imagination to spread its wings?
For Hall Caine, musk and synthetic bergamot. For Mrs. Glyn and her
neighbors on the tiger-skin, the fragrant blood of the red, red rose.
For the ruffianish pages of Jack London, the pungent, hospitable smell
of a first-class bar-room--that indescribable mingling of Maryland rye,
cigar smoke, stale malt liquor, radishes, potato salad and _blutwurst_.
For the Dartmoor sagas of the interminable Phillpotts, the warm
ammoniacal bouquet of cows, poultry and yokels. For the "Dodo" school,
violets and Russian cigarettes. For the venerable Howells, lavender and
mignonette. For Zola, Rochefort and wet leather. For Mrs. Humphrey Ward,
lilies of the valley. For Marie Corelli, tuberoses and embalming fluid.
For Chambers, sachet and lip paint. For----

But I leave you to make your own choices. All I offer is the general
idea. It has been tried in the theatre. Well do I remember the first
weeks of "Florodora" at the old Casino, with a mannikin in the lobby
squirting "La Flor de Florodora" upon all us Florodorans.... I was put
on trial for my life when I got home!

XXXI

THE HOLY ESTATE

Marriage is always a man's second choice. It is entered upon, more often
than not, as the safest form of intrigue. The caitiff yields quickest;
the man who loves danger and adventure holds out longest. Behind it one
frequently finds, not that lofty romantic passion which poets hymn, but
a mere yearning for peace and security. The abominable hazards of the
high seas, the rough humors and pestilences of the forecastle--these
drive the timid mariner ashore.... The authentic Cupid, at least in
Christendom, was discovered by the late Albert Ludwig Siegmund Neisser
in 1879.

XXXII

DICHTUNG UND WAHRHEIT

Deponent, being duly sworn, saith: My taste in poetry is for delicate
and fragile things--to be honest, for artificial things. I like a frail
but perfectly articulated stanza, a sonnet wrought like ivory, a song
full of glowing nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns,
conjunctions, prepositions and participles, but without too much hard
sense to it. Poetry, to me, has but two meanings. On the one hand, it is
a magical escape from the sordidness of metabolism and the class war,
and on the other hand it is a subtle, very difficult and hence very
charming art, like writing fugues or mixing mayonnaise. I do not go to
poets to be taught anything, or to be heated up to indignation, or to
have my consci