holicism; which still has
statues that can be wreathed in flowers. I wish our national feast of
fireworks revolved round something positive and popular. I wish the
beauty of a Catherine Wheel were displayed to the glory of St.
Catherine. I should not especially complain if Roman candles were really
Roman candles. But this negative character does not destroy the national
character; which began at least in disinterested faith and has ended at
least in disinterested fun. There is nothing disinterested at all about
the new commercial fireworks. There is nothing so dignified as a dingy
guy among the lights of Broadway. In that thoroughfare, indeed, the very
word guy has another and milder significance. An American friend
congratulated me on the impression I produced on a lady interviewer,
observing, 'She says you're a regular guy.' This puzzled me a little at
the time. 'Her description is no doubt correct,' I said, 'but I confess
that it would never have struck me as specially complimentary.' But it
appears that it is one of the most graceful of compliments, in the
original American. A guy in America is a colourless term for a human
being. All men are guys, being endowed by their Creator with certain ...
but I am misled by another association. And a regular guy means, I
presume, a reliable or respectable guy. The point here, however, is that
the guy in the grotesque English sense does represent the dilapidated
remnant of a real human tradition of symbolising real historic ideals by
the sacramental mystery of fire. It is a great fall from the lowest of
these lowly bonfires to the highest of the modern sky-signs. The new
illumination does not stand for any national ideal at all; and what is
yet more to the point, it does not come from any popular enthusiasm at
all. That is where it differs from the narrowest national Protestantism
of the English institution. Mobs have risen in support of No Popery; no
mobs are likely to rise in defence of the New Puffery. Many a poor crazy
Orangeman has died saying, 'To Hell with the Pope'; it is doubtful
whether any man will ever, with his last breath, frame the ecstatic
words, 'Try Hugby's Chewing Gum.' These modern and mercantile legends
are imposed upon us by a mercantile minority, and we are merely passive
to the suggestion. The hypnotist of high finance or big business merely
writes his commands in heaven with a finger of fire. All men really are
guys, in the sense of dummies. We are only