Ponkapog Papers | Page 9

seems, in that island of dreams, Sea-girdled and basking in magical air.
They've streets of bazaars filled with lacquers and jars, And silk stuffs, and sword-blades that tell of old wars; They've Fuji's white cone looming up, bleak and lone, As if it were trying to reach to the stars.
They've temples and gongs, and grim Buddhas in throngs, And pearl-powdered geisha with dances and songs: Each girl at her back has an imp, brown or black, And dresses her hair in remarkable prongs.
On roadside and street toddling images meet, And smirk and kotow in a way that is sweet; Their obis are tied with particular pride, Their silken kimonos hang scant to the feet.
With purrs like a cat they all giggle and chat, Now spreading their fans, and now holding them flat; A fan by its play whispers, "Go now!" or "Stay!" "I hate you! "I love you!"--a fan can say that! Beneath a dwarf tree, here and there, two or three Squat coolies are sipping small cups of green tea; They sputter, and leer, and cry out, and appear Like bad little chessmen gone off on a spree.
At night--ah, at night the long streets are a sight, With garlands of soft-colored lanterns alight-- Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high overhead, Like thousands of butterflies taking their flight.
Somewhere in the gloom that no lanterns illume Stand groups of slim lilies and jonquils in bloom; On tiptoe, unseen 'mid a tangle of green, They offer the midnight their cups of perfume.
At times, sweet and clear from some tea-garden near, A ripple of laughter steals out to your ear; Anon the wind brings from a samisen's strings The pathos that's born of a smile and a tear.
THE difference between an English audience and a French audience at the theatre is marked. The Frenchman brings down a witticism on the wing. The Briton pauses for it to alight and give him reasonable time for deliberate aim. In English playhouses an appreciable number of seconds usually precede the smile or the ripple of laughter that follows a facetious turn of the least fineness. I disclaim all responsibility for this statement of my personal observation, since it has recently been indorsed by one of London's most eminent actors.
AT the next table, taking his opal drops of absinthe, was a French gentleman with the blase aspect of an empty champagne-bottle, which always has the air of saying: "I have lived!"
WE often read of wonderful manifestations of memory, but they are always instances of the faculty working in some special direction. It is memory playing, like Paganini, on one string. No doubt the persons performing the phenome- nal feats ascribed to them have forgotten more than they remember. To be able to repeat a hundred lines of verse after a single reading is no proof of a retentive mind, excepting so far as the hundred lines go. A man might easily fail under such a test, and yet have a good memory; by which I mean a catholic one, and that I imagine to be nearly the rarest of gifts. I have never met more than four or five persons pos- sessing it. The small boy who defined memory as "the thing you forget with" described the faculty as it exists and works in the majority of men and women.
THE survival in publishers of the imitative in- stinct is a strong argument in support of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man. One publisher no sooner brings out a new style of book-cover than half a dozen other publishers fall to duplicating it.
THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place with a knot of violets tied to the dinted guard, there being no known grave to decorate. For many a year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrow- ful woman had come and fastened these flowers there. The first time she brought her offering she was a slender girl, as fresh as her own vio- lets. It is a slender figure still, but there are threads of silver in the black hair.
FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who in early youth was taught "to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing"--espe- cially the fine writing. Simplicity is art's last word.
The man is clearly an adventurer. In the seven- teenth century he would have worn huge flint- lock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt, and been something in the seafaring line. The fel- low is always smartly dressed, but where he lives and how he lives are as unknown as "what song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women." He is a man who apparently has no appointment with his breakfast and whose din- ner is a chance acquaintance. His probable banker is the next person. A great city like this is