Don Marquis

“ SINCERITY IN THE HOME
SINCERITY should be the keynote of a life, don’t you think?
Sincerity — beauty — use — these are my watchwords.
I heard such an interesting talk on sincerity the other evening. I belong to a Little Group of Serious Thinkers who are taking up sincerity in all its phases this week.
We discussed Sincerity in the Home.
So many people's homes, you know, do not represent anything personal.
The sincere home should be full of purpose and personality—decorations, rugs, ornaments, hangings and all, you know.
The home shows the soul. ”

“ THE SONG OF THE SNORE Fothergil Finch, Hermione's friend, the vers libre poet, dodges through life harried and hunted by one pursuing Fear.
"Some day," he said to me —
(It is Hermione's Boswell who is speaking in this sketch, in the first person, and not Hermione, the incomparable.) —
"Some day," Fothergil finch said to me, the other night, in a tone of intense, bitter conviction, "some day It will get me! Some day I will overtake me. The great Beat, Popularity, which pursues me! Some day It will clutch me and tear me and devour my Soul! Some day I will be a Popular Writer!" ”

“ Mamma — poor Mamma! — she is so terribly unadvanced you know! — Mama said: "Hermione, I do not know what the Cosmos is. But this I do know — not another Sex Discussion or East Indian Swami will ever come into THIS house!"
"Mamma," I said to her, "I will NOT give up the
Cosmos. It means everything to me; simply EVERYTHING!"
I am always firm with Mamma; it is kinder, in the long run, to be quite positive. But what I suffer at home from objections to the advanced movements nobody knows!
Nobody but the Leaders of Thought can dream what Martyrdom is! ”

“ It was saying to the Blind Complacent Pillars of Polite Society: "My aroma is not your aroma, but my aroma is my own!" Oh, the Courageous Glue Factory, the Free, Unfettered Glue Factory! A thousand Glue Factories, from Maine to Oregon, are thus rebuking Class Prejudice and Bourgeois Smugness. Like Poets, like Prophets of the New Art, they stand, Glue Factory after Glue Factory, Expressing their Egos, Being Themselves, undaunted, unshackled, strong, independent, virile! Oh, to be the Poet of the Super Glue Factory! ”

“ But all the personality which his eyes should show, all the force which should dwell in his nose, all the temperamental qualities that should reveal themselves in his mouth and chin, all the genius which should illumine his brow — these dwell within his Adam's apple. The man has run entirely to that feature; his moods, his emotions, his thoughts, his passions, his appetites, his beliefs, his doubts, his hopes, his fears, his resolves, his despairs, his defeats, his exaltations — all, all make themselves known subtly in the eccentric motions of that unusual Adam's apple. ”

“ Don't you just dote on romance? I do!
But, of course, there's no place for it in our hurried modern life, and I suppose we shouldn't regret it.
But now and then I sigh over it. Like dropping a tear, you know, in a dear old chest perfumed with lavender and old roses.
I always say that one can be advanced and in the van of modern progress, and still drop a tear, you know. ”

“ It's like the Cosmic Urge, you know; except it's altogether German, Fothy explained.
Every once in a while you hear of a New Urge. That's one of the things that distinguishes Modern Thought from the old philosophies, don't you think?
Although, of course, the Cosmic Urge isn't what it used to be a year or two ago.
It's become—er—well, vulgarized, if you know what I mean. Everybody is writing and talking about it now, don't you know.
I think, myself, it's going out, soon. And a leader—a real pioneer in thought, you know,—would scarcely care to talk about it now without a smile. ”

“ We took up transmigration of souls one time — our little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know — and it's wonderful; simply WONDERFUL!
That was when the Swami Brandranath used to talk to us. The dear Swami! Such eyes — so pure and yet so magnetic! — I have never seen in a human being.
The eye is the window of the soul, you know.
He's in jail now, the poor, dear Swami. But he wasn't really a bigamist at all. You see, he had seven spiritual planes. All of us do, only most of us don't know it. But he could get from one plane to another quite easily. ”

“ Do you think that all this study of sex hygiene means the death of romance?
It's a serious thought, isn t it?
But what I always say is: "Which of these things will do the most good in the world?"
Especially good to the poor!
You know how frightfully interested I am in the poor.
I make that my test. I always say to myself: "Which will do the most good to the great masses?"
I take such a serious interest in the masses!
We should think twice before we take romance out of their lives and replace it with science of any kind. ”

“ Nearly every night when I am alone with my own Ego I go into the Silences for a little period of Spiritual Self-Examination and I always ask myself: "Have I Concentrated today? Really Concentrated? Or have I failed?"
I call these little times my Psychic Inquisitions.
In the hurry of this crowded age one must find time to get along with one's self, must one not? Fothy Finch has written a beautiful thing about the hurry of this crowded age which I wish everyone could hang over his desk. ”

“ He said the aura CHANGES its color as the soul progresses.
Two people may be in harmony today, and both have pink auras, and in a year hers may be green and his golden.
What desperate chances a woman takes when she marries, doesn't she?
I sometimes think life must have been a much more comfortable thing before the world got to be so terribly advanced.
But, of course, it is our duty to sacrifice personal comfort for the future of the race and the betterment of the world. ”

“ When they reflect that every article they sell is to be a gift from one thoughtful and loving heart to another they must forget the mere fatigue of the flesh and just feel the stimulus, the inspiration, the vibration!
There are gifts, I admit, that haven't the divine spark of love to hallow them, but after all there aren't so many of that sort. Love one another is the spirit of Christmas—and it prevails, whatever the skeptics may say to the contrary. ”

“ Dissension disturbs the soul's harmony.
One's subliminal consciousness must ever vibrate in harmony with the Cosmic All.
I never fuss when a person disturbs me. I just go into the Silences and vibrate there.
But I kept thinking: "Do I know any Cave Men?"
I think I do—one. He tries to conceal it. But it's his secret, I'm sure.
He has the most luminous eyes!
Like a wolf's, you know, when it gallops across the waste places—under the stars, alone! ”

“ When one thinks it over, one grows more and more conscious that the human race owes a great deal to Evolution, doesn't one?
What could we have done without it?
It's as somebody said about something else one time—if we hadn't had it, you know, it would have been necessary to invent it, though for the life of me, I can't remember who it was or what he said about it. Although likely it was Madame de Staël. We took her up once and it developed that she had said a most surprising number of things like that—things, you know, that would be quite quotable if you could only remember them. ”

“ Fothy always gets excited and trembles and chokes when he reads his own poetry, and while he was reading it Papa came into the room and disgraced himself by asking him if there was any Money in that kind of poetry, and Fothy was so agitated that he fairly screamed when he said:
"Money... money... curse money! Money is one of the things I am in revolt against.... Money is death and damnation to the free spirit!" ”

“ I said to her, "it is no use for you to pretend to be shocked. I have a right to happiness. And happiness to me means being alone, under the stars, and walking barefoot and bareheaded in the dew."
"Alone with a Cave Man!" she said. And then she cried.
Tears!—that is so like the old-fashioned woman!
"Mamma," I said, kindly, but firmly, "if it is my destiny to be kidnaped by a Cave Man and taken into the waste places, under the stars, can I avoid it?" ”

“ The loveliest woman gave us a talk on interior decoration the other night — she wears these slinky, Greek things, you know, with straw sandals, when the weather permits — and I engaged her to do the house over.
But right away a problem presented itself — whether to have the house done to fit my personality or whether to have the house done to fit the thing I want my personality to evolve into, and trust the environment to help in the evolution.
Modern thought complicates LIFE immensely, doesn't it? ”

“ BERTIE GRIGGS—you know Ethelbert Griggs, don't you? He does the text for the Paris fashions for a woman's magazine, and on the side he writes the most impassioned verse. All about Serpents, and Women, and Lillith and Phryne, you know.
Bertie said to me only the other day, "Fothy, you are too Radical. It will keep you down in the world."
"Bertie," I said, "I know I am, but can I help it? I spurn the world! A truly virile poet must." ”

“ I said to him, "how much real practical sociology we have right here before us—all these men shoveling snow—and how little they realize, most of them, that their work is taking them into sociology at all." ”

“ Then waved the toe called Life, and as with one accord each of that company
Leapt gasping to his or her feet, as the case might be,
And cried: "I feel! I feel! I feel! I feel the Cosmic Urge!"
Then moved the toe called Italy,
And Fothergil Finch remarked: "Roses... roses... roses...
Onions and roses... roses are onions, and onions are beautiful...
Doves and pigeons... pigeons... pigeons are pigs...
And pigs are beautiful" . . . ”

“ How did you know it?"
"One knows these things," he said—a trifle sadly, I thought. "They come to one—out of the Silences; one knows not how. It is better not to ask how! It is better not to question! It is better to accept! Do you not feel it so?"
Sometimes I think that Fothergil Finch is the only man who has ever understood me. ”

“ Are you stinging these gloomy Big Bosses
To a keener, immortaler ouch?"
Hermione murmured: "How eerie!
You are voicing my own Inner Mood!
Ah, me! but the world is less dreary
If one is but Understood! ”

“ And of course that would be a loss—anything is a loss that destroys Beauty.
For, after all, Beauty is what the world needs more than anything else. It's a serious thought—how far Use should be sacrificed to Beauty, and Beauty to Use, isn't it? ”

“ Turn, choke, twist and struggle, sleeper, and snore me the song of life in the making, Sneeze me a universe full of star-dust, Snore me back to the days when I was a Cave Man, and with my bare hands slew the walrus, for I am Virile! Snore the death-rattle of the walrus, O struggling sleeper, snore! Snore me——
But I was compelled to leave. There is a great deal of it, Fothergil says. If you know Fothergil you are aware that when he declaims his Virile verses he becomes excited; he swells physically; sometimes he looks quite five feet tall in his moments of expansion ”

“ But I always feel that it is my duty to give the best in myself to these problems.
Someone must help Evolution evolve. Someone must be unselfish enough to give the cosmos new marks to come up to.
And who but the serious thinkers are willing to sacrifice themselves? ”

“ Fothergil Finch has often said to me that that is one difference between genius and talent. When you have genius, you know, things like that just come to you; but if you only have talent you must work and WORK for them.
"If I only hd your spontaneity, Hermione!" ”

“ If one is going to take things up and show a serious interest in them one must not limit one's self to a few phases.
One must be broad. One must be thorough. One must cover the whole field of thought.
Our little group this winter has been trying to do that. So far we've taken up Bergson, socialism, psychology, Rabindranath Tagore, the meaning of welfare work, culinary science, the new movements in art—and ever so many more things I can't remember now.
For the rest of Lent we're going to take up the Cosmic Consciousness. ”

“ It comes over me so strong at times, the yearning for the primitive does, that I just sit with a dreamy look on my face and murmur to myself: "ALONE, ALONE — UNDER THE STARS! ALONE!"
Mamma overheard me saying that the other day and thought I had gone crazy, and she said: "for Heaven's sake, Hermione, what are you thinking about, and what do you want?"
"The stars," I murmured, scarcely knowing that
I spoke aloud, "the stars and my Cave Man!"
Mamma was shocked — she says for an unmarried woman to think of Cave Men is simply indelicate.
Mamma is not at all advanced, you know. ”

“ Mamma has no idea whatever of logic. She is a typical old-fashioned woman.
"Mamma," I said, "cry as much as you like. You shall not disturb my Inner Harmony! I will not permit you to. And my mind is made up. I will take up the Twilight Sleep in a serious way!" ”

“ What is so free, so untrammeled, so ungyved, so unconventional, as an Influenza Germ? From throat to throat it floats, full of the spirit of true democratic brotherhood, making the masses equal with the classes, careless, winged, ungyved! ”

“ But, of course, advanced thinkers will have to take the matter up seriously and discover a way out — some day we will live on aromas and electricity, no doubt.
Don't you think the world is getting kinder? A hundred years ago, for instance, no one would have cared whether plants suffer pain or not — people wouldn't have given it a second though, you know.
And now, though, they will have to keep on eating them until something else is invented, they will do it with a shudder and won't enjoy them near so much. The world is losing much of its cruelty and thoughtlessness. ”

“ Evolution will Evolve in the right direction?
I have worried myself half to death at times over the Superman!
You know I feel personally responsible, to a certain extent, about what he will be like when he gets here. If he isn't what he should be, you know, it will be the fault of those of us who are the leaders in thought today — it will be because we haven't started him right, you know. Mamma — poor dear Mamma is SO unadvanced, you know! — has an idea that when the Superman does get here he won't be at all the sort of person that one would care to receive socially. ”

“ I was indignant. "Mamma," I said, "what right have you to say they would discuss that all the time?"
"Because," she said, "I have noticed that no matter whether they start with sociology or psychology, they always get around to Sex in the end."
Isn't it funny about pure-minded people? — in the generation before this anything that shocked a pure- minded person like Mamma was sure to be bad.
But now its only the evil-minded people who ever get shocked at all, it seems.
The really PUREST of the pure-minded people don't get shocked by anything at all these days. ”