Life — October 20, 1921 — page 9: what you’re looking at

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

October 20 The Letters of Alicia Robert Barnes Rudd New York, Awfully late, but I can’t remember the date. 3 EAREST, “ - I am going, before I forget 5 Gare eaes) them, to dash off to you the fruits, so to speak, of my last Meditation Hour (in the elevator at Oldman’s going up to the fifth floor). You see, I'd been so awfully rushed all day and was seizing those precious, precious moments just to let my thoughts sweep in... that’s the way they do, you know. First, I leave my mind in a state of coma, sort of, and mentally pause. Then almost immediately something perfectly tre- mendous comes . . . like water into the pool at Palm Beach, or Miami, even . although I am not comparing the two, i se while Miami is lovely, they say (we don't go there), still, it's full of people from the Middle West and New Jersey... Well, anyway, Miami could never have the flavor for me that dear old Palm Beach has, I don’t care whut you say. How do you like that metaphor, or whatever you call it, about my thoughts and the pool? Is it strained? Be frank, darling, won't you, if you think it is? You see, I’m very anxious to enrich my style and make it, my style, a little more brilliant, like George Meredith and Henry James and people like that. Not, dear, that I should ever permit myself to sacrifice my ideas to a mere brilliance of technique, as they say in a little book I’m reading, “How to Write Success- jully.” I'd just die and never write another word if | thought that I should ever, dear, turn into just a stylist like . . . O, well, lots of people. So you must watch me and warn me if you see me getting all insincere and shallow, won’t you? But I haven't told you that thought of mine. O, well, language is terribly inadequate to express one’s deeper feelings, don’t you think? Affectionately, ALICIA, P. S—Saw some darling lingerie at Oldman’s and have been thinking of you ever since. Heaven in Hell Brcsuse we took Love’s hand and held it tightly, Glad to have found him, even though too late, \Ve have been doomed to loneliness eternal, To hurt and Hell and hopelessness and hate. Because we snatched all eagerly the minutes That grudgingly Life flung with frowning face, They have stripped us of all hope; and grim and cruel Have rent the fairy gossamer and lace. A wanton and a thief of Love they name us, Who sought out Love and found at last in vain. White cotton fingers pointing, they have damned us To endless hours of emptiness and pain. Poor, gray, flat people! I am sorry for them; They see not Life’s gay sunlight, nor the dark; They cannot breathe the perfume of the flower, Their dismal ears hear not the singing lark. Yet, they, of us, have made themselves the Rulers; They cut and stitch and mend Life as they go; They mould and fit it drably to their measures; They say: “It should go this way, so and so!” But for us, dear, there are no flames eternal, Though damned are we by Bigot, Book and Bell, Together we will laugh at powerless Satan, Because together we'll find our Heaven in Hell! M.C. L. comicbooks.com