Mince Pie | Page 2

your privilege to elevate the flask against the brightness of a window,
and meditate (with a breath of sadness) on the joys and problems that
sacred fluid holds in solution.
How blue it shines toward the light! Blue as lupin or larkspur, or
cornflower--aye, and even so blue art thou, my scriven, to think how far
the written page falls short of the bright ecstasy of thy dream! In the
bottle, what magnificence of unpenned stuff lies cool and liquid: what
fluency of essay, what fonts of song. As the bottle glints, blue as a
squill or a hyacinth, blue as the meadows of Elysium or the eyes of
girls loved by young poets, meseems the racing pen might almost gain
upon the thoughts that are turning the bend in the road. A jolly throng,
those thoughts: I can see them talking and laughing together. But when
pen reaches the road's turning, the thoughts are gone far ahead: their
delicate figures are silhouettes against the sky.
It is a sacramental matter, this filling the ink-well. Is there a writer,
however humble, who has not poured into his writing pot, with the ink,
some wistful hopes or prayers for what may emerge from that dark
source? Is there not some particular reverence due the ink-well, some
form of propitiation to humbug the powers of evil and constraint that
devil the journalist? Satan hovers near the ink-pot. Luther solved the
matter by throwing the well itself at the apparition. That savors to me

too much of homeopathy. If Satan ever puts his face over my desk, I
shall hurl a volume of Harold Bell Wright at him.
But what becomes of the ink-pots of glory? The conduit from which
Boswell drew, for Charles Dilly in The Poultry, the great river of his
Johnson? The well (was it of blue china?) whence flowed _Dream
Children: a Revery_? (It was written on folio ledger sheets from the
East India House--I saw the manuscript only yesterday in a room at
Daylesford, Pennsylvania, where much of the richest ink of the last two
centuries is lovingly laid away.) The pot of chuckling fluid where
Harry Fielding dipped his pen to tell the history of a certain foundling;
the ink-wells of the Café de la Source on the Boul' Mich'--do they by
any chance remember which it was that R.L.S. used? One of the
happiest tremors of my life was when I went to that café and called for
a bock and writing material, just because R.L.S. had once written
letters there. And the ink-well Poe used at that boarding-house in
Greenwich Street, New York (April, 1844), when he wrote to his dear
Muddy (his mother-in-law) to describe how he and Virginia had
reached a haven of square meals. That hopeful letter, so perfect now in
pathos--
For breakfast we had excellent-flavored coffee, hot and strong--not
very clear and no great deal of cream--veal cutlets, elegant ham and
eggs and nice bread and butter. I never sat down to a more plentiful or a
nicer breakfast. I wish you could have seen the eggs--and the great
dishes of meat. Sis [his wife] is delighted, and we are both in excellent
spirits. She has coughed hardly any and had no night sweat. She is now
busy mending my pants, which I tore against a nail. I went out last
night and bought a skein of silk, a skein of thread, two buttons, a pair of
slippers, and a tin pan for the stove. The fire kept in all night. We have
now got four dollars and a half left. To-morrow I am going to try and
borrow three dollars, so that I may have a fortnight to go upon. I feel in
excellent spirits, and haven't drank a drop--so that I hope soon to get
out of trouble.
[Illustration]
Yes, let us clear the typewriter off the table: an ink-well is a sacred

thing.
Do you ever stop to think, when you see the grimy spattered desks of a
public post-office, how many eager or puzzled human hearts have tried,
in those dingy little ink-cups, to set themselves right with fortune?
What blissful meetings have been appointed, what scribblings of pain
and sorrow, out of those founts of common speech. And the ink-wells
on hotel counters--does not the public dipping place of the Bellevue
Hotel, Boston, win a new dignity in my memory when I know (as I
learned lately) that Rupert Brooke registered there in the spring of 1914?
I remember, too, a certain pleasant vibration when, signing my name
one day in the Bellevue's book, I found Miss Agnes Repplier's
autograph a little above on the same page.
Among our younger friends, Vachel Lindsay comes to mind as one
who has done honor to the ink-well. His Apology