The Quiet Corner
" / counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library."—C. LAMB. "In these days of freedom there is nothing that we cannot discuss even at the formal dinner-table," remarked Hereticus, opening...
...At last we have a court decision in the case of Hattie Davidson v. Claude Henry Taylor, January 12, 1927, by the Commissioner of the General Land Office, declaring that Claude Taylor, although quietly omitting his middle title of Henry, entered fully upon his rights of title...
...Have you signed up with the Simmons Fellowship for the Study of Sleep, Doctor...
...We show our advance only in our intricacies of statement: a spade is now an agricultural device...
...Humani nihil a me alienum puto...
...In these days of freedom there is nothing that we cannot discuss even at the formal dinner-table," remarked Hereticus, opening fire on Britannicus and Doctor Angelicus, who were comfortably ruminating under their respective electric fans...
...Pour les sports.' He sums up his pronunciamento with the avowal: 'Suffice it to say for the moment, that I have found a new principle of mathematical and logical exactitude...
...The younger the party the greater the freedom: the five senses and now the five facets of our comments...
...I have been accused of snoring and talking in my sleep...
...What do you say...
...a bad breath is deftly discussed as halitosis...
...The T. Woodrows and T. Charleses are once again the Tommies I knew as boys: the Donns become their old-time Percys: the Joyces are once more Alfreds...
...However, the advent in our midst of Lucien, grand coutourier, seems to threaten the secrecies we observe with our sense of smell: he proclaims the ensemble of the costume and the odor—'of course there are scents, exquisite in themselves, but not conceived from the point of view of the coutourier'—in announcing the launching of his Modulations A, B and C: 'My A is a regal odor for the evening...
...I am glad to see that science has made up its mind that the pre-midnightsleepfor-beauty theory is a false one, but I am puzzled by the Fellowship's views on the menace of the mattress and efficiency in bedding...
...See if you can procure some answers from me when you next find me sleeping...
...The final touch of delicacy in most of our modems is concerned with odor," declared the Doctor...
...I merely reply, Why Shouldn't We...
...For instance, one old duchess exclaimed in his presence: 'Why, what a delightful scent of violets!' Whereupon the old gentleman, with a courtly bow, declared: 'Your Grace, it is only your humble servant.' Ex uno disce omnes...
...at « « "We have all been impressed by the flamboyant splendor of recent American middle names, by the recondite exquisiteness of Sister Mary Hortensia and Brother Francis Eudoxius...
...This freedom, in a way, is merely an Elizabethan revert," declared Britannicus gravely...
...I have no evidence to offer either in admission or rebuttal...
...Even old Homer felt he was entitled to his forty winks, and your little ironies flick me painfully at these moments...
...A caterpillar in the soup is less offensive than a social contact with the garbage man, and the young intellectual speaks less and less of his cold morning plunge, which seems to have gone out of fashion since the death of Richard Harding Davis and the coming of the literary mystics...
...THE LIBRARIAN...
...Savonarola, Fra Marco, are you dead so long...
...My C scent is joyous as sunshine, which it suggests...
...Doctor ?" "I rarely enter the latter places, as you may imagine, my friend, if you will consider a while...
...I have, in effect, created three perfumes that correspond to the primary colors of the scale— red, blue, yellow.'" "We have returned to the perfume concerts and symphonies of my Parisian years in the 'nineties," said Britannicus...
...and sighing under these illuminated (and perhaps necessary) nomenclatures and hyphenations, we have leaned in affection toward the Paul Joneses and the John Smiths which were so often the original baptismal clips of our iloriegated acquaintances...
...Just before my time in London society, I recall there was a charming old gentleman whose eccentricity—^whether based on fact or not, I cannot say—consisted in the firm belief that his person exhaled the odor of flowers...
...In future, let not my friend, T. Delpuenti Smiggins, refuse my letters addressed to Timothy S., nor B. Cavandish Casey object to my missive for Birgitta C. A glance over the Social Register will reveal a field of desolated splendors in the removal or suppression of these bifurcated glories: the Smiths may mourn and the Browns hang up their harps in Babylon...
...It is a scent worthy of an extreme formality, it supports a mood of high social exaltation...
...Not yet," replied the startled old gentleman...
...What a debacle, what a holocaust of vanities...
...I entertain, no doubt, some valuable thoughts on these subjects, but as they come to me usually in my sleep, I am unable to communicate them to you in these wakeful hours...
...brusquely inquired Hereticus, on finding the Doctor bent over his manuscript...
...It became the habit of his friends, knowing, or perhaps sharing in...
...You know that I am pragmatically interested in sleep, but the results of my investigations have been rather meagre...
...You are associating too much with the best-selling novelists ; remember how I warned you against their professional outlooks," grumbled the Doctor, only half aroused...
...My B is a hopeful merry scent, appropriate for the afternoon costume...
...his persuasion, to comment, on his entry to the drawing-room, on the strong flowery perfumes they sensed...
...It seems that the common law recognizes but two names: the first or Christian name and the family or surname, and that this has been the principle adhered to by all our courts, supreme, federal and state, both in civil and criminal procedure...
...All I know is that there are some psychological as well as physiological questions vaguely involved here...
...However, I must object to such trivial questionnaires as, Why Should We Move in Our Sleep...
...The scene shifts from the aeolian halls to the palazzos of Fifth Avenue dressmakers...
Vol. 6 • July 1927 • No. 10
