Life — May 7, 1896 — page 8: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

GOLFING TERMS, DRIVING OFF A TEES RS, FIXEM. your club, THE BRUTE: I don't see what you men find in It's what we don’t find. Tt man at the top of the ladder is not lonesome. He is too busy retaining his place. TANDEM TALKS. SCENE: The dining-room of a Long Island hotel at luncheon hour. Half-a-dozen bicycle parties scattered about. “ TT is great!" exclaimed Diana, as she settled into a chair and glanced at her pretty face in a mirror. “Greater than Art?” asked Adrian, who liked to stick pins into Diana's enthusiasms. Art was what she thought she worked at five mornings a week. It was her sedative before a round of luncheons, teas, and din- ners. “You always jest at Art,” said Diana, severely. ‘1 was talking down to your level. I meant to remark that wheeling on a tandem down the Merrick road, with a northwest gale behind you, is great!" “But all this wheeling #s death to Art,” said Adrian with mock solemnity. ‘‘ It is one of those strong stimu- lants that destroys your pleasure in the mild bouquet of books and pictures.” “*You are wrong, hopelessly wrong,” flashed Diana. ‘The keen pleasure and physical exhilaration of such a whirling ride as we have had, racing with the gale, keys up every sense with it. I saw colors in the landscape that I never saw before—browns, and purples, and swirl- ing grays that the French f/esn-azr men have painted with their finer vision.” “You probably see them better now,” said Adrian; “‘but you'll never have the patience to paint them. The wheel is death to thought, meditation, and Art. My great legal treatise on the Relation of State Legislatures to Lunacy would have been finished a year ago but for the wheel. The hours I used to spend at the Bar Asso- ciation are sacrificed on sunny afternoons and moonlight nights. I used to get the real thrill from chasing an abstract principle of law through a score of musty State Reports. It set my brain afire to sce these things grow palpable before me. A new idea was an achievement’ —now it is a mere phantom of the night. What is thought at its best compared to the joy of exercise in the sunlight and the placid nerves that follow on hunger and thirst appeased? I tell you, Diana, the wheel is making us all rank material- ists.” “That is what most people with an artistic temperament need,” said Diana. ‘‘They are out of sympathy with the great material motives that move the mass of men and women,” “And so they ought to be,” said Adrian. ‘‘ You must be different from the mass of men to lead them. How can a writer preach higher ideals if his life is on the lower level?” “You beg the question,” persisted Diana. ‘* The man who reads, or writes, or paints can put more vigor, more individuality, more idealism into it if he has put body and nerves attune by wholesome exercise.” “There is just so much energy in a man or woman,” replied Adrian, ‘‘ What goes into leg muscle won't be transmuted by any hocus-pocus into brain-cells and thought. You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.” “It’s all aquestion of proportion,” said Diana. ‘* Civ- ilized people for years have been working the brain-cells “ EXxcuse Mr, SIR, BUT YOUR BRIDLE HAS SLIPPED.’