nds paltered with her
legend, Helen is Homer's alone, there remains no great or typical work of
Greek art which represents her beauty, and the breasts from which were
modelled cups of gold for the service of the gods. We have only
paintings on vases, or work on gems, which, though graceful, is
conventional and might represent any other heroine, Polyxena, or
Eriphyle. No Helen from the hands of Phidias or Scopas has survived to
our time, and the grass may be growing in Therapnae over the shattered
remains of her only statue.

As Stesichorus fabled that only an _eidolon_ of Helen went to Troy, so,
except in the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," we meet but shadows of her
loveliness, phantasms woven out of clouds, and the light of setting suns.

CHAPTER XIII: ENCHANTED CIGARETTES

To dream over literary projects, Balzac says, is like "smoking enchanted
cigarettes," but when we try to tackle our projects, to make them real,
the enchantment disappears. We have to till the soil, to sow the seed,
to gather the leaves, and then the cigarettes must be manufactured, while
there may be no market for them after all. Probably most people have
enjoyed the fragrance of these enchanted cigarettes, and have brooded
over much which they will never put on paper. Here are some of "the
ashes of the weeds of my delight"--memories of romances whereof no single
line is written, or is likely to be written.

Of my earliest novel I remember but little. I know there had been a
wreck, and that the villain, who was believed to be drowned, came home
and made himself disagreeable. I know that the heroine's mouth was _not_
"too large for regular beauty." In that respect she was original. All
heroines are "muckle-mou'd," I know not why. It is expected of them. I
know she was melancholy and merry; it would not surprise me to learn that
she drowned herself from a canoe. But the villain never descended to
crime, the first lover would not fall in love, the heroine's own
affections were provokingly disengaged, and the whole affair came to a
dead stop for want of a plot. Perhaps, considering modern canons of
fiction, this might have been a very successful novel. It was entirely
devoid of incident or interest, and, consequently, was a good deal like
real life, as real life appears to many cultivated authors. On the other
hand, all the characters were flippant. This would never have done, and
I do not regret novel No. I., which had not even a na