ty to a high and chivalrous ideal.

Such a life might be a lesson, if anything could, to the bumptious and
"efficient" and smug. Time after time I have watched him serving some
furred and jewelled customer who was not fit to exchange words with him;
I have seen him jostled in a crowded aisle by some parvenu ignoramus who
knew not that this quiet little man was one of the immortal spirits of
gentleness and breeding who associate in quiet hours with the unburied
dead of English letters. That corner of the store, near the front door,
can never be the same.

Such a life could only fittingly be described by the gentle, inseeing
pen of an E. V. Lucas.

My greatest regret and disappointment, when I heard of his sudden
death, was that he would never know of a little tribute I had paid him
in a forthcoming book. I had been saving it as a surprise for him, for I
knew it would please him. And now he will never know.

February, 1918.

JOYCE KILMER

[Illustration]

I

I wonder if there is any other country where the death of a young
poet is double-column front-page news?

And if poets were able to proofread their own obits, I wonder if
any two lines would have given Joyce Kilmer more honest pride
than these:

JOYCE KILMER, POET,
IS KILLED IN ACTION

which gave many hearts a pang when they picked up the newspaper
last Sunday morning.

Joyce Kilmer died as he lived--"in action." He found life
intensely amusing, unspeakably interesting; his energy was
unlimited, his courage stout. He attacked life at all points,
rapidly gathered its complexities about him, and the more
intricate it became the more zestful he found it. Nothing
bewildered him, nothing terrified. By the time he was thirty he
had attained an almost unique position in literary circles. He
lectured on poetry, he interviewed famous men of letters, he was
poet, editor, essayist, critic, anthologist. He was endlessly
active, full of delightful mirth and a thousand schemes for
outwitting the devil of necessity that hunts all brainworkers.
Nothing could quench him. He was ready to turn out a poem, an
essay, a critical article, a lecture, at a few minutes' notice.
He had been along all the pavements of Grub Street, perhaps the
most exciting place of breadwinning known to the civilized man.
From his beginning as a sales clerk in a New York bookstore
(where, so the tale goes, by misreading the price cipher he sold
a $150 volume for $1.50) down to the time