Yet Again | Page 3

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This e-text was prepared by Tom Weiss ([email protected])

Yet Again
by Max Beerbohm

Till I gave myself the task of making a little selection from what I had
written since last I formed a book of essays, I had no notion that I had
put, as it were, my eggs into so many baskets--The Saturday Review,
The New Quarterly, The New Liberal Review, Vanity Fair, The Daily
Mail, Literature, The Traveller, The Pall Mall Magazine, The May
Book, The Souvenir Book of Charing Cross Hospital Bazaar, The
Cornhill Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and The Anglo-Saxon
Review...Ouf! But the sigh of relief that I heave at the end of the list is
accompanied by a smile of thanks to the various authorities for letting
me use here what they were so good as to require.
M. B.

CONTENTS
THE FIRE SEEING PEOPLE OFF A MEMORY OF A MIDNIGHT
EXPRESS PORRO UNUM... A CLUB IN RUINS `273' A STUDY IN
DEJECTION A PATHETIC IMPOSTURE THE DECLINE OF THE
GRACES WHISTLER'S WRITING ICHABOD GENERAL
ELECTIONS A PARALLEL A MORRIS FOR MAY-DAY THE
HOUSE OF COMMONS MANNER THE NAMING OF STREETS
ON SHAKESPEARE'S BIRTHDAY A HOME-COMING `THE
RAGGED REGIMENT' THE HUMOUR OF THE PUBLIC
DULCEDO JUDICIORUM
WORDS FOR PICTURES
`HARLEQUIN' `THE GARDEN OF LOVE' `ARIANE ET DIONYSE'
`PETER THE DOMINICAN' `L' OISEAU BLEU' `MACBETH AND
THE WITCHES' `CARLOTTA GRISI' `HO-TEI' `THE VISIT'

THE FIRE

If I were `seeing over' a house, and found in every room an iron cage
let into the wall, and were told by the caretaker that these cages were
for me to keep lions in, I think I should open my eyes rather wide. Yet
nothing seems to me more natural than a fire in the grate.
Doubtless, when I began to walk, one of my first excursions was to the
fender, that I might gaze more nearly at the live thing roaring and
raging behind it; and I dare say I dimly wondered by what blessed
dispensation this creature was allowed in a domain so peaceful as my
nursery. I do not think I ever needed to be warned against scaling the
fender. I knew by instinct that the creature within it was dangerous--
fiercer still than the cat which had once strayed into the room and
scratched me for my advances. As I grew older, I ceased to wonder at
the creature's presence and learned to call it `the fire,' quite lightly.
There are so many queer things in the world that we have no time to go
on wondering at the queerness of the things we see habitually. It is not
that these things are in themselves less queer than they at first seemed
to us. It is that our vision of them has been dimmed. We are lucky
when by some chance we see again, for a fleeting moment, this thing