The Quiet Corner
/ counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library.—C. LAMB. "Ladies are to be revived this season," murmured Doctor Angelicus, complacently. "What ladies, Doctor?" inquired Euphemia. "Why, the...
...A highly appropriate interest for the town of William Penn and Benjamin Franklin," added Doctor Angelicus...
...How can you object to a device that gives proper architectural design to the female form—the right triangle that moves with all the grace of the centaur, that lends a proper daintiness to the footstep...
...Plumpers, Doctor...
...at the rain from the library window...
...How beautiful your flight...
...No, I mean Pickwick...
...No, the bustle shall be welcomed by me, at least, as a modest adaptation of the rear skirtings, a proper termination for the basques...
...I am sure that you modern young ladies, at least in your dreams, walk with trains and demitrains, showing an atavistic strain in the female heart...
...The duchess devoted herself to the caviar and spumone and was interrupted by the Philadelphian aristocrat with the remark: " 'Perhaps Your Grace might pay more attention to me, if she knew that my ancestor was Benjamin Franklin.' "The English peeress paused heavily and with that honesty and frankness that is so characteristic of her noble race, remarked between mouthfuls: "'Benjamin Franklin, who is he...
...We fat men must stick together if we are to preserve our eminence and our rights...
...I thought it was Benjamin Franklin," said Hereticus...
...Turn to another page of the April Bookman and you will find the warning statement that 'the circulating library in a large insane asylum differs very little in its content from the library in the average neighborhood, except that in the asylum there is a comparatively greater demand for books of a serious sort...
...I am too busy trying to forget the advertising placards in the subways and trolley cars...
...Have you no reverence for the mighty dead and the hefty living...
...Philadelphia, I notice," remarked Primus Criticus, "has taken to Pickwick...
...asked Miss Euphemia, always conscientious about her diction and spelling...
...The Walnut Street Theatre has been producing a play, Mr...
...De mortuis nil nisi bonum...
...Pickwick's Pilgrimages...
...asked Hereticus...
...Neither Mr...
...Why, the ladies of my youth," explained the Doctor, halfrousing from a reverie...
...I have just been reading a fashion note from Paris vrhich says: 'After the crinoline, the bustle.' " "The bustle—horrid thing, I shall never w^ear it...
...without it she may represent nature: but is it art, I ask you...
...A bone and a hank of hair,' and several large biographies are all that remain of our great ones...
...Never heard of him in my life, I assure you, woman...
...I take my literature from my own library...
...Do not dogmatize," growled Hereticus, who had forgotten his umbrella and hated bluebird philosophy in any form...
...There is a great deal of irrelevant humor about us from people who need their plumpers...
...I should expect this, after some of the free-lunch gatherings of editors and authors which it has been my sad duty to attend," moralized the Doctor...
...exclaimed Euphemia...
...Pickwick nor Benjamin Franklin needed to use them and I only wear mine when I am presented at court or come up for a new university degree...
...Doctor," remarked Primus Criticus...
...But when you fall...
...Have you noticed the contents of the front pages of our literary supplements lately...
...I never notice front pages, my dear young lady," growled Angelicus, apocalyptically...
...Does not the new Chinese poet of the Bowery, Chung Park Lum, sing of the Snowflakes: " 'From rain you came Frozen as you passed through the air...
...We then—even the most short-sighted of us—may be sure whether a lady is coming or going in a room...
...Ah, there's the danger...
...April showers bring forth May flowers," sighed Primus Criticus, looking...
...Pickwick, and the Lippincott Company, always at the front with English literature, has printed Walter Dixon's book on Mr...
...Upon the dust and dirt of earth Too soon the white of you Becomes an earthly hue!'" "But, dear Hereticus," interposed Doctor Angelicus, "we are not all of us snowflakes, and I am seized by the terrible depression induced by the April Bookman which I am reading...
...THE LIBRARIAN...
...I use the smallest size...
...I rfeally pitied that sweet lady from the city of brotherly love who met a portly English duchess at dinner in Rome last year...
...I, at least, shall welcome it— heartily...
...A lady in a bustle has real presence...
...asked Miss Euphemia...
...I said plumpers—the sort George Washington used in order to round out his toothless hollows...
...O Doctor, these confessions...
...Now, my dear young lady, not so fast," interposed the literary sage...
...The exquisite suavity and banal character of the guests made me feel that some warning about insanity in the authorial genealogies has given these gentlemen a soft touch and a soft step that results in the healthy, harmless stupidities of our best modem writing...
...Have you ever noticed the stout statuary around the court-house there...
...The bustle is one of the vanished glories of art, decorum and dignity...
...It declares that: 'In America, there is not a single periodical that devotes its pages to, and has a distinctly editorial policy and definite attitude toward, the honest criticism of books based on their literary merit regardless of cliques, personalities and publishers' propaganda.' This is a slander of slanders, and we should rise and resent it, instead of dreaming of spring flowers, soiled snowflakes or the rubbishy fiction of today...
Vol. 6 • May 1927 • No. 1
