truth And your truth as lies-- Woe is me.
Now, if you please, is the object of these verses animal, mineral or vegetable? Is the expression, "Thou art the beard on another man's face," intended as a figure, or was it written by a barber? Certainly, after reading this, "Simple Simon" is a ballade of perfect form, and "Jack and Jill" or "Hickity, Pickity, My Black Hen," are exquisite lyrics. But of the following what shall be said:
Now let me crunch you With full weight of affrighted love. I doubted you --I doubted you-- And in this short doubting My love grew like a genie For my further undoing.
Beware of my friends, Be not in speech too civil, For in all courtesy My weak heart sees specters, Mists of desire Arising from the lips of my chosen; Be not civil.
This is somewhat more lucid as evincing the bard's exquisite sensitiveness:
Ah, God, the way your little finger moved As you thrust a bare arm backward. And made play with your hair And a comb, a silly gilt comb --Ah, God, that I should suffer Because of the way a little finger moved.
Mr. Crane's verselets are illustrated by some Bradley pictures, which are badly drawn, in bad taste, and come with bad grace. On page 33 of the book there are just two lines which seem to completely sum up the efforts of both poet and artist:
"My good friend," said a learned bystander, "Your operations are mad."
Yet this fellow Crane has written short stories equal to some of Maupassant's.
_Pittsburg Leader_, June 3, 1899
After reading such a delightful newspaper story as Mr. Frank Norris' "Blix," it is with assorted sensations of pain and discomfort that one closes the covers of another newspaper novel, "Active Service," by Stephen Crane. If one happens to have some trifling regard for pure English, he does not come forth from the reading of this novel unscathed. The hero of this lurid tale is a newspaper man, and he edits the Sunday edition of the New York "Eclipse," and delights in publishing "stories" about deformed and sightless infants. "The office of the 'Eclipse' was at the top of an immense building on Broadway. It was a sheer mountain to the heights of which the interminable thunder of the streets rose faintly. The Hudson was a broad path of silver in the distance." This leaves little doubt as to the fortunate journal which had secured Rufus Coleman as its Sunday editor. Mr. Coleman's days were spent in collecting yellow sensations for his paper, and we are told that he "planned for each edition as for a campaign." The following elevating passage is one of the realistic paragraphs by which Mr. Crane makes the routine of Coleman's life known to us:
Suddenly there was a flash of light and a cage of bronze, gilt and steel dropped magically from above. Coleman yelled "Down!" * * * A door flew open. Coleman stepped upon the elevator. "Well, Johnnie," he said cheerfully to the lad who operated the machine, "is business good?" "Yes, sir, pretty good," answered the boy, grinning. The little cage sank swiftly. Floor after floor seemed to be rising with marvelous speed; the whole building was winging straight into the sky. There was soaring lights, figures and the opalescent glow of ground glass doors marked with black inscriptions. Other lights were springing heavenward. All the lofty corridors rang with cries. "Up!" "Down!" "Down!" "Up!!" The boy's hand grasped a lever and his machine obeyed his lightest movement with sometimes an unbalancing swiftness.
Later, when Coleman reached the street, Mr. Crane describes the cable cars as marching like panoplied elephants, which is rather far, to say the least. The gentleman's nights were spent something as follows:
"In the restaurant he first ordered a large bottle of champagne. The last of the wine he finished in somber mood like an unbroken and defiant man who chews the straw that litters his prison house. During his dinner he was continually sending out messenger boys. He was arranging a poker party. Through a window he watched the beautiful moving life of upper Broadway at night, with its crowds and clanging cable cars and its electric signs, mammoth and glittering like the jewels of a giantess.
"Word was brought to him that poker players were arriving. He arose joyfully, leaving his cheese. In the broad hall, occupied mainly by miscellaneous people and actors, all deep in leather chairs, he found some of his friends waiting. They trooped upstairs to Coleman's rooms, where, as a preliminary, Coleman began to hurl books and papers from the table to the floor. A boy came with drinks. Most of the men, in order to prepare for the game, removed their coats and cuffs and drew up the sleeves of their shirts. The electric globes shed a blinding light upon the table. The sound of clinking chips arose; the elected banker spun the cards, careless and dextrous."
The atmosphere of the entire novel is just that close and enervating. Every page is like the next morning taste of a champagne supper, and is heavy with the smell of stale cigarettes. There is no fresh air in the book and no sunlight, only the "blinding light shed by the electric globes." If the life of New York newspaper men is as unwholesome and sordid as this, Mr. Crane, who has experienced it, ought to be sadly ashamed to tell it. Next morning when Coleman went for breakfast in the grill room of his hotel he ordered eggs on toast and a pint of champagne for breakfast and discoursed affably to the waiter.
"May be you had a pretty lively time last night, Mr. Coleman?"
"Yes, Pat," answered Coleman. "I did. It was all because of an unrequitted affection, Patrick." The man stood near, a napkin over his arm. Coleman went on impressively. "The ways of the modern lover are strange. Now, I, Patrick, am a modern lover, and when, yesterday, the dagger of disappointment was driven deep into my heart, I immediately played poker as hard as I could, and incidentally got loaded. This is the modern point of view. I understand on good authority that in old times lovers used to languish. That is probably a lie, but at any rate we do not, in these times, languish to any great extent. We get drunk. Do you understand Patrick?"
The waiter was used to a harangue at Coleman's breakfast time. He placed his hand over his mouth and giggled. "Yessir."
"Of course," continued Coleman, thoughtfully. "It might be pointed out by uneducated persons that it is difficult to maintain a high standard of drunkenness for the adequate length of time, but in the series of experiments which I am about to make, I am sure I can easily prove them to be in the wrong."
"I am sure, sir," said the waiter, "the young ladies would not like to be hearing you talk this way."
"Yes; no doubt, no doubt. The young ladies have still quite medieval ideas. They don't understand. They still prefer lovers to languish."
"At any rate, sir, I don't see that your heart is sure enough broken. You seem to take it very easy."
"Broken!" cried Coleman. "Easy? Man, my heart is in fragments. Bring me another small bottle."
After this Coleman went to Greece to write up the war for the "Eclipse," and incidentally to rescue his sweetheart from the hands of the Turks and make "copy" of it. Very valid arguments might be advanced that the lady would have fared better with the Turks. On the voyage Coleman spent all his days and nights in the card room and avoided the deck, since fresh air was naturally disagreeable to him. For all that he saw of Greece or that Mr. Crane's readers see of Greece Coleman might as well have stayed in the card room of the steamer, or in the card room of his New York hotel for that matter. Wherever he goes he carries the atmosphere of the card room with him and the "blinding glare of the electrics." In Greece he makes love when he has leisure, but he makes "copy" much more ardently, and on the whole is quite as lurid and sordid and showy as his worst Sunday editions. Some good bits of battle descriptions there are, of the "Red Badge of Courage" order, but one cannot make a novel of clever descriptions of earthworks and poker games. The book concerns
