The Reader Critic
“SPIRITUAL ADVENTURES”Anonymous:At your suggestion I have begun to read Arthur Symons’s “Spiritual Adventures.”“Christian Trevelga” strikes me, as you predicted, most strongly so far. Symons is one of the subtlest of minds; everything he writes is worth reading. This is of his best certainly. What is one to make of him? I don’t know. I don’t know whether his kind of subtlety is of any earthly value, or whether it is as valuable as Shelley’s. I can never give up faith in the human race quite as completely as he does, nor adopt his attitude of autocratic detachment; yet I never seem to have any real faith, either.—Vae victis!He is removed from all sense of human values, and lost, always, in abstract patterns. This particular story is an extraordinary expression of him—of the prizes and peril of such a state. Oh, hell! what an insult is put upon us when we are invited to live, and to make such a choice.Perhaps one makes it: then he is not happy until he has lost himself in an art that is “something more than an audible dramatization of human life.” Perhaps he is right. But—But—but—Sometimes Iknowthat for the greatest artist there would be no chasm between what the heart desires and what the mind constructs. Tell me how to do that inpoetry and I’ll give you a dollar. Perhaps it can be done in music—I don’t know. But in poetry the human heart and the mathematical soul are always fighting—and so far as I know they have not yet come to an agreement—not in English poetry, at least. The artist and the human being never get to be bedfellows. It’s either sickening humanitarianism or stark designing—the second is the less painful.Well!—I loathe the world, including Symons and all the arts.Ezra Pound, London:Thanks for the January-February issue. Your magazine seems to be looking up. A touch of light in Dawson and Seiffert—thoughThe Little Reviewseems to me rather scrappy and unselective. I thought you started out to prove Ficke’s belief that the sonnet is “Gawd’s own city.” However, he seems to have abandoned that church. I still don’t know whether you send me the magazine in order to encourage me in believing that my camp stool by Helicon is to be left free from tacks, or whether the paper is sent to convert me from error.I am glad to see in it some mention of Eliot, who is really of interest.The Egoistis about to publish Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” in volume form (since no grab-the-cash firm will take it) and do Lewis’s “Tarr” as a serial. I think you will be interested in the two novels, and I hope you will draw attention to them, and to the sporting endeavor ofThe Egoistto do in this dark isle what theMercurehas so long done in France, i. e., publish books as well as a magazine.Incidentally, Chicago should not depend on New York for its books.Anonymous:Will you ask that Lollipop Vender man, in the March issue, what happened to his little dirigible? He was sailing along dropping bombs, hitting the mark every time, when something seemed to happen and he came limply wobbling down to—nothing.I hope the last half of that article was not meant to be satire or wit or anything like that. He speaks with too much authority to have much sense of humor, and—ye gods!—the situation is far too desperate for wit—of that kind. Now there’s Bartlett—read what he says of Bartlett! Haven’t we answered all attacks for years with “There’s Bartlett”? It was only intuition and self-preservation on our part at first, perhaps—but now hasn’t Bartlett proved that he is a “real artist”? He is off to New York to live.How he does wobble when he comes to his list of “able and honest”.Poor Parker! that he should have to go into the list of best men, too—that list! The mancanpaint—technic seems to be only asuperstition now but it once had a place in Art. Parker has that at least. Wendt, Buehr, Ravlin, and Davis should be rescued from the “able and honest” before your critic collapses completely in referring to Clarkson and Oliver Dennet Grover as some of “their best men.” Ask him anyway—what happened?Alice Groff, Philadelphia:Why did not Sherwood Anderson write up “Vibrant Life” clean and true? Why did he not have the courage to paint every one of those emotions in clear color—to outline every one of those actions in the beauty of naturalness? Why does he artificialize everything? Is he afraid of the crouching tigers of conventional morality?Why should not vibrant life assert itself after its kind, even in the presence of death? What desecration was there in this man and woman coming together in such presence, drawn by the invincible magnetism of sex? What of falsity to life was there in the lawyer’s giving and answering the call of life as to this woman, even though he had a wife whom he loved?Why conjure up an atmosphere of guilt that neither man nor woman felt? Why suggest such hair-bristling horror as to the accidental overturning of a dead man’s body, any more than over the accidental upsetting of a vase, or a statue, in the course of a dance? Why such strained effort to make that specialized expressionof vibrant life which is the very pivotal centre of all life appear as the degradation of degradation, degrading everything else, even death?Will you answer that there is an eternal and universal sense of the fitness of things with which every soul may be lightened that cometh into the world? Shall I not reply to you that this is a lie against life—that life is sacrificed every day to this lie? Shall I not say to you that vibrant life must not allow itself to be sacrificed to such lies—that vibrant life must create anew continually a sense of the fitness of things for itself and for its every new expression—that it must do this with authority, shaking itself bravely free from the clutch of the dead hand, whether as to traditions, standards, customs, morals, ideals or love even? Shall I not say to you that Life must assert its right to Live? Shall we not organize life on such basis?REVIEWING “THE LITTLE REVIEW”Virginia York in “The Richmond Evening Journal”:As we said a couple of months ago,The Little Review, published in windy Chicago, is claimed by its editors and readers to be the very, very last word in prose and poetry. Also, it is the organ, the mouth organ, perhaps, of that unsustained tune known as “vers libre.” In a criticism of some of the Review’s lurid, foolish contents we poked a good deal of fun at the publication in general and one piece of loose, or free, verse in particular. This gem, entitled, “Cafe Sketches,” by Arthur Davison Ficke, said, in part:Presently persons will come outAnd shake legs.I do not want legs shaken.I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably.I want to see dawn spilled across the blacknessLike a scrambled egg on a skillet;I want miracles, wonders.Tidings out of deeps I do not know, ...But I have a horrible suspicionThat neither youNor your esteemed consortNor I myselfCan ever provide these simple thingsFor which I am so patiently waitingBase people.How I dislike you!As we said a couple of months ago, “Maybe you think this is funny, but certainly it is not intended to be. Seriousness, thick, black, dense seriousness is the keynote ofThe Little Review.” However, the current issue of said magazine carries our editorial remarks in full, and with our hand on our heart we make a deep courtesy for the honor conferred upon us. Though we distinctly deplore the fact that absolutely no comment is made upon our criticism ofThe Little Reviewand Mr. Ficke’s remarkable “pome.” It is as if we were taken by the editorial legs and shaken. And we do not want legs shaken. We are a lady. We would far rather have our immortal editorial soul shaken unreasonably and spilled across the literary blackness and blankness “like a scrambled egg on the skillet.” Yet, we have a horrible idea “that neither you,” nor our esteemed contemporary, “nor I myself,” know what it is all about; but we do wish that Margaret Anderson and the other editors of “Le Revue Petite” had made a few caustic remarks on our feeble attempts to be funny. “Base people! How I dislike you!”But to show that we can be generous and heap coals of fire upon the heads of our enemies, we propose to reproduce two short, sweet poems from this month’s (beg pardon, the January-February issue, lately out, “on account of having no funds during January,” as the Review editors admit) issue ofThe Little Review. The first selection on our program, ladies and gentlemen, is by Harriet Dean and is called “The Pillar,” though much more effectively it might have been headed “The Pillow” or “The Hitching-Post.” Here goes:When your house grows too close for you,When the ceilings lower themselves, crushing you,There on the porch I shall wait,Outside your house.You shall lean against my straightness,And let night surge over you.Now if it were only a nice slim lamp-post of a man giving such an invitation we should pray that the ceilings would descend, and should hasten to the porch—strangely enough on the outside of the house—and we should love to lean, and lean, and lean, surge what may.The second, an “Asperity,” by Mitchell Dawson, is labeled “Teresa,” and madly singeth as follows:“Do you remember Antonio—Swift-winged, green in the sun?Into the snap-dragon throat of desireFlew Antonio.Snap!...The skeleton of Antonio has madeA good husband, a good provider.”La, la, la! At first we thought “Antonio” was a green dragon fly, but, finally, by exercising a bit of common sense, we know that Tony is a locust and left his “skeleton,” or “shell,” behind; and that Mrs. Tony must have subsisted on the “leavings.”Oh, this nut sundae, chocolate fudge, marshmallow whip vers libre poetry! Isn’t it just too lovely? Snap! “Into the snap-dragon throat of desire, Flew Antonio.” Honestly now, Tony, don’t you wish the lady had kept her mouth shut?We should like to comment upon these remarks, but surely they are too good to spoil.A Boy, Chicago:I am a boy sixteen years old, and one could not expect me to know much about poetry—especially free verse. But I have heard of your magazine as a magazine that was ready to print what all kinds of people thought. So I have written a little verse—it is not a poem—telling you something about what is going on inside my mind, for these matters trouble every boy’s mind, although you may think that we are light-minded at my age.BLINDNESSI suppose I must be blind.People say continually that the world is a wicked place;I hear them talking about it all the time.They say our city streets reekWith sin and sorrowAnd all manner of misery and filth,And yet I do not see any of it.I go up and down these streets every dayAnd I see that they are ugly and that many peopleAre deformed and sick and hungry;But I close my eyes to it.I suppose somebody will call me cowardly, but what shall I do?I have no money to give the poor, and perhapsThat is not getting at their real trouble anyway.I cannot heal the sick and deformed.I cannot make the streets cleaner.So I just think of other things.Of my books at home, or the tennis courts in the park,Or my pretty sister or anything.There is nothing wrong in my own world.I am happy. I like my school well enough.I have my boy friends, and they are healthy athletic boys.All the girls I know are good girls,With charming and high minds.And yet it is true that many boys lie and steal,And girls run away and are dragged into lives of shame.Why do I not see it? Why do I not do anything?Why am I so helpless, if I have any duty to others?FROM “THE INTERSTATE MEDICAL JOURNAL”A case in point showing how little has been achieved by our medical men who have gone among the people, torch in hand, to lead them to the Promised Land of happiness and content and physical and mental health has been well illustrated in a poem, recently published inThe Little Review(Chicago), wherein the authoress, Mary Aldis, unwittingly indicts the whole medical profession for still allowing the sale of a patent medicine to reduce obesity. The strange title of the poem in homely and unadorned “free verse” is “Ellie: The Tragic Tale of An Obese Girl.”Mrs. Aldis—thus runs the poem—had a manicurist who was “a great big lummox of a girl—a continent,” with “silly bulging cheeks and puffy forehead,” and who one day said to the poetess, weeping and distraught: “I’m so fat, so awful, awful fat! The boys won’t look at me.” She asked Mrs. Aldis for help and Mrs. Aldis suggested, “A doctor’s vague advice to bant and exercise,” and “Ellie and her woes passed from my mind. Until, as summer dawned again, I heard that she was dead.” Mrs. Aldis went to the funeral and saw Ellie lying in her coffin and was told by Ellie’s mother, “She must a made it [the dress] by herself. It’s queer it fitted perfectly, An’ her all thin like that.” Later in the evening Mrs. Aldis received the following confidences from Ellie’s mother: “’Twas the stuff she took that did it, I never knew till after she was dead. The bottles in the woodshed, hundreds of ’em, All labelled ‘Caldwell’s Great Obesity Cure Warranted Safe and Rapid.’”To sermonize here, we have Mrs. Aldis, who we know to be a highly intelligent woman and one not only interested in the uplift of the drama but also in the uplift of the common (?) people, merely saying to a girl, who is wretchedly unhappy about her elephantine size: All that I can give you is a doctor’s vague advice to bant and exercise. She might have given her Vance Thompson’s epoch-making book “Eat and Grow Thin,” or read chapters from it to the unhappy girl, thereby convincing her that starvation is unnecessary and also a patent medicine. But with a coldness that is most reprehensive, she gave “a doctor’s vague advice to bant and exercise,” and evidently Ellie would none of this. She might also have consulted the hundred and one doctors in Chicago or elsewhere who specialize in the reduction of fat, and who could have given her for “the continent” a diet chart or perhaps a pill to effect the desired change. But she did not think this necessary; she did not feel it her duty. But if we have only adverse criticism for Mrs. Aldis’ uncharitable act, what direful words of commination should we not visit on the doctor who gave the “vague advice.” In an age when the cult of slimness is uppermost in everybody’s mind, is it possible that the doctor consulted by Mrs. Aldis was so untrue to his mission as a public benefactor that he gave only “vague advice,” or is Mrs. Aldis maligning the whole medical profession and trying to show that by his “vague advice” the doctor was really responsible for Ellie’s death by driving her into taking “the bottles in the woodshed, hundreds of ’em. All labelled ‘Caldwell’s Great Obesity Cure Warranted Safe and Rapid.’”?The lesson contained in the poetic lines of Mrs. Aldis’ little tragedy is a bitter one for all those medical men who have made strenuous efforts to let the public share their deep and vast knowledge without so much as asking for the slightest compensation. It shows beyond a doubt that not only are the Ellies of this world unwilling to imbibe science in a popular form, but also the Aldises of a much higher intelligence. It shows that the lure of patent medicine is a very strong one and that a doctor’s “vague advice” cannot offset it. Strange, indeed, that a doctor’s “vague advice” should be so inconsequential opposite so patently fraudulent a preparation as “Caldwell’s Great Obesity Cure,” but stranger still is what we are about to record—namely, the failure of our medical propagandists to combat in an intelligent way that most simple of all our metabolic disturbances—obesity!
Anonymous:
At your suggestion I have begun to read Arthur Symons’s “Spiritual Adventures.”
“Christian Trevelga” strikes me, as you predicted, most strongly so far. Symons is one of the subtlest of minds; everything he writes is worth reading. This is of his best certainly. What is one to make of him? I don’t know. I don’t know whether his kind of subtlety is of any earthly value, or whether it is as valuable as Shelley’s. I can never give up faith in the human race quite as completely as he does, nor adopt his attitude of autocratic detachment; yet I never seem to have any real faith, either.—Vae victis!
He is removed from all sense of human values, and lost, always, in abstract patterns. This particular story is an extraordinary expression of him—of the prizes and peril of such a state. Oh, hell! what an insult is put upon us when we are invited to live, and to make such a choice.
Perhaps one makes it: then he is not happy until he has lost himself in an art that is “something more than an audible dramatization of human life.” Perhaps he is right. But—
But—but—
Sometimes Iknowthat for the greatest artist there would be no chasm between what the heart desires and what the mind constructs. Tell me how to do that inpoetry and I’ll give you a dollar. Perhaps it can be done in music—I don’t know. But in poetry the human heart and the mathematical soul are always fighting—and so far as I know they have not yet come to an agreement—not in English poetry, at least. The artist and the human being never get to be bedfellows. It’s either sickening humanitarianism or stark designing—the second is the less painful.
Well!—I loathe the world, including Symons and all the arts.
Ezra Pound, London:
Thanks for the January-February issue. Your magazine seems to be looking up. A touch of light in Dawson and Seiffert—thoughThe Little Reviewseems to me rather scrappy and unselective. I thought you started out to prove Ficke’s belief that the sonnet is “Gawd’s own city.” However, he seems to have abandoned that church. I still don’t know whether you send me the magazine in order to encourage me in believing that my camp stool by Helicon is to be left free from tacks, or whether the paper is sent to convert me from error.
I am glad to see in it some mention of Eliot, who is really of interest.
The Egoistis about to publish Joyce’s “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” in volume form (since no grab-the-cash firm will take it) and do Lewis’s “Tarr” as a serial. I think you will be interested in the two novels, and I hope you will draw attention to them, and to the sporting endeavor ofThe Egoistto do in this dark isle what theMercurehas so long done in France, i. e., publish books as well as a magazine.
Incidentally, Chicago should not depend on New York for its books.
Anonymous:
Will you ask that Lollipop Vender man, in the March issue, what happened to his little dirigible? He was sailing along dropping bombs, hitting the mark every time, when something seemed to happen and he came limply wobbling down to—nothing.
I hope the last half of that article was not meant to be satire or wit or anything like that. He speaks with too much authority to have much sense of humor, and—ye gods!—the situation is far too desperate for wit—of that kind. Now there’s Bartlett—read what he says of Bartlett! Haven’t we answered all attacks for years with “There’s Bartlett”? It was only intuition and self-preservation on our part at first, perhaps—but now hasn’t Bartlett proved that he is a “real artist”? He is off to New York to live.
How he does wobble when he comes to his list of “able and honest”.
Poor Parker! that he should have to go into the list of best men, too—that list! The mancanpaint—technic seems to be only asuperstition now but it once had a place in Art. Parker has that at least. Wendt, Buehr, Ravlin, and Davis should be rescued from the “able and honest” before your critic collapses completely in referring to Clarkson and Oliver Dennet Grover as some of “their best men.” Ask him anyway—what happened?
Alice Groff, Philadelphia:
Why did not Sherwood Anderson write up “Vibrant Life” clean and true? Why did he not have the courage to paint every one of those emotions in clear color—to outline every one of those actions in the beauty of naturalness? Why does he artificialize everything? Is he afraid of the crouching tigers of conventional morality?
Why should not vibrant life assert itself after its kind, even in the presence of death? What desecration was there in this man and woman coming together in such presence, drawn by the invincible magnetism of sex? What of falsity to life was there in the lawyer’s giving and answering the call of life as to this woman, even though he had a wife whom he loved?
Why conjure up an atmosphere of guilt that neither man nor woman felt? Why suggest such hair-bristling horror as to the accidental overturning of a dead man’s body, any more than over the accidental upsetting of a vase, or a statue, in the course of a dance? Why such strained effort to make that specialized expressionof vibrant life which is the very pivotal centre of all life appear as the degradation of degradation, degrading everything else, even death?
Will you answer that there is an eternal and universal sense of the fitness of things with which every soul may be lightened that cometh into the world? Shall I not reply to you that this is a lie against life—that life is sacrificed every day to this lie? Shall I not say to you that vibrant life must not allow itself to be sacrificed to such lies—that vibrant life must create anew continually a sense of the fitness of things for itself and for its every new expression—that it must do this with authority, shaking itself bravely free from the clutch of the dead hand, whether as to traditions, standards, customs, morals, ideals or love even? Shall I not say to you that Life must assert its right to Live? Shall we not organize life on such basis?
Virginia York in “The Richmond Evening Journal”:
As we said a couple of months ago,The Little Review, published in windy Chicago, is claimed by its editors and readers to be the very, very last word in prose and poetry. Also, it is the organ, the mouth organ, perhaps, of that unsustained tune known as “vers libre.” In a criticism of some of the Review’s lurid, foolish contents we poked a good deal of fun at the publication in general and one piece of loose, or free, verse in particular. This gem, entitled, “Cafe Sketches,” by Arthur Davison Ficke, said, in part:
Presently persons will come outAnd shake legs.I do not want legs shaken.I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably.I want to see dawn spilled across the blacknessLike a scrambled egg on a skillet;I want miracles, wonders.Tidings out of deeps I do not know, ...But I have a horrible suspicionThat neither youNor your esteemed consortNor I myselfCan ever provide these simple thingsFor which I am so patiently waitingBase people.How I dislike you!
Presently persons will come outAnd shake legs.I do not want legs shaken.I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably.I want to see dawn spilled across the blacknessLike a scrambled egg on a skillet;I want miracles, wonders.Tidings out of deeps I do not know, ...But I have a horrible suspicionThat neither youNor your esteemed consortNor I myselfCan ever provide these simple thingsFor which I am so patiently waitingBase people.How I dislike you!
Presently persons will come outAnd shake legs.I do not want legs shaken.I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably.I want to see dawn spilled across the blacknessLike a scrambled egg on a skillet;I want miracles, wonders.Tidings out of deeps I do not know, ...But I have a horrible suspicionThat neither youNor your esteemed consortNor I myselfCan ever provide these simple thingsFor which I am so patiently waitingBase people.How I dislike you!
Presently persons will come out
And shake legs.
I do not want legs shaken.
I want immortal souls shaken unreasonably.
I want to see dawn spilled across the blackness
Like a scrambled egg on a skillet;
I want miracles, wonders.
Tidings out of deeps I do not know, ...
But I have a horrible suspicion
That neither you
Nor your esteemed consort
Nor I myself
Can ever provide these simple things
For which I am so patiently waiting
Base people.
How I dislike you!
As we said a couple of months ago, “Maybe you think this is funny, but certainly it is not intended to be. Seriousness, thick, black, dense seriousness is the keynote ofThe Little Review.” However, the current issue of said magazine carries our editorial remarks in full, and with our hand on our heart we make a deep courtesy for the honor conferred upon us. Though we distinctly deplore the fact that absolutely no comment is made upon our criticism ofThe Little Reviewand Mr. Ficke’s remarkable “pome.” It is as if we were taken by the editorial legs and shaken. And we do not want legs shaken. We are a lady. We would far rather have our immortal editorial soul shaken unreasonably and spilled across the literary blackness and blankness “like a scrambled egg on the skillet.” Yet, we have a horrible idea “that neither you,” nor our esteemed contemporary, “nor I myself,” know what it is all about; but we do wish that Margaret Anderson and the other editors of “Le Revue Petite” had made a few caustic remarks on our feeble attempts to be funny. “Base people! How I dislike you!”
But to show that we can be generous and heap coals of fire upon the heads of our enemies, we propose to reproduce two short, sweet poems from this month’s (beg pardon, the January-February issue, lately out, “on account of having no funds during January,” as the Review editors admit) issue ofThe Little Review. The first selection on our program, ladies and gentlemen, is by Harriet Dean and is called “The Pillar,” though much more effectively it might have been headed “The Pillow” or “The Hitching-Post.” Here goes:
When your house grows too close for you,When the ceilings lower themselves, crushing you,There on the porch I shall wait,Outside your house.You shall lean against my straightness,And let night surge over you.
When your house grows too close for you,When the ceilings lower themselves, crushing you,There on the porch I shall wait,Outside your house.You shall lean against my straightness,And let night surge over you.
When your house grows too close for you,When the ceilings lower themselves, crushing you,There on the porch I shall wait,Outside your house.You shall lean against my straightness,And let night surge over you.
When your house grows too close for you,
When the ceilings lower themselves, crushing you,
There on the porch I shall wait,
Outside your house.
You shall lean against my straightness,
And let night surge over you.
Now if it were only a nice slim lamp-post of a man giving such an invitation we should pray that the ceilings would descend, and should hasten to the porch—strangely enough on the outside of the house—and we should love to lean, and lean, and lean, surge what may.
The second, an “Asperity,” by Mitchell Dawson, is labeled “Teresa,” and madly singeth as follows:
“Do you remember Antonio—Swift-winged, green in the sun?Into the snap-dragon throat of desireFlew Antonio.Snap!...The skeleton of Antonio has madeA good husband, a good provider.”
“Do you remember Antonio—Swift-winged, green in the sun?Into the snap-dragon throat of desireFlew Antonio.Snap!...The skeleton of Antonio has madeA good husband, a good provider.”
“Do you remember Antonio—Swift-winged, green in the sun?Into the snap-dragon throat of desireFlew Antonio.Snap!...The skeleton of Antonio has madeA good husband, a good provider.”
“Do you remember Antonio—
Swift-winged, green in the sun?
Into the snap-dragon throat of desire
Flew Antonio.
Snap!...
The skeleton of Antonio has made
A good husband, a good provider.”
La, la, la! At first we thought “Antonio” was a green dragon fly, but, finally, by exercising a bit of common sense, we know that Tony is a locust and left his “skeleton,” or “shell,” behind; and that Mrs. Tony must have subsisted on the “leavings.”
Oh, this nut sundae, chocolate fudge, marshmallow whip vers libre poetry! Isn’t it just too lovely? Snap! “Into the snap-dragon throat of desire, Flew Antonio.” Honestly now, Tony, don’t you wish the lady had kept her mouth shut?
We should like to comment upon these remarks, but surely they are too good to spoil.
A Boy, Chicago:
I am a boy sixteen years old, and one could not expect me to know much about poetry—especially free verse. But I have heard of your magazine as a magazine that was ready to print what all kinds of people thought. So I have written a little verse—it is not a poem—telling you something about what is going on inside my mind, for these matters trouble every boy’s mind, although you may think that we are light-minded at my age.
I suppose I must be blind.People say continually that the world is a wicked place;I hear them talking about it all the time.They say our city streets reekWith sin and sorrowAnd all manner of misery and filth,And yet I do not see any of it.I go up and down these streets every dayAnd I see that they are ugly and that many peopleAre deformed and sick and hungry;But I close my eyes to it.I suppose somebody will call me cowardly, but what shall I do?I have no money to give the poor, and perhapsThat is not getting at their real trouble anyway.I cannot heal the sick and deformed.I cannot make the streets cleaner.So I just think of other things.Of my books at home, or the tennis courts in the park,Or my pretty sister or anything.There is nothing wrong in my own world.I am happy. I like my school well enough.I have my boy friends, and they are healthy athletic boys.All the girls I know are good girls,With charming and high minds.And yet it is true that many boys lie and steal,And girls run away and are dragged into lives of shame.Why do I not see it? Why do I not do anything?Why am I so helpless, if I have any duty to others?
I suppose I must be blind.People say continually that the world is a wicked place;I hear them talking about it all the time.They say our city streets reekWith sin and sorrowAnd all manner of misery and filth,And yet I do not see any of it.I go up and down these streets every dayAnd I see that they are ugly and that many peopleAre deformed and sick and hungry;But I close my eyes to it.I suppose somebody will call me cowardly, but what shall I do?I have no money to give the poor, and perhapsThat is not getting at their real trouble anyway.I cannot heal the sick and deformed.I cannot make the streets cleaner.So I just think of other things.Of my books at home, or the tennis courts in the park,Or my pretty sister or anything.There is nothing wrong in my own world.I am happy. I like my school well enough.I have my boy friends, and they are healthy athletic boys.All the girls I know are good girls,With charming and high minds.And yet it is true that many boys lie and steal,And girls run away and are dragged into lives of shame.Why do I not see it? Why do I not do anything?Why am I so helpless, if I have any duty to others?
I suppose I must be blind.People say continually that the world is a wicked place;I hear them talking about it all the time.They say our city streets reekWith sin and sorrowAnd all manner of misery and filth,And yet I do not see any of it.I go up and down these streets every dayAnd I see that they are ugly and that many peopleAre deformed and sick and hungry;But I close my eyes to it.I suppose somebody will call me cowardly, but what shall I do?I have no money to give the poor, and perhapsThat is not getting at their real trouble anyway.I cannot heal the sick and deformed.I cannot make the streets cleaner.So I just think of other things.Of my books at home, or the tennis courts in the park,Or my pretty sister or anything.There is nothing wrong in my own world.I am happy. I like my school well enough.I have my boy friends, and they are healthy athletic boys.All the girls I know are good girls,With charming and high minds.And yet it is true that many boys lie and steal,And girls run away and are dragged into lives of shame.Why do I not see it? Why do I not do anything?Why am I so helpless, if I have any duty to others?
I suppose I must be blind.
People say continually that the world is a wicked place;
I hear them talking about it all the time.
They say our city streets reek
With sin and sorrow
And all manner of misery and filth,
And yet I do not see any of it.
I go up and down these streets every day
And I see that they are ugly and that many people
Are deformed and sick and hungry;
But I close my eyes to it.
I suppose somebody will call me cowardly, but what shall I do?
I have no money to give the poor, and perhaps
That is not getting at their real trouble anyway.
I cannot heal the sick and deformed.
I cannot make the streets cleaner.
So I just think of other things.
Of my books at home, or the tennis courts in the park,
Or my pretty sister or anything.
There is nothing wrong in my own world.
I am happy. I like my school well enough.
I have my boy friends, and they are healthy athletic boys.
All the girls I know are good girls,
With charming and high minds.
And yet it is true that many boys lie and steal,
And girls run away and are dragged into lives of shame.
Why do I not see it? Why do I not do anything?
Why am I so helpless, if I have any duty to others?
A case in point showing how little has been achieved by our medical men who have gone among the people, torch in hand, to lead them to the Promised Land of happiness and content and physical and mental health has been well illustrated in a poem, recently published inThe Little Review(Chicago), wherein the authoress, Mary Aldis, unwittingly indicts the whole medical profession for still allowing the sale of a patent medicine to reduce obesity. The strange title of the poem in homely and unadorned “free verse” is “Ellie: The Tragic Tale of An Obese Girl.”
Mrs. Aldis—thus runs the poem—had a manicurist who was “a great big lummox of a girl—a continent,” with “silly bulging cheeks and puffy forehead,” and who one day said to the poetess, weeping and distraught: “I’m so fat, so awful, awful fat! The boys won’t look at me.” She asked Mrs. Aldis for help and Mrs. Aldis suggested, “A doctor’s vague advice to bant and exercise,” and “Ellie and her woes passed from my mind. Until, as summer dawned again, I heard that she was dead.” Mrs. Aldis went to the funeral and saw Ellie lying in her coffin and was told by Ellie’s mother, “She must a made it [the dress] by herself. It’s queer it fitted perfectly, An’ her all thin like that.” Later in the evening Mrs. Aldis received the following confidences from Ellie’s mother: “’Twas the stuff she took that did it, I never knew till after she was dead. The bottles in the woodshed, hundreds of ’em, All labelled ‘Caldwell’s Great Obesity Cure Warranted Safe and Rapid.’”
To sermonize here, we have Mrs. Aldis, who we know to be a highly intelligent woman and one not only interested in the uplift of the drama but also in the uplift of the common (?) people, merely saying to a girl, who is wretchedly unhappy about her elephantine size: All that I can give you is a doctor’s vague advice to bant and exercise. She might have given her Vance Thompson’s epoch-making book “Eat and Grow Thin,” or read chapters from it to the unhappy girl, thereby convincing her that starvation is unnecessary and also a patent medicine. But with a coldness that is most reprehensive, she gave “a doctor’s vague advice to bant and exercise,” and evidently Ellie would none of this. She might also have consulted the hundred and one doctors in Chicago or elsewhere who specialize in the reduction of fat, and who could have given her for “the continent” a diet chart or perhaps a pill to effect the desired change. But she did not think this necessary; she did not feel it her duty. But if we have only adverse criticism for Mrs. Aldis’ uncharitable act, what direful words of commination should we not visit on the doctor who gave the “vague advice.” In an age when the cult of slimness is uppermost in everybody’s mind, is it possible that the doctor consulted by Mrs. Aldis was so untrue to his mission as a public benefactor that he gave only “vague advice,” or is Mrs. Aldis maligning the whole medical profession and trying to show that by his “vague advice” the doctor was really responsible for Ellie’s death by driving her into taking “the bottles in the woodshed, hundreds of ’em. All labelled ‘Caldwell’s Great Obesity Cure Warranted Safe and Rapid.’”?
The lesson contained in the poetic lines of Mrs. Aldis’ little tragedy is a bitter one for all those medical men who have made strenuous efforts to let the public share their deep and vast knowledge without so much as asking for the slightest compensation. It shows beyond a doubt that not only are the Ellies of this world unwilling to imbibe science in a popular form, but also the Aldises of a much higher intelligence. It shows that the lure of patent medicine is a very strong one and that a doctor’s “vague advice” cannot offset it. Strange, indeed, that a doctor’s “vague advice” should be so inconsequential opposite so patently fraudulent a preparation as “Caldwell’s Great Obesity Cure,” but stranger still is what we are about to record—namely, the failure of our medical propagandists to combat in an intelligent way that most simple of all our metabolic disturbances—obesity!