Ponkapog Papers

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Aldrich Thomas Bailey. Ponkapog Papers

LEAVES FROM A NOTE BOOK

ASIDES

TOM FOLIO

FLEABODY AND OTHER QUEER NAMES

A NOTE ON “L’AIGLON”

PLOT AND CHARACTER

THE CRUELTY OF SCIENCE

LEIGH HUNT AND BARRY CORNWALL

DECORATION DAY

WRITERS AND TALKERS

ON EARLY RISING

UN POETE MANQUE

THE MALE COSTUME OF THE PERIOD

ON A CERTAIN AFFECTATION

WISHMAKERS’ TOWN

HISTORICAL NOVELS

POOR YORICK

THE AUTOGRAPH HUNTER

ROBERT HERRICK

Отрывок из книги

IN his Memoirs, Kropotkin states the singular fact that the natives of the Malayan Archipelago have an idea that something is extracted from them when their likenesses are taken by photography. Here is the motive for a fantastic short story, in which the hero—an author in vogue or a popular actor—might be depicted as having all his good qualities gradually photographed out of him. This could well be the result of too prolonged indulgence in the effort to “look natural.” First the man loses his charming simplicity; then he begins to pose in intellectual attitudes, with finger on brow; then he becomes morbidly self-conscious, and finally ends in an asylum for incurable egotists. His death might be brought about by a cold caught in going out bareheaded, there being, for the moment, no hat in the market of sufficient circumference to meet his enlarged requirement.

THE evening we dropped anchor in the Bay of Yedo the moon was hanging directly over Yokohama. It was a mother-of-pearl moon, and might have been manufactured by any of the delicate artisans in the Hanchodori quarter. It impressed one as being a very good imitation, but nothing more. Nammikawa, the cloisonne-worker at Tokio, could have made a better moon.

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THOUGH Iago was not exactly the kind of person one would select as a superintendent for a Sunday-school, his advice to young Roderigo was wisdom itself—“Put money in thy purse.” Whoever disparages money disparages every step in the progress of the human race. I listened the other day to a sermon in which gold was personified as a sort of glittering devil tempting mortals to their ruin. I had an instant of natural hesitation when the contribution-plate was passed around immediately afterward. Personally, I believe that the possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of poverty the world will never know. “After the love of knowledge,” says Buckle, “there is no one passion which has done so much good to mankind as the love of money.”

DIALECT tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care for anything properly said.

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