"I think I know the man you mean," said the Philosopher. "I had forgotten his name."
"I thought it possible you might have met him," I replied. "Well, my cousin Edith was arranging a dinner-party the other day, and, as usual, she did me the honour to ask my advice. Generally speaking, I do not give advice nowadays. As a very young man I was generous with it. I have since come to the conclusion that responsibility for my own muddles and mistakes is sufficient. However, I make an exception in Edith's case, knowing that never by any chance will she follow it."
"Speaking of editors," said the Philosopher, "Bates told me at the club the other night that he had given up writing the 'Answers to Correspondents' personally, since discovery of the fact that he had been discussing at some length the attractive topic, 'Duties of a Father,' with his own wife, who is somewhat of a humorist."
"There was the wife of a clergyman my mother used to tell of," said the Woman of the World, "who kept copies of her husband's sermons. She would read him extracts from them in bed, in place of curtain lectures. She explained it saved her trouble. Everything she felt she wanted to say to him he had said himself so much more forcibly."
"The argument always appears to me weak," said the Philosopher. "If only the perfect may preach, our pulpits would remain empty. Am I to ignore the peace that slips into my soul when perusing the Psalms, to deny myself all benefit from the wisdom of the Proverbs, because neither David nor Solomon was a worthy casket of the jewels that God had placed in them? Is a temperance lecturer never to quote the self-reproaches of poor Cassio because Master Will Shakespeare, there is evidence to prove, was a gentleman, alas! much too fond of the bottle? The man that beats the drum may be himself a coward. It is the drum that is the important thing to us, not the drummer."
"Of all my friends," said the Woman of the World, "the one who has the most trouble with her servants is poor Jane Meredith."
"I am exceedingly sorry to hear it," observed the Philosopher, after a slight pause. "But forgive me, I really do not see―"
"I beg your pardon," answered the Woman of the World. "I thought everybody knew 'Jane Meredith.' She writes 'The Perfect Home' column for The Woman's World."
"It will always remain a riddle, one supposes," said the Minor Poet. "Which is the real ego―I, the author of 'The Simple Life,' fourteenth edition, three and sixpence net―"
"Don't," pleaded the Old Maid, with a smile; "please don't."
"Don't what?" demanded the Minor Poet.
"Don't ridicule it―make fun of it, even though it may happen to be your own. There are parts of it I know by heart. I say them over to myself when― Don't spoil it for me." The Old Maid laughed, but nervously.
"My dear lady," reassured her the Minor Poet, "do not be afraid. No one regards that poem with more reverence than do I. You can have but small conception what a help it is to me also. I, too, so often read it to myself; and when― We understand. As one who turns his back on scenes of riot to drink the moonlight in quiet ways, I go to it for sweetness and for peace. So much do I admire the poem, I naturally feel desire and curiosity to meet its author, to know him. I should delight, drawing him aside from the crowded room, to grasp him by the hand, to say to him: 'My dear―my very dear Mr. Minor Poet, I am so glad to meet you! I would I could tell you how much your beautiful work has helped me. This, my dear sir―this is indeed privilege!' But I can picture so vividly the bored look with which he would receive my gush. I can imagine the contempt with which he, the pure liver, would regard me did he know me―me, the liver of the fool's hot days."
"A short French story I once read somewhere," I said, "rather impressed me. A poet or dramatist―I am not sure which―had married the daughter of a provincial notary. There was nothing particularly attractive about her except her dot. He had run through his own small fortune and was in some need. She worshipped him and was, as he used to boast to his friends, the ideal wife for a poet. She cooked admirably―a useful accomplishment during the first half-dozen years of their married life; and afterwards, when fortune came to him, managed his affairs to perfection, by her care and economy keeping all worldly troubles away from his study door. An ideal Hausfrau, undoubtedly, but of course no companion for our poet. So they went their ways; till, choosing as in all things the right moment, when she could best be spared, the good lady died and was buried.
"And here begins the interest of the story, somewhat late. One article of furniture, curiously out of place among the rich appointments of their fine hotel, the woman had insisted on retaining, a heavy, clumsily carved oak desk her father had once used in his office, and which he had given to her for her own as a birthday present back in the days of her teens.
"You must read the story for yourselves if you would enjoy the subtle sadness that surrounds it, the delicate aroma of regret through which it moves. The husband finding after some little difficulty the right key, fits it into the lock of the bureau. As a piece of furniture, plain, solid, squat, it has always jarred upon his artistic sense. She too, his good, affectionate Sara, had been plain, solid, a trifle squat. Perhaps that was why the poor woman had clung so obstinately to the one thing in the otherwise perfect house that was quite out of place there. Ah, well! she is gone now, the good creature. And the bureau―no, the bureau shall remain. Nobody will need to come into this room, no one ever did come there but the woman herself. Perhaps she had not been altogether so happy as she might have been. A husband less intellectual―one from whom she would not have lived so far apart―one who could have entered into her simple, commonplace life! it might have been better for both of them. He draws down the lid, pulls out the largest drawer. It is full of manuscripts, folded and tied neatly with ribbons once gay, now faded. He thinks at first they are his own writings―things begun and discarded, reserved by her with fondness. She thought so much of him, the good soul! Really, she could not have been so dull as he had deemed her. The power to appreciate rightly―this, at least, she must have possessed. He unties the ribbon. No, the writing is her own, corrected, altered, underlined. He opens a second, a third. Then with a smile he sits down to read. What can they be like, these poems, these stories? He laughs, smoothing the crumpled paper, foreseeing the trite commonness, the shallow sentiment. The poor child! So she likewise would have been a litterateure. Even she had her ambition, her dream.