The Certain Hour | Page 4

impels
to action, choice and
determination,--then it is that they become

torturing, severe and trying."
From the dawn of the day to the dusk he toiled,
Shaping fanciful
playthings, with tireless hands,--
Useless trumpery toys; and, with
vaulting heart,
Gave them unto all peoples, who mocked at him,

Trampled on them, and soiled them, and went their way.
Then he toiled from the morn to the dusk again,
Gave his gimcracks
to peoples who mocked at him,
Trampled on them, deriding, and
went their way.
Thus he labors, and loudly they jeer at him;--
That is, when they
remember he still exists.
WHO, you ask, IS THIS FELLOW?--What matter names?
He is only
a scribbler who is content.
FELIX KENNASTON. The Toy-Maker .

AUCTORIAL INDUCTION
WHICH (AFTER SOME BRIEF DISCOURSE OF FIRES AND

FRYING-PANS) ELUCIDATES THE INEXPEDIENCY OF

PUBLISHING THIS BOOK, AS WELL AS THE NECESSITY

OF WRITING IT: AND THENCE PASSES TO A MODEST

DEFENSE OF MORE VITAL THEMES.
The desire to write perfectly of beautiful happenings
is, as the saying
runs, old as the hills--and as
immortal. Questionless, there was many
a serviceable
brick wasted in Nineveh because finicky persons must

needs be deleting here and there a phrase in favor of
its cuneatic
synonym; and it is not improbable that
when the outworn sun expires
in clinkers its final ray
will gild such zealots tinkering with their
"style."
Some few there must be in every age and every land of

whom life claims nothing very insistently save that
they write
perfectly of beautiful happenings.
Yet, that the work of a man of letters is almost
always a congenial
product of his day and environment,
is a contention as lacking in
novelty as it is in
the need of any upholding here. Nor is the
rationality
of that axiom far to seek; for a man of genuine
literary
genius, since he possesses a temperament whose
susceptibilities are
of wider area than those of any
other, is inevitably of all people the
one most
variously affected by his surroundings. And it is he,
in
consequence, who of all people most faithfully and
compactly
exhibits the impress of his times and his
times' tendencies, not merely
in his writings--where it
conceivably might be just predetermined
affectation--
but in his personality.
Such being the assumption upon which this volume is
builded, it
appears only equitable for the architect
frankly to indicate his
cornerstone. Hereinafter you
have an attempt to depict a special
temperament--one in
essence "literary"--as very variously molded by

diverse
eras and as responding in proportion with its ability
to the
demands of a certain hour.
In proportion with its ability, be it repeated,
since its ability is
singularly hampered. For, apart
from any ticklish temporal
considerations, be it
remembered, life is always claiming of this

temperament's possessor that he write perfectly of
beautiful
happenings.
To disregard this vital longing, and flatly to
stifle the innate striving
toward artistic creation, is
to become (as with Wycherley and
Sheridan) a man who
waives, however laughingly, his sole apology
for
existence. The proceeding is paltry enough, in all
conscience;
and yet, upon the other side, there is
much positive danger in giving
to the instinct a
loose rein. For in that event the familiar

circumstances of sedate and wholesome living cannot but
seem, like
paintings viewed too near, to lose in gusto
and winsomeness. Desire,
perhaps a craving hunger,
awakens for the impossible. No emotion,
whatever be
its sincerity, is endured without a side-glance toward

its capabilities for being written about. The world,
in short, inclines to
appear an ill-lit mine, wherein
one quarries gingerly amidst an
abiding loneliness (as
with Pope and Ufford and Sire Raimbaut)--and
wherein
one very often is allured into unsavory alleys (as with

Herrick and Alessandro de Medici)--in search of that
raw material
which loving labor will transshape into
comeliness.
Such, if it be allowed to shift the metaphor, are
the treacherous
by-paths of that admirably policed
highway whereon the
well-groomed and well-bitted Pegasi
of Vanderhoffen and Charteris
(in his later manner)
trot stolidly and safely toward oblivion. And the

result of wandering afield is of necessity a tragedy,
in that the
deviator's life, if not as an artist's
quite certainly as a human being's,
must in the outcome
be adjudged a failure.

Hereinafter, then, you have an attempt to depict a
special
temperament--one in essence "literary"--as very
variously molded by
diverse eras and as responding in
proportion with its ability to the
demands of a certain
hour.
II
And this much said, it is permissible to hope, at
least, that here and
there some reader may be found not
wholly blind to this book's goal,
whatever be his
opinion as to this book's success in reaching it. Yet

many honest souls there be among us average-novelreaders
in whose
eyes this volume must rest content to
figure as a collection of short
stories having naught
in common beyond the feature that each deals
with the
affaires du coeur of a poet.
Such must always be the book's interpretation by
mental indolence.
The fact is incontestable; and this
fact in itself may be taken as
sufficient to establish
the inexpediency of publishing The Certain
Hour. For
that "people will not buy a volume of short stories" is

notorious to all publishers. To offset the axiom there
are no doubt
incongruous phenomena--ranging from the
continued popularity of