appeared columns of learned criticisms, facetious editorials, and serious
letters from subscribers. Helen Della Delmar (proclaimed with a flourish
of trumpets and rolling of tomtoms to be the greatest woman poet in the
United States) denied Brissenden a seat beside her on Pegasus and wrote
voluminous letters to the public, proving that he was no poet.

The Parthenon came out in its next number patting itself on the back for
the stir it had made, sneering at Sir John Value, and exploiting
Brissenden's death with ruthless commercialism. A newspaper with a sworn
circulation of half a million published an original and spontaneous poem
by Helen Della Delmar, in which she gibed and sneered at Brissenden.
Also, she was guilty of a second poem, in which she parodied him.

Martin had many times to be glad that Brissenden was dead. He had hated
the crowd so, and here all that was finest and most sacred of him had
been thrown to the crowd. Daily the vivisection of Beauty went on. Every
nincompoop in the land rushed into free print, floating their wizened
little egos into the public eye on the surge of Brissenden's greatness.
Quoth one paper: "We have received a letter from a gentleman who wrote a
poem just like it, only better, some time ago." Another paper, in deadly
seriousness, reproving Helen Della Delmar for her parody, said: "But
unquestionably Miss Delmar wrote it in a moment of badinage and not quite
with the respect that one great poet should show to another and perhaps
to the greatest. However, whether Miss Delmar be jealous or not of the
man who invented 'Ephemera,' it is certain that she, like thousands of
others, is fascinated by his work, and that the day may come when she
will try to write lines like his."

Ministers began to preach sermons against "Ephemera," and one, who too
stoutly stood for much of its content, was expelled for heresy. The
great poem contributed to the gayety of the world. The comic
verse-writers and the cartoonists took hold of it with screaming
laughter, and in the personal columns of society weeklies jokes were
perpetrated on it to the effect that Charley Frensham told Archie
Jennings, in confidence, that five lines of "Ephemera" would drive a man
to beat a cripple, and that ten lines would send him to the bottom of the
river.

Martin did not laugh; nor did he grit his teeth in anger. The effect
produced upon him was one of great sadness. In the crash of his whole
world, with