runkenness, white slavery, sex, are its mingled themes. There is a
pretty picture, recognizable in any smart community, of a witty woman
of fashion, and a full-length portrait of a bounder. "The Yellow Fay,"
Saltus's _cliche_ for the Demon Rum, was the original title of this
"Fifth Avenue Incident." Romance and Realism consort lovingly together
in its pages. There is an unforgetable passage descriptive of a young
man ridding himself of his mistress. He interrupts his flow of
explanation to hand her a card case, which she promptly throws out of
the window.

"'That is an agreeable way of getting rid of twelve thousand dollars,'
he remarked.

"Yet, however lightly he affected to speak, the action annoyed him.
Like all men of large means he was close. It seemed to him beastly to
lose such a sum. He got up, went to the window and looked down. He
could not see the case and he much wanted to go and look for it. But
that for the moment Marie prevented."

"The Pomps of Satan"[27] is replete with grace and graciousness, and
full of charm, a quality more valuable to its possessor than
juvenility, our author tells us in a chapter concerning the lost
elixir of youth. Neither form nor matter assume ponderous shape in
this volume, which in the quality of its contents reminds one faintly
of Franz Blei's lady's breviary, "The Powder Puff," but Saltus's book
is the more ingratiating of the two. Satan's pomps are varied; the
author exposes his whims, his ideas, images the past, forecasts the
future, deplores the present. There is a chapter on cooking and we
learn that Saltus does not care for food prepared in the German style
... nor yet in the American. He forbids us champagne: "Champagne is
not a wine. It is a beverage, lighter indeed than brandy and soda,
but, like cologne, fit only for demi-reps." But he seems untrue to
himself in an essay condemning the use of perfumes. His own books are
heavily scented. With the rare prescience and clairvoyance of an
artist he includes the German Kaiser in a chapter on hyenas (in
1906!); therein stalk the blood-stained shadows of Caligula,
Caracalla, Atilla, Tamerlane, Cesare Borgia, Philip II, and Ivan the
Terrible. The paragraph is worth quoting: "Power consists in having a
million bayonets behind you. Its diffusion is not general. But there
are people who possess it. For one, the German Kaiser. Not long since
somebody or other diagnosed in him the habitual criminal. We doubt
that he is that.