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WORKS OF ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
Cardigan A King and a Few Dukes The Maid-at-Arms The Conspirators The Reckoning The Cambric Mask Lorraine The Haunts of Men Maids of Paradise Outsiders Ashes of Empire A Young Man in a Hurry The Red Republic In Search of the Unknown The King in Yellow In the Quarter The Maker of Moons The Mystery of Choice Iole
FOR CHILDREN
Outdoor-Land River-Land Orchard-Land Forest-Land
IOLE
"The little things," he continued, delicately perforating the atmosphere as though selecting a diatom.]
By
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
D. APPLETON & CO. New York MDCCCCV
Copyright, 1905, by
ROBERT W. CHAMBERS
_Published May, 1905_
TO
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
PREFACE
Does anybody remember the opera of _The Inca_, and that heartbreakingepisode where the Court Undertaker, in a morbid desire to increase hisprofessional skill, deliberately accomplishes the destruction of hismiddle-aged relatives in order to inter them for the sake of practise?
If I recollect, his dismal confession runs something like this:
"It was in a bleak November When I slew them, I remember, As I caught them unawares Drinking tea in rocking-chairs."
And so he talked them to death, the subject being "What Really is Art?"Afterward he was sorry--
"The squeak of a door, The creak of the floor, My horrors and fears enhance; And I wake with a scream As I hear in my dream The shrieks of my maiden aunts!"
Now it is a very dreadful thing to suggest that those highly respectablepseudo-spinsters, the Sister Arts, supposedly cozily immune in theirpolygamous chastity (for every suitor for favor is popularly expected tobe wedded to his particular art)--I repeat, it is very dreadful tosuggest that these impeccable old ladies are in danger of being talkedto death.
Let us find comfort in the ancient proverb: "Art talked to death shallrise again." Let us also recollect that "Dinky is as dinky does"; that"All is not Shaw that Bernards"; that "Better Yeates than Clever"; thatwords are so inexpensive that there is no moral crime in robbing Henryto pay James.
Firmly believing all this, abjuring all atom-pickers, slab furniture,and woodchuck literature--save only the immortal verse:
"And there the wooden-chuck doth tread; While from the oak trees' tops The red, red squirrel on thy head The frequent acorn drops."
Abjuring, as I say, dinkiness in all its forms, we may still hope thatthose cleanly and respectable spinsters, the Sister Arts, will continuethroughout the ages, rocking and drinking tea unterrified by themillion-tongued clamor in the back yard and below stairs, where thumband forefinger continue the question demanded by intellectualexhaustion: "L'arr! Kesker say l'arr?"