The Quiet Corner
I counsel thee, shut not thy heart nor thy library.—C. LAMB. Contrary to his usual habit, Doctor Angelicus, after a short "good morning," lapsed into a silence: thisi struck Hereticus as so...
...And see there swims an olive in the bowl...
...Whereupon, not to be outdone in poetry, Hereticus droned: "Measure me out from the fathomless tun That somewhere or other you keep In your vasty cellars, O mighty one, Twenty gallons of sleep...
...asked the solicitous rocker...
...at t; »t "The terrors of the deep had a new illustration last month when the army cable-ship, investigating a break in the line between Seattle and Ketchican, pulled up the knotted wire, in which a whale was helplessly entangled...
...The day is sultry, so I may be excused for quoting from A. P. Herbert's Two Gentlemen in Soho, as a corollary to your lines, Hereticus: "Pluck me ten berries from the juniper And in the beaker of strong barley spirit The kindly juices of the fruit compress...
...Doctor Angelicus was first to break the silence with a sigh: "I have a need of silence and of stars: too much is said too loudly: I am dazed...
...Never again, never be young again, Hereticus —^never intrude upon nursery delights or interests...
...Of whom...
...The ghastly dignity of the giraffes looking down at us as though they were bestselling novelists: the poor denuded brows of the ostrich: the fat horses galloping around the ring with the coryphees and clovras on their backs: athletic mothers from western farmlands, decked in spangles, swinging their children from trapezes high in air as though they were milk-pails: and the Siamese elephant, pallid under his talcum powder and the whitel spotlight—oh, the congested youth that surged over me...
...I know that sound...
...T H E LIBRARIAN...
...It was found that the cable, covered by gutta percha and a heavy armoring difficult to sever even with machinery, was cut in eight different places by the mammal's bites...
...Oh, how they swayed and rocked, Hereticus...
...How they swallowed the eternal peanuts and held up their plaintive nozzles to the little boys in prayer for more and more...
...A silence, perfect and unalloyed, fell over the library, where Primus Criticus, bowed over his manuscript, sighed to himself: "Ah, Pagliacci, your heart- was breaking then...
...Come, Angelicus," replied Hereticus, in a husky voice, "let us take a taxi to the club...
...I remember once when our old Dean Smithington arrived at the convocation complaining that his collie dog had seized and scattered the manuscript of his address, so that he would be obliged to confine himself to a few remarks instead of the formal oration he had prepared...
...The silken sound of whirled infinity is lost in voices shouting to be heard...
...I am old, Father William!' I could have cried, as the great audience shook with laughter when one clown struck his brother punchinello with a hammer on the bald spot, or when the old lady with a tea-cup blew smoke from her nostrils with each sip of her Bohay...
...H m n After a long hour devoted to work, that is, psychical not physical exertion, in which the sound of the hammer upon the iron-structure is rarely heard...
...The Doctor removed his glasses, and moralized: "I have often wondered at my difficulties with our central telephone station, and I am convinced that some members of this whale's family must be at large in our city...
...Which when the draught is finished, shall remain Like some sad emblem of a perished love...
...H. C, the professor of therapeutics, then asked him if it would not be feasible to procure a litter of this collie's puppies and to present each of the professors of the college with a canine adjunct for their studies, i After attending the college commencement, I infer that his system has been a failure...
...you bring back the whole threescore of them...
...Pause o'er Paris And fill two eggshells with the French vermuth...
...At any rate, the spawn of some of these whales," added Hereticus, seriously, "might be obtained and trained to masticate the wires after midnight...
...Wring from an orange two bright tears, and shake— Shake a long time—the harmonious trinity...
...The rustle of newspapers, typewriters and snipping scissors filled the room with its old susurrus, when with a groan Angelicus muttered: "Don't rock up and down so regularly, Hereticus...
...Contrary to his usual habit, Doctor Angelicus, after a short "good morning," lapsed into a silence: thisi struck Hereticus as so unhealthy that he began to sway up and down nervously in the new wicker rocking-chair which has just come into the library...
...The elephants...
...Fly south for Italy, nor come you back Till in the cup you have made prisoner Two little thimblefuls of that sweet syrup The Romans call Martini...
...The elephants...
...The nearby Rockefeller chimes began to peal for five o'clock...
...Then the children of the party, having eaten more peanuts than were good for them, or the monkeys,) turn sick, as Cleopatra in her barge drawn by the draped camels, waves her fan at the placards that warn us to stop smoking, and a little boy behind me, in excitement at seeing the Zulus| waving their assegais from a box on the elephant's back,] drips his ice-cream cone down my collar...
...there could be no better explanation of the crossed wires and the double-crossed operators, the calls for cab stations that rouse me from my early morning slumbers and the, guttural deep-sea voices that inquire if the cook is at home, or why the bootlegger is taking so much time in his deliveries...
...Leave the baby intelligentsia to the nursemaids and avoid the fearful mental congestion of youth and five-ring-circuses from which I am doomed to suffer...
...The suggestion in that last line is anti-Volsteadian, not early Victorian," retorted Angelicus...
...And the odors and unseemly manners of hippopotamus and hyena...
Vol. 6 • May 1927 • No. 3
