Life — May 6, 1920 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

The Reflections of a Snob EY" RY once in a period T get a mild attack of hook fever; and so I have been looking over this season's “offerings,” as the publishers, I be- lieve, term it, in hopes that I might find something appealing. Dear me, it does seem as if the war should have I rather hoped that out of it would come a literature that least from As I come to look at it, T cannot see done more for us. would save one enti, that the war has given us anything worth while. The Bolsheviks are fair- ly amusing, but the dreadful creatures have done such horrid things! Lama fatalist in this respect, however, and, hesides, T have never been able to dis- cover that individuals of the commoner sort are considered by nature. 1 faney this is due to their utter lack of a sense of the fitness of things. Yet this is expressing myself very badly I feel my own shortcomings when I attempt any sort of philosophical ex- pression, yet one must do this sort of thing, as the need of it arises occa- sionally when one goes out. What I mean is that one makes one’s own world, and this being true, it is form that most. If T hanged to-morrow, the manner in which it was done would count more counts were to be than my own feeble life. T have a jar- ring thought that these sorts of things are bungled horribly. Personally, 1 should feel it most keenly—more than T can say—to have the affair misman- aged, as it doubtless would be in America. As a matter of fact, 1 fancy the electric chair is a crude affair so far as the method is concerned. Then take our prisons; there is no sort of form there. No wonder the poor If they could dress for dinner occasionally, or have agree- able conversation, and if the tableware and linen were considered, it would help them morally. We don’t under- stand about these things. But to re- turn to the books: I rather liked Wells until he tried to make the Deity so wretches suffer. common, but the man is now impos- never learned any- pnett, the fact is that sible. He has thing. As for B he never recovered from himself. 1 cannot endure books written by men on subjects which are not a part of themselves. Dickens, for example, was a part of his environment, and how well he wrote! I always feel like drop- THE SECOND DAY OF THE ping a line to the publisher and say. ing how much I like him. Blossoms, my man, who never reads anything but the papers, refused to read Great E. pectations, but I quite understand. He wants something that deals with high society, as he would term it. 1 can. not read any of our modern women, with the possible exception of Edith Wharton and Rebecca West. Wom- en, as a rule, have no form in litera- ture, The fact is, one must fall lack on one’s own society in these days or be quite lost. I have to keep mysclf up to the mark, merely for my own en- tertainment. This is why I rarely read the papers, and why I guard my com- panionships. T. LM. MILLENNIUM comicbooks.com