Various

“ Hanaré was gone now. Without Hanaré life could never be the same. And Hanaré’s daughter had changed. She had become an independent woman. There was defiance in her eyes, instead of that ancient girlishness which had always kept hope alive in Paul’s heart. Indeed, the world had changed. For better or for worse, Paul, too, had changed.
In those intense moments of a man’s lifetime, wherein the past, together with the ideals which epitomize the past, are relinquished and a new method of life undertaken—in those moments a man is not fully conscious of all that he is doing. ”

“ Every day Carlos had alternated playing around the city with attempts to work which always ended like to-day. In all that time he had only finished one picture—but it had been good, and had shown the talent that was being wasted. If only she knew some way to touch the spark to that talent. Eloise found herself wondering whether perhaps she had not undertaken a task too difficult even for her love. It seemed as if Carlos utterly lacked the requisite energy to produce what he was capable of. With a sigh she turned to putting the studio in order. ”

“ And not only in Yale, but generally throughout the East—and it was alone in the East that the Classic spirit lived—the eviction of Culture was general. But Yale has an obsession to continue to be one vast primary school for scientists, and the intellect of the undergraduate suffers. Like it or no, the forcible entrance of the Sciences reduced Culture to a phantom, and, to interpolate a definition, by culture is meant those elements in the developed mind which make it self-sufficient, content, and productive of Beauty. ”

“ These thoughts flowed slowly through Paul’s mind, now that he was out on the street, walking toward his apartment. He cursed himself for his selfishness and for bringing into a death-chamber such passions and emotions, thereby to heighten a young girl’s distress. What if they were the passions of a lifetime! What if they had caused him inexpressible suffering! He was none the less a selfish brute, immersed in his own selfishness. ”

“ We look at this century of ours, we try to see it as might a future historian, and find a surprising hodge-podge. Fully judge it without the future, we cannot, yet, because everything is moving at such a terrific rate, these days, the present and the future are almost one, and we are thus enabled to pass partial judgment at least. Partial judgment—and on what? A world disillusioned, its ideals smashed, or, more tragic even, forgot; in the field of its arts, new music, new poetry, new painting; and over and above all, Science triumphant. ”

“ Yale must be militant, and now that the war is over, she should go back to pre-war—long pre-war—standards.
Be idealists with us, and look toward the Future! We must, together, never forget that out of chaos comes chaos, that out of our communally undisciplined intellects must come more undisciplined intellects, nor that we, after all, count little in comparison to the coming generations, for our potentialities we are realizing, or have realized, and their potentialities are yet untouched. ”

“ But Paul was not thinking of these things. He was merely astounded at the change that the night had wrought in himself.
“I wish to hell Hanaré hadn’t died,” he exclaimed suddenly, and without any reason for it. “Life is nothing but a constant attempt to adjust ourselves to the tragedy of existence. Since we cannot tell to-day what will happen to-morrow, we never quite succeeded in our adjustments: and so, there’s always a tragedy. We go on and on—like that!”
He felt master of himself now. But Marie supposed that he was lecturing her. ”

“ It was, however, likely that Paul carried with him a remnant of the atmosphere of the death-chamber he had just left—the green-walled room in the rear of 355 where Hanaré Tierens had died—and that the remembrance of this most recent experience created in his mind a marked sensitiveness to ghostly things such as policemen and Greenwich Village arc-lights. That calm, livid face, with its peculiarly French nose, had passed through some experience of which Paul, at least, knew nothing. He still felt the pressure of Hanaré’s hand, which he had held until the last moment. ”

“ The tragedy had been heightened by the silence. Paul had expressed his love too often for her to [49] be able to forget, even at this time, the intensity of his passion. And once, when their eyes met, he knew that in her young heart one more sorrow had thus been added to her present burden—a sympathy for him, and a feeling of almost shame that she could not respond to his love. ”

“ But it is that that he should be taught; it is that which should absolutely be driven home to him, lest chaos become dissolution.
And how? The answer, in part, is the old, old answer which must ring true so long as discipline, intellectually, means the more perfect, and therefore the more beautiful result—the Classics. In this age of science, such a suggestion, no doubt, is heretical—but only consider it for a moment, one small phase of it as it applies to us in the college world. Consider the undergraduate in a university. ”

“ Paul proceeded, as though the sound of his own voice helped to drive away the real tragedy behind—“if we were all automatons, who acted out one day the same as any other, incapable of making fools out of ourselves,—why then, life might be worth living. But some fool of a God—a fool God—gave us this power to make mistakes. Marie, for the past six years both our lives have been mistakes. ”

“ Of course, we being young, do take it all too seriously, for Youth always takes everything, particularly itself, too seriously; but, we, being idealists, stand to defend our ideals, which are mental discipline and intellectual aristocracy. Surely the poor Muses are not to blame that they are so misshapen and unlovely, for they are only the manifestation of a moving Cause behind them, which Cause, it seems to us, is mental sloppiness, a lack of intellectual discipline. It is in opposition to the basic reason of the artistic monstrosities of the age, then, that our ideals lie. ”

“ Whether we have our darkness, whether we are encountering the intangible—and it is not intangible in this instance—we must at least see that another and more splendid tale shall be told by the next generation, and, meeting the challenge of the present in the name of the Future, vanquish, if it is in us. ”

“ The schools should stand firmly for a higher standard of mental discipline, a better preparation for the more mature problems of college life with all their challenges to the mind, just as the colleges, further advanced, should endeavor to make men better prepared for life, and as the college graduates’ living of life with that background should prepare them for the quiet time of old age, when the intellectual failure or success of life will count more—far more—than any pecuniary or social status. ”

“ Last night you let me know well enough what you thought of me. But I don’t mind, because I know that is what I am. I can’t remember ever being anything else; though, of course, if one is to be a man’s mistress, one has the right of choosing the man. I prefer education to ignorance, and a decent amount of politeness to mere brutality.”
“I am not merely brutal!” He stood up and faced her as he said it. “It’s you who are brutal—or at least you will be before you have done with me. Women are all cruel, because they understand men so well. Our souls are torn first by one and then by the other. ”

“ It had given Paul the conviction that if a man is going to marry a decent woman,—well—the least he can do is to be decent himself. At the heart of civilization, he thought, lay the unitary standard. And thus he had crossed in safety numerous pitfalls which present themselves to the average hack-writer—the small dealer in ideas.
But to-night, ah, well—even one’s deepest ideals are shattered [51] at times. The excruciating emotions of the past few hours had left him like a rudderless ship, adrift in a sea of bewildering passions. ”

“ We grant these illegitimate members of the “progeny immortal of painting, sculpture, and rapt poesy” do fall, under our very eyes, prostrate along the path to lasting fame, with that goal still not even in sight, nevertheless, men and women are gulled by them, look, and admire even, in their breathless attempt to be “astride the times”. Therein lies the tragedy—that they are accepted. ”

“ She procured the doughnuts, and Paul reluctantly shambled off to a nearby table, where he sat down, facing the counter. It was indeed strange that this girl should exert so much attraction over him. He had seen beautiful women before during his twenty-six years of varied existence. However, he remembered with a smile that since women had meant anything to him at all, he had been in love: first with a stolidly serious young lady, who was now married to a man much older than herself, and then with Marie Tierens. ”

“ The Sciences, of themselves are good enough, have interest, even romance, but they are specialized, rarified to such a degree that they do not teach life, nor do they prepare for life, while in their way, the Classics are life. ”

“ Impulsively Marie ran over to his side and knelt there, with her arms upon the chair.
“Are—are you drunk, Paul?” She had rarely seen drunken men.
He raised his head then and looked into her eyes, which were so close to his. “No,” he said. “I have been drinking, but I am [55] not drunk. I am merely dazed, by death, and by life—but mostly by life. Life is so strange. Have you never thought that?”
“Yes.”
“No—no—no! Not the way I have thought it. You only know the half of life—Hanaré’s half. You have inherited, now, Hanaré’s domain. Innocent, childish Hanaré! ”

“ But it is just that that a university should stand for: it is the production of great minds, trained in clear, broad ways of thinking, self-sufficient, capable of escaping from the trammels of the every-day. ”

“ And from where can the preparing of the cultured mind, and the fighting away from the incubus of the formula come save from our universities?—In Yale, of course, the great tradition of the cultural education, and the influence of classicism, which—our intellectual re-Renaissance to the contrary, notwithstanding—turned out capable and self-reliant minds for generations before the war, the war abruptly cut off the moment it won the battle of science for Science. ”

“ The vision was entirely agreeable.
“It’s Rosalie,” she replied. “At least I think so. I haven’t no father or mother. I live with Aunt Bess, but Toots is my dog.”
“I’d like to paint a picture of you, Rosalie. That’s my business, you see; I’m an artist—or supposed to be. Do you think your aunt would let you come up to my house to-morrow afternoon, and would you like to?” ”

“ And if the universities can hold as their fixed purpose the creating and maintaining of this higher order, and the creating again of a higher order still they will once more be fulfilling the only requirements for their existence. But they cannot go on blandly saying that all is well: all is not well, and Pollyannaism in so grave a question as that of laying the foundation for the mental competence and the intellectual aristocracy of future generations is bad taste, and is out of place. ”

“ We need say nothing about the world in general—it is out of place here, and we all know too much of wars and rumors of wars, and the rest. So let us consider a moment then, the arts.—Such new arts they are, too, and like most youngsters, so very self-assertive! Their Muses are flapper-muses, and, like their [40] physical prototypes, cause havoc enough. We have with us “the arts, though unimagined, yet to be” of Shelley’s prophecy, and, to Shelley, who loved Beauty and knew her, they would indeed be unimaginable! Poetry, unformed and unthought ”

“ If the king is weak, his subjects are weak, and often times revolt, and the universities must not be weak. They, officially, and we undergraduates, personally, should work toward a higher standard of intellect, for if they and we do not, the next generation will not thank us for a heritage of intellectual sloppiness—and may revolt. Above all, we must not be satisfied with the average, but demand the exceptional, exceptional minds and men, and more and more of them. ”

“ Shelley, in the preface to Prometheus Unbound, says: “Poets, not otherwise than philosophers, painters, sculptors, and musicians, are, in one case, the creators, and in another, the creations, of their age”, and it is there we may find, perhaps, the explanation, and at the same time a hint as to the solution of the whole problem: the age with its chaos and inefficient efficiency has created these inartistic artists; a new order of artists could re-create a less chaotic order—it at least is a possible solution. ”

“ What a wonderful girl Eloise was, and what a trump to have believed in him enough to have married him. He would work as he never had before as soon as they got settled in New York. With which resolutions he got into bed to dream of painting portraits for the kings and queens of Europe.
Four months later in a studio-apartment in the low Fifties a wet paint-brush was hurled viciously at a small statue of the Laocoon. It struck the largest figure full in the face with a comforting smack, and clattered to the floor. Carlos Bentley had been trying to do a portrait. ”