Imaginary Interviews

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Howells William Dean. Imaginary Interviews

IMAGINARY INTERVIEWS

I. THE RESTORATION OF THE EASY CHAIR BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

II. A YEAR OF SPRING AND A LIFE OF YOUTH

III. SCLEROSIS OF THE TASTES

IV. THE PRACTICES AND PRECEPTS OF VAUDEVILLE

V. INTIMATIONS OF ITALIAN OPERA

VI. THE SUPERIORITY OF OUR INFERIORS

VII. UNIMPORTANCE OF WOMEN IN REPUBLICS

VIII. HAVING JUST GOT HOME

IX. NEW YORK TO THE HOME-COMER'S EYE

X. CHEAPNESS OF THE COSTLIEST CITY ON EARTH

XI. WAYS AND MEANS OF LIVING IN NEW YORK

XII. THE QUALITY OF BOSTON AND THE QUANTITY OF NEW YORK

XIII. THE WHIRL OF LIFE IN OUR FIRST CIRCLES

XIV. THE MAGAZINE MUSE

XV. COMPARATIVE LUXURIES OF TRAVEL

XVI. QUALITIES WITHOUT DEFECTS

XVII. A WASTED OPPORTUNITY

XVIII. A NIECE'S LITERARY ADVICE TO HER UNCLE

XIX. A SEARCH FOR CELEBRITY

XX. PRACTICAL IMMORTALITY ON EARTH

XXI. AROUND A RAINY-DAY FIRE

XXII. THE ADVANTAGES OF QUOTATIONAL CRITICISM

XXIII. READING FOR A GRANDFATHER

XXIV. SOME MOMENTS WITH THE MUSE

XXV. A NORMAL HERO AND HEROINE OUT OF WORK

OTHER ESSAYS

I. AUTUMN IN THE COUNTRY AND CITY

II. PERSONAL AND EPISTOLARY ADDRESSES

III. DRESSING FOR HOTEL DINNER

IV. THE COUNSEL OF LITERARY AGE TO LITERARY YOUTH

V. THE UNSATISFACTORINESS OF UNFRIENDLY CRITICISM

VI. THE FICKLENESS OF AGE

VII. THE RENEWAL OF INSPIRATION

VIII. THE SUMMER SOJOURN OF FLORINDO AND LINDORA

IX. TO HAVE THE HONOR OF MEETING

X. A DAY AT BRONX PARK

Отрывок из книги

It is not generally known that after forty-two years of constant use the aged and honored movable which now again finds itself put back in its old place in the rear of Harper's Magazine was stored in the warehouse of a certain safety-deposit company, in the winter of 1892. The event which had then vacated the chair is still so near as to be full of a pathos tenderly personal to all readers of that magazine, and may not be lightly mentioned in any travesty of the facts by one who was thought of for the empty place. He, before putting on the mask and mimic editorial robes – for it was never the real editor who sat in the Easy Chair, except for that brief hour when he took it to pay his deep-thought and deep-felt tribute to its last occupant – stood with bowed face and uncovered head in that bravest and gentlest presence which, while it abode with us here, men knew as George William Curtis.

It was, of course, in one of the best of the fireproof warehouses that the real editor had the Easy Chair stored, and when the unreal editor went to take it out of storage he found it without trouble in one of those vast rooms where the more valuable furniture and bric-à-brac are guarded in a special tutelage. If instinct had not taught him, he would have known it by its homely fashion, which the first unreal editor had suggested when he described it as an "old red-backed Easy Chair that has long been an ornament of our dingy office." That unreality was Mr. Donald G. Mitchell, the graceful and gracious Ik Marvel, dear to the old hearts that are still young for his Dream Life and his Reveries of a Bachelor, and never unreal in anything but his pretence of being the real editor of the magazine. In this disguise he feigned that he had "a way of throwing" himself back in the Easy Chair, "and indulging in an easy and careless overlook of the gossiping papers of the day, and in such chit-chat with chance visitors as kept him informed of the drift of the town talk, while it relieved greatly the monotony of his office hours." Not "bent on choosing mere gossip," he promised to be "on the watch for such topics or incidents as" seemed really important and suggestive, and to set them "down with all that gloss, and that happy lack of sequence, which make every-day talk so much better than every-day writing."

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To himself the unreal editor had to own that this was a poser. In his heart he was sick of Christmas: not of the dear and high event, the greatest in the memory of the world, which it records and embodies, but the stale and wearisome Christmas of the Christmas presents, purchased in rage and bestowed in despair; the Christmas of Christmas fiction; the Christmas of heavy Christmas dinners and indigestions; the Christmas of all superfluity and surfeit and sentimentality; the Christmas of the Timminses and the Tiny Tims. But while he thought of these, by operation of the divine law which renders all things sensible by their opposites, he thought of the other kinds of Christmas which can never weary or disgust: the Christmas of the little children and the simple-hearted and the poor; and suddenly he addressed himself to the Easy Chair with unexpected and surprising courage.

"Why should that be so very difficult?" he demanded. "If you look at it rightly, Christmas is always full of inspiration; and songs as well as sermons will flow from it till time shall be no more. The trouble with us is that we think it is for the pleasure of opulent and elderly people, for whom there can be no pleasures, but only habits. They are used to having everything, and as joy dwells in novelty it has ceased to be for them in Christmas gifts and giving and all manner of Christmas conventions. But for the young to whom these things are new, and for the poor to whom they are rare, Christmas and Christmasing are sources of perennial happiness. All that you have to do is to guard yourself from growing rich and from growing old, and then the delight of Christmas is yours forever. It is not difficult; it is very simple; for even if years and riches come upon you in a literal way, you can by a little trying keep yourself young and poor in spirit. Then you can always rejoice with the innocent and riot with the destitute.

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