever. Her father, with an acrid smile, withdrew his finger. The butterfly then appeared to recover the power of voluntary motion, while its hues assumed much of their original luster, and the gleam of starlight, which was its most ethereal attribute, again formed a halo round about it. At first, when transferred from Robert Danforth's hand to the small finger of the child, this radiance grew so powerful that it positively threw the little fellow's shadow back against the wall. He, meanwhile, extended his plump hand as he had seen his father and mother do, and watched the waving of the insect's wings with infantile delight. Nevertheless, there was a certain odd expression of sagacity that made Owen Warland feel as if here were old Pete Hovindan, partially, and but partially, redeemed from his hard skepticism into childish faith. How wise the little monkey looks! whispered Robert Danforth to his wife. I never saw such a look on a child's face, answered Annie, admiring her own infant, and with good reason, far more than the artistic butterfly. The darling knows more of the mystery than we do. As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of something not entirely congenial in the child's nature, it alternately sparkled and grew dim. At length it arose from the small hand of the infant with an airy motion that seemed to bear it upward without an effort. As if the ethereal instincts with which its master's spirit had endowed it impelled this fair vision involuntarily to a higher sphere. Had there been no obstruction, it might have soared into the sky and grown immortal. But its luster gleamed upon the ceiling, the exquisite texture of its wings brushed against that earthly medium, and a sparkle or two, as of stardust, floated downward and lay glimmering on the carpet. Then the butterfly came fluttering down, and, instead of returning to the infant, was apparently attracted towards the artist's hand. Not so, not so, murmured Owen Warland, as if his handiwork could have understood him, thou hast gone forth out of thy master's heart. There is no return for thee. With a wavering movement, and emitting a tremulous radiance, the butterfly struggled, as it were, towards the infant, and was about to alight upon his finger. But while it still hovered in the air, the little child of strength, with his grandsire's sharp and shrewd expression in his face, made a snatch at the marvellous insect, and compressed it in his hand. Annie screamed. Old Peter Haventon burst into a cold and scornful laugh. The blacksmith, by main force, unclosed the infant's hand, and found within the palm a small heap of glittering fragments, once the mystery of beauty had fled forever. And as for Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labour, and which was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly than this. When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses, became of little value in his eyes, while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality. End of The Artist of the Beautiful, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. THE CLICKING OF CUTHBURT by P. G. Woodhouse This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. This reading by John Axe. THE CLICKING OF CUTHBURT by P. G. Woodhouse The young man came into the smoking-room of the clubhouse, and flung his bag with a clatter on the floor. He sank moodly into an arm chair and pressed the bell. Waiter! Sir? The young man pointed at the bag with every evidence of distaste. You may have these cubs, he said. Take them away. If you don't want them yourself, give them to one of the catties. Across the room the oldest member gazed at him with a grave sadness through the smoke of his pipe. His eye was deep and dreamy. The eye of a man who, as the poet says, has seen golf steadily and seen it whole. You were giving up golf, he said? He was not altogether unprepared for such an attitude on the young man's part. For from his iry on the terrace above the ninth green, he had observed him start out on the afternoon's round, and had seen him lose a couple of balls in the lake at the second hole after taking seven strokes at the first. Yes, cried the young man fiercely. Forever, damn it! Playing game? Blank infernal, fat-headed, silly ass of a game? Nothing but a waste of time. The sage winced. Don't say that, my boy. But I do say it. What earthly good is golf? Life is stern, and life is earnest. We live in a practical age. All around us we see foreign competition making itself unpleasant. And we spend our time playing golf. What do we get out of it? Is golf any use? That's what I'm asking you. Can you name me a single case where devotion to this pestilential pastime has done a man any practical good? The sage smiled gently. I could name a thousand. One will do. I will select, said the sage, from the innumerable memories that rest in my mind, the story of Cuthbert Banks. Never heard of him. Give good cheer, said the oldest member. You're going to hear of him now. It was in the picturesque little settlement of Wood Hills, said the oldest member, that the incidents occurred which I'm about to relate. Even if you have never been in Wood Hills, that suburban paradise is probably familiar to you by name. Situated at a convenient distance from the city, it combines in a notable manner the advantages of town life with the pleasant surroundings and healthful air of the country. Its inhabitants live in commodious houses, standing in their own grounds, and enjoying so many luxuries, such as gravel, soil, main drainage, electric light, telephone, baths, and the company's own water, that you might be pardoned for imagining life to be so ideal for them that no possible improvement could be added to their lot. Mrs. Willoughby Smithhurst was under no such delusion. What Wood Hills needed to make it perfect, she realized, was culture. Material benefits are all very well, but if the sumum bonum is to be achieved, the soul also demands a look in, and it was Mrs. Smithhurst's unfaltering resolve that never while she had her strength should the soul be handed the loser's end. It was her intention to make Wood Hills a center of all that was most cultivated and refined, and golly how she had succeeded. Under her presidency, the Wood Hills Literary and Debating Society had tripled its membership, but there was always a fly in the ointment, a caterpillar in the salad. The local golf club, an institution to which Mrs. Smithhurst strongly objected, had also tripled its membership, and the division of the community into two rival camps. The golfers and the cultured had become more marked than ever. This division, always acute, had attained now the dimensions of a schism. The rival sex greeted one another with cold hostility. Unfortunate episodes came to widen the breach. Mrs. Smithhurst's house adjoined the links, standing to the right of the fourth tee, and as the Literary Society was in the habit of entertaining visiting lecturers, many a golfer had fusel his drive owing to a sudden loud outburst of applause coinciding with his downswing. And not long before this story opens, a sliced ball quizzing in at the open window had come within an ace of incapacitating Raymond Parcel Devine, the rising young novelist who rose at that moment a clear foot and a half, from any further exercise of his art. Two inches indeed to the right and Raymond would inevitably have handed in his dinner pail. To make matters worse, a ring at the front doorbell followed almost immediately, and the maid ushered in a young man of pleasing appearance in a sweater and baggy knickerbockers, who apologetically but firmly insisted on playing his ball where it lay. And, what with the shock of the lecturer's narrow escape and the spectacle of the intruder standing on the table and working away with a niblick, the afternoon session had to be classed as a complete frost. Mr. Devine's determination, from which no argument could swerve him to deliver the rest of his lecture in the cold cellar, gave the meeting a jolt from which it never recovered. I have dwelt upon this incident because it was the means of introducing Cuthbert Banks to Mrs. Smithhurst's niece, Adeline. As Cuthbert, for it was he who had so nearly reduced the muster role of rising novelists by one, hopped down from the table after his stroke, he was suddenly aware that a beautiful girl was looking at him intently. As a matter of fact, everyone in the room was looking at him intently. None more so than Raymond Parsle Devine. But none of the other were beautiful girls. Long as the members of Woodhills Literary Society were on brain, they were short on looks. And to Cuthbert's excited eye, Adeline Smithhurst stood out like a jewel in a pile of Coke. He had never seen her before, for she had only arrived at her aunt's house on the previous day. But he was perfectly certain that life, even when lived in the midst of gravel soil, main drainage, and the company's own water, was going to be a pretty fore affair if he did not see her again. Yes, Cuthbert was in love. And it is interesting to record, as showing the effects of the tender emotion on a man's game, that 20 minutes after he had met Adeline, he did the short 11th in one, and was as near as a toucher to get a three on the 400 yard 12th. I skipped lightly over the intermediate stages of Cuthbert's courtship, and come to the moment when, at the annual ball in aid of the local cottage hospital, the only occasion during the year on which the lion, so to speak, lay down with a lamb, and the golfers and the cultured met on terms of easy comrade ship, their differences temporarily laid aside. He proposed to Adeline, and was badly stymied. That fair soulful girl could not see him with a spyglass. Mr. Banks, she said, I will speak frankly. Charge right ahead, a Senate Cuthbert. Deeply sensible as I am of, I know, of the honor and the compliment and all that, but passing lightly over all that guff, what seems to be the trouble? I love you to distraction. Love is not everything. You're wrong, said Cuthbert earnestly. You're right off it. Love. And he was about to dilate on the theme when she interrupted him. I am a girl of ambition. And very nice to said Cuthbert. I am a girl of ambition, repeated Adeline. And I realized that the fulfillment of my ambitions must come through my husband. I am very ordinary myself. What cried Cuthbert? You ordinary? Why, you are a pearl among women, the queen of your sex. You can't have been looking in a mirror lately. You stand alone. Simply alone, you make the rest look like battered repaints. Well, said Adeline, softening a trifle, I believe I am fairly good looking. Anybody who was content to call you fairly good looking would describe the Taj Mahal as a pretty nifty tomb. But that is not the point. What I mean is, if I marry a non-entity, I shall be a non-entity myself forever. And I would sooner die than be a non-entity. And if I follow your reasoning, you think that lets me out? Well, really, Mr. Banks, have you done anything? Or are you ever likely to do anything worthwhile? Cuthbert hesitated. It's true, he said. I didn't finish in the first ten at the open. And I was knocked out in the semifinals of the amateur. But I won the French Open last year. The what? The French Open. Golf, you know. Golf. You waste your time playing golf. I admire a man who is more spiritual, more intellectual. A pang of jealousy went Cuthbert's bosom. Like what's its name, Divine, he said, sullenly. Mr. Divine, replied Adeline, bushing faintly, is going to be a great man. He has achieved much. The critics say he is more Russian than any other young English writer. And is that good? Of course, that's good. I should have thought that we would be to be more English than any other young English writer. Nonsense. Who wants an English writer to be English? You've got to be Russian or Spanish or something to be a real success. The mantle of great Russians has descended on Mr. Divine. From what I've heard of the Russians, I should hate to have that happen to me. There is no danger of that, said Adeline scornfully. Oh, well, let me tell you that there is a lot more in me than you think. That might easily be so. You think I'm not spiritual and intellectual, said Cuthbert, deeply moved? Very well. Tomorrow I join the literary society. Even as he spoke the words, his leg was itching to kick himself for being such a chump. But the sudden expression of pleasure on Adeline's faith soothed him. He went home that night with the feeling that he had taken on something rather attractive. It was only in the cold gray light of the morning that he realized what he had let himself in for. I do not know if you have had any experience of suburban literary societies, but the one that flourished under the eye of Mrs. Willoughby Smithhurst at Wood Hills was rather more so than the average. With my feeble powers of narrative, I cannot hope to make clear to you all that Cuthbert banks endured in the next few weeks. And even if I could, I doubt if I should do so. It is all very well to excite pity and terror, as Aristotle recommends. But there are limits. In the ancient Greek tragedies, it was an ironclad rule that all the real rough stuff should take place offstage. And I shall follow this admirable principle. It will suffice if I say merely that Jay Cuthbert banks had a thin time. After attending 11 debates and 14 lectures on Ver's Libra poetry, the 17th century essayists, the neo Scandinavian movement in Portuguese literature, and other subjects of a similar nature, he grew so enfeebled that, on the rare occasions when he had the time for a visit to the Lynx, he had to take a full iron for his mashy shots. It was not simply the oppressive nature of the debates and the lectures that sapped his vitality. What really got in amongst him was the torture of seeing Adeline's adoration of Raymond Parslow Divine. The man seemed to have made the deepest possible impression on her plastic emotions. When he spoke, she leaned forward with parted lips and looked at him. When he was not speaking, which was seldom, she leaned back and looked at him. And when he happened to take the next seat to her, she leaned sideways and looked at him. One glance at Mr. Divine would have been more than enough for Cuthbert. But Adeline found him a spectacle that never paled. She could not have gazed at him with a more rapturous intensity if she had been a small child, and he, a saucer of ice cream. All this Cuthbert had to witness, while still endeavoring to retain possession of his faculty sufficiently, to enable him to duck and back away if someone suddenly asked him what he thought of the somber realism of Vladimir Brusilov. It is little wonder that he tossed in his bed, picking at the coverlet, through sleepless nights, and had to have all his waistcoats taken in three inches to keep them from sagging. This Vladimir Brusilov, to whom I have referred, was the famous Russian novelist. And, owing to the fact of his being in the country on a lecturing tour at the moment, there had been something of a boom in his works. The Woodhills Literary Society had been studying them for weeks, and never since his first entrance into the intellectual circles had Cuthbert banks come nearer to throwing in the towel. Vladimir specialized in gray studies of hopeless misery, where nothing happened till page 380, when the Mujik decided to commit suicide. It was tough going for a man whose deepest reading hitherto had been Vardin on the push-shot, and there could be no greater proof of the magic of love than the fact that Cuthbert stuck it without a cry. But the strain was terrible, and I am inclined to think that he must have cracked, had it not been for the daily reports in the papers of the internecine strife that was proceeding so briskly in Russia. Cuthbert was an optimist at heart, and it seemed to him that, at the rate at which the inhabitants of that interesting country were murdering one another, the supply of Russian novelists must eventually give out. One morning, as he tottered down the road for a short walk, which was now almost the only exercise which he was equal, Cuthbert met Adeline. A spasm of anguish flitted through all his nerve-centres, as he saw that she was accompanied by Raymond Parsle Devine. Good morning, Mr. Banks, said Adeline. Good morning, said Cuthbert Hollaby. Such good news about Vladimir Brusilov. Dead? said Cuthbert, with a touch of hope. Dead? Of course not. Why should he be? No, and Emily met his manager after his lecture at Queen's Hall yesterday, and he has promised that Mr. Brusilov shall come to her next Wednesday reception. Oh, ah, said Cuthbert Dolley. I don't know how she managed it. I think she must have told him that Mr. Devine would be there to meet him. But you said he was coming, argued Cuthbert. I shall be very glad, said Raymond Devine, of the opportunity of meeting Brusilov. I'm sure, Adeline said, he will be very glad of the opportunity of meeting you. Possibly, said Mr. Devine. Possibly. Confident critics have said that my work closely resembles that of the Great Russian Masters. Your psychology is so deep. Yes, yes. And your atmosphere, yes, quiet. Cuthbert, in a perfect agony of spirit, prepared to withdraw from this love feast. The sun was shining brightly, but the world was black to him. Birds sang in the treetops, but he did not hear them. He might have been a moojik for all the pleasure he found in life. You will be there, Mr. Banks? Said Adeline as he turned away. Oh, all right, said Cuthbert. When Cuthbert had entered the drawing room on the following Wednesday and had taken his usual place in a distant corner where, while being able to feast his gaze on Adeline, he had a sporting chance of being overlooked or mistaken for a piece of furniture. He perceived the great Russian thinker seated in the midst of a circle of admiring females. Raymond Parcel Devine had not yet arrived. His first glance at the novelist surprised Cuthbert. Doubtless with the best motives, Vladimir Brusilov had permitted his face to become almost entirely concealed behind a dense cereba of hair, but his eyes were visible through the undergrowth. And it seemed to Cuthbert that there was an expression in them not unlike that of a cat in a strange backyard surrounded by small boys. The man looked for Lauren and hopeless, and Cuthbert wondered whether he had had bad news from home. That was not the case. The latest news which Vladimir Brusilov had had from Russia had been particularly cheering. Three of his principal creditors had perished in the last massacre of the bourgeoisie, and a man whom he had owed for five years for a samovar and a pair of overshoes had fled the country and had not been heard of since. No, it was not bad news from home that was depressing Vladimir. What was wrong with him was the fact that this was the 82nd suburban literary reception he had been compelled to attend since he had landed in the country on his lecturing tour, and he was sick to death of it. When his agent had first suggested the trip, he had signed on the dotted line without an instant's hesitation. Worked out in rubles, the fees offered seemed just about right. But now as he peered through the brushwood at the faces around him and realized that eight out of ten of those present had manuscripts of some sort concealed on their persons, and were only waiting for an opportunity to whip them out and start reading, he wished he had stayed in his quiet home in Nizhny Novgorod, where the worst thing that could happen to a fellow was a brace of bombs coming in through the window and mixing themselves up with his breakfast egg. At this point in his meditations, he was aware that his hostess was looming up before him with a pale young man in hormone spectacles at her side. There was in Mrs. Smethurst's demeanor something of the unction of the master of ceremonies at the Big Fight, who introduces the earnest gentleman who wishes to challenge the winner. Oh, Mr. Brusilov, said Mrs. Smethurst. I do so want you to meet Mr. Raymond Parslow Devine, whose works I expect you to know. He is one of our younger novelists. The distinguished visitor peered in a wary and defensive manner through the shrubbery, but did not speak. Inwardly, he was thinking how exactly like Mr. Devine was to the 81 other young novelists to whom he had been introduced at various Hamlets throughout the country. Raymond Parslow Devine bowed courteously, while Cuthbert, wedged into his corner, clowered at him. The critics, said Mr. Devine, have been kind enough to say that my poor efforts contain a good deal of the Russian spirit. I owe much to the great Russians. I have been greatly influenced by Sovietsky. Down in the forest, something stirred. It was Vladimir Brusilov's mouth opening, and he prepared to speak. He was not a man who prattled readily, especially in a foreign tongue. He gave the impression that each word was excavated from his interior by some up-to-date process of mining. He glared bleakly at Mr. Devine and allowed three words to drop out of him. Sovietsky, no good. He paused for a moment, set the machinery working again, and delivered five more at the pit head. I spit me of Sovietsky. There was a painful sensation. The lot of a popular idol is in many ways an enviable one, but it has the drawback of uncertainty. Here today and gone tomorrow. Until this moment, Raymond Parslow, Devine's stock, had stood at something considerably over-par in Wood Hills, in electoral circles. But now there was a rapid slump. Hitherto, he had been greatly admired for being influenced by Sovietsky. But it appeared now that this was not a good thing to be. It was evidently a rotten thing to be. The law could not touch you for being influenced by Sovietsky, but there is an ethical as well as a legal code. And this, it was obvious that Raymond Parslow, Devine, had transgressed. Women drew away from him slightly, holding their skirts. Men looked at him censorously. Adeline Smithhurst started violently and dropped a teacup, and Cuthbert Banks, doing his popular imitation of a sardine in his corner, felt for the first time that life held something of sunshine. Raymond Parslow, Devine, was finally shaken, but he made in a droid attempt to recover his lost prestige. When I say I have been influenced by Sovietsky, I mean, of course, that I was once under his spell. A young writer commits many follies. I have long since passed through that phase. The false glamour of Sovietsky has ceased to dazzle me. I now belong wholeheartedly to the school of Nastikov. There was a reaction. After all, we cannot expect old heads on young shoulders, and a lapse at the outset of one's career should not be held against one who has eventually seen the light. Nastikov, no good, said Vladimir Brusilov coldly. He paused, listening to the machinery. Nastikov, worse than Sovietsky, he paused again. I spit me of Nastikov, he said. This time there was no doubt about it. The bottom had dropped out of the market, and Raymond Parslow, Devine, preferred, were down in the cellar with no takers. It was clear to the entire assembled company that they had been all wrong about Raymond Parslow, Devine. They had allowed him to play on their innocence and to sell them a pup. They had taken him at his own valuation, and had been cheated into admiring him as a man who amounted to something, and all the while he had belonged to the school of Nastikov. You never can tell. Mrs. Smithhurst's guests were well-bred, and there was consequently no violent demonstration, but you could see by their faces what they felt. Those nearest Raymond Parslow jostled to get further away. Mrs. Smithhurst eyed him stonily through a raised lornette. One or two low hisses were heard, and over at the other end of the room, somebody opened the window in a marked manner. Raymond Parslow, Devine, hesitated for a moment, then, realizing his situation, turned and slunk to the door. There was an audible sigh of relief as it closed behind him. Vladimir Brusilov proceeded to sum up. No novelist's any good except me. Saviecki. Nastikov. I spit me of zeal. No novelist's any good except me. B. G. Woodhouse and Tolstoy. Not bad. Not good, but not bad. No novelist's any good except me. And, having uttered this dictum, he removed a slab of cake from a nearby plate, steered it through the jungle, and began to champ. It is too much to say that there was dead silence. There could never be that in any room in which Vladimir Brusilov was eating cake. But certainly, what you might call the general chit chat was pretty well down and out. Nobody liked to be the first to speak. The members of the Woodhills Literary Society looked at one another timidly. Cuthbert, for his part, gazed at Adeline, and Adeline gazed into space. It was plain that the girl was deeply stirred. Her eyes were open wide, and a faint flush of crimson on her cheeks, and her breath was coming quickly. Adeline's mind was in a whirl. She felt as if she had been walking gaily along a pleasant path, and had stopped suddenly on the very brink of a precipice. It would be idle to deny that Raymond Parsle divine had attracted her extraordinarily. She had taken him at his own valuation as an extremely hot potato. And her hero worship had gradually been turning into love. And now her hero had been shown to have feet of clay. It was hard, I consider, on Raymond Parsle divine. But that is how it goes in the world. You get a following as a celebrity, and then you run up against another bigger celebrity, and your admirers desert you. One could moralize on this at considerable length, but better not, perhaps. Enough to say that the glamour of Raymond Parsle divine ceased abruptly at that moment for Adeline. And her most coherent thought at this juncture was to resolve, as soon as she got up to her room, to burn the three signed photographs he had sent her, and to give the autographed presentation set of his books to the grocer's boy. Mrs. Smithhurst, meanwhile, having rallied somewhat, was endeavoring to set the feast of reason and flow of soul going again. And how do you like England, Mr. Brusiloff, she asked. The celebrity paused in the act of lowering another segment of cake. Damn good, he replied, gorgely. I suppose you've traveled all over the country by this time? You said it, agreed the thinker. Have you met many of our great public men? Yes, yes! Quite a few of the nibs. Lloyd Gorge, I mean him. But beneath the matting, a discontented expression came through his face, and his voice took on a peevish tone. But I not meet your real great men, your Arb-Michel, your Arrivadan. I not meet them. That what gives me the people, Vich. Have you ever meet Arb-Michel and Arrivadan? A strained, anguished look came into Mrs. Smithhurst's face and was reflected in the faces of the other members of the circle. The eminent Russian had sprung two entirely new ones on them. And they felt that their ignorance was about to be exposed. What would Vladimir Brusilov think of the Woodhills Literary Society? The reputation of the Woodhills Literary Society was at stake, trembling in the balance, and coming up for the third time. In dumb agony, Mrs. Smithhurst rolled her eyes about the room, searching for someone capable of coming to the rescue. She drew a blank. And then, from a distant corner, there sounded a deprecating cough. And those nearest Cuthbert banks saw that he had stopped twisting his right foot around his left ankle and his left foot around his right ankle, and was sitting up with a light of almost human intelligence in his eyes. Said Cuthbert, blushing as every eye in the room seemed to fix itself on him. I think he means Abe Mitchell and Harry Varden. Abe Mitchell and Harry Varden repeated Mrs. Smithhurst blankly. I never heard of. Yes, yes, most, very, shouted Vladimir Brusilov enthusiastically. Ard Michelle and Arie Varden. You know them, yes? No, what, perhaps? I've played with Abe Mitchell often, and I was partnered with Harry Varden in last year's open. The great Russian uttered a cry that shook the chandelier. You play the open? Why, he demanded reproachfully of Mrs. Smithhurst, was I not introductory to this young man who plays the opens? Well, the fact is, Mr. Brusilov, she broke off. She was equal to the task of explaining, without already anyone's feelings, that she had always regarded Cuthbert as a piece of cheese and a blot on the landscape. Infroduct me, thundered the celebrity. Well, I certainly, certainly, of course, this is Mr. she looked appealingly at Cuthbert. Banks, prompted Cuthbert. Banks, cried Vladimir Brusilov. Not Kudaboot, Banks! Is your name Kudaboot? Asked Mrs. Smithhurst faintly. Well, it's Cuthbert. Yes, yes, Kudaboot! There was a rush and a whirl as the effervescent Muscovite burst his way through the throng and rushed to where Cuthbert sat. He stood for a moment, eyeing him excitedly. Then, stooping swiftly, kissed him on both cheeks, before Cuthbert could get his guard up. My dear young man, I saw you winzy, French open. Great, great superb hot stuff! And you can say, I said so. Will you permit one who is but 18 at Ninji Novgorod to salute you once more? And he kissed Cuthbert again. Then, brushing aside one or two intellectuals who were in the way, he dragged up a chair and sat down. You are a great man, he said. Oh no, said Cuthbert modestly. Yes, great, most very! The way you're there, your approach putts dead from anywhere. Oh, I don't know. Mr. Brusilov drew his chair closer. Let me tell you one very funny story about putting. It was one day I played at Ninji Novgorod with a pro against Lenin and Trotsky. And Trotsky had a two-inch putt for the hole. But just as he addresses the ball, someone in the crowd, he tries to assassinate Lenin with a revolver. You know that has done a great national sport, trying to assassinate Lenin with revolvers. And the bang puts Trotsky off his stroke, and he goes five yards past the hole, and then Lenin, who is rather shaken, you understand, he misses again himself, and we win the hole in the match, and I clean up 396,000 rubles or 15 shillings in your money. Some gamovitch. And now let me tell you one other very funny story. The desultery conversation had begun in murmurs over the rest of the room, as Wood Hill's intellectuals politely endeavored to conceal the fact that they realized that they were about as much out of it at this reunion of twin souls as cats at a dog show. From time to time they started as Vladimir Brusilov's high laugh boomed out. Perhaps it was consolation to them to know that he was enjoying himself. As for Adeline, how shall I describe her emotions? She was stunned. Before her very eyes, the stone which the builders had rejected had become the main thing. The hundred-to-one shot had walked away with a race. A rush of tender admiration for Cuthbert Banks flooded her heart. She saw that she had been all wrong. Cuthbert, whom she had always treated with patronizing superiority, was really a man to be looked up to and worshiped. A deep, dreamy sigh shook Adeline's fragile form. Half an hour later, Vladimir and Cuthbert Banks rose. Guta by Mrs. Smithurst, said the celebrity, thank you for a most charming visit. My friend Kuta Boot and me, we now go to shoot a few oars. You will lend me clubs, friend Kuta Boot. And he won't. The Niblitsky is what I use most. Guta by Mrs. Smithurst. They were moving to the door when Cuthbert felt a light touch on his arm. Adeline was looking up at him tenderly. May I come to and walk round with you? Cuthbert's bosom heaved. Oh, he said with a tremor in his voice, that you would walk around with me for life. Her eyes met his. Perhaps, she whispered softly, it could be arranged. And so concluded the oldest member, you see that golf can be of the greatest practical assistance to a man in life's struggle. Raymond Parcel Devine, who was no player, had to move out of the neighborhood immediately, and is now, I believe, writing scenarios out in California for the Flickr Film Company. Adeline is married to Cuthbert, and it was only his earnest pleadings which prevented her from having their eldest son, christened Abe Mitchell, ribbed face Mashi Banks, for she is now as keen a devotee of the great game as her husband. Those who know them, say that theirs is a union so devoted, so the sage broke off abruptly, for the young man had rushed to the door and out into the passage. Through the open door, he could hear him crying passionately to the waiter to bring back his clubs. End of The Clicking of Cuthbert by P. G. Woodhouse