a
while he said: "Someone is guying you. That isn't a picture. It's a
joke."

The futurist devotees were indignant, but there were enough who were
stung by faint suspicion to investigate. They studied that signature
upside down and under a microscope. After a while they got the
identity of the man responsible for it, and--we draw a veil over the
rest!

Then there was the man--another one--who, by way of a cheerful
experiment, painted a post-impressionist picture with a billiard cue,
jabbing gaily at the canvas as though trying to make difficult screwed
shots, caroms and so on. Having done his worst in this way, he then
took his picture to a gallery and exhibited it upside down. It
attracted much attention and a fair quota of praise.

Stories such as these might discourage one if one did not keep
remembering that even in far deeper and greater affairs of life, "A
hair perhaps divides the false and true." Who are we to improve on
Omar's wise and tolerant philosophy?

I have less sympathy with the girl who wrote poetry, and even
occasionally sold it, at so much a line. Having sold a poem of
eighteen lines for $9.00 she almost wept because, as she ingenuously
complained, she might just as easily have written twenty lines for
$10.00!

Then there is the fair Villager who intones Walt Whitman to music of
her own composition; that is a bit trying, I grant you. And the male
Villager who frequents spiritualistic seances and communes with dead
poets.

One night Emerson presided. And, after the ghosts had departed, the
spiritualistic Villager read some of his own poems.

"And do you know," he declared, enraptured, "everyone thought it was
still Emerson who was speaking!"

Now for him we may have sympathy. He is perhaps a faker, but I am
inclined to believe that he is that anachronism, a sincere faker. He
is on the level. Like two-thirds of the Village, he is playing his
game with his whole heart and soul, with all that is in him. I am
afraid that it would be hard to say as much for a certain class of
outside-the-Village fakers who, from time to time, drift into the
cheery confines thereof and carry away sacks of shekels--though not,
let us hope, as much as they wanted to get!

Have you ever heard, for instance, of the psychoanalysts? They
diagnose soul troubles as regular doctors diagnose diseases of the
body, and they are in great demand. Some of them are alienists,
healers of sick brains; some of them are just--fake