People One Hasn't Met

Miniature Portraits of Certain Modern Personages as One Imagines Them After Reading Their Works

THOMAS BEER

Sherwood A rider son

THE dark eyed man came out of a cigar store and stood under the awning to watch this rainy street. A black limousine rolled by and the woman in its shelter turned her painted face to stare at the dark eyed man. He didn't notice. A young fellow walked past, swishing a handsome raincoat, leaving a smell of gin in the moist air. The man under the awning didn't notice. A lank boy, in overalls scented by stables, slouched along the gutter, shyly glancing at people on the sidewalk. The man under the awning said, gently, "Hey, bud, come in out of the wet."

The Prince of Wales

AS the Equerry raised the window shade, light shone on the face of Queen Victoria in a framed portrait opposite the large bed. The Queen's eyes seemed to stare with a not altogether approving look at the distorted remains of a cigarette exposed on the bedside table. In the bed nothing was visible save a small and shapely pink ear between the counterpane and the pillow. However, a muffled but decisive voice emerged, inquiring, "Is there a committee waiting to ask my advice on the moral condition of the Cornish miners?"

"No, sir."

"Oh . . . Has anyone written a song about me since yesterday?"

"Scotland Yard hasn't reported it, sir."

"Good." The voice, after a period, piteously resumed, "To which section of the Empire am I starting this morning for an extended tour?"

"To none, sir."

The voice said, "Thank God," and the pink ear vanished under the pillow.

Anatole France

SOURIANT, assis toujours sur un fauteuil profond, il fixe ses yeux clairs sur les gestes inefficaces d'un nain minuscule qui nage dans l'etang noir de son encrier en argent blafard et cisele.

Dans l'aniichambre, une mandoline nasi lie, alternativement, morceaux de Gluck et de Strawinski.

Sous la table, un chat maigre leche tendrement le dos harcele d'un pingouin boiteux. Accroupi dans un coin ombreux, Paul Gsell dort legerement, et ses ronflements font un contre point assombri.

Dr. S. Freud

PUSHING his way through the starving functionaries of a Viennese court-room, he rested a hand on the shoulder of the snivelling prisoner and said, "Hold! There are extenuating circumstances! Let me explain."

"Respected Herr Doktor," responded the courteous, though starving, magistrate, "I regret to inform you that this fellow has stolen a purse full of American gold from the trousers of yonder red haired American profiteertourist. What are the extenuating circumstances?"

Raising the prisoner to his feet, the great specialist addressed him in a detached, scientific, impersonal but kindly manner, asking, "Was not your mother your favourite parent, my boy?" The culprit, snivelling, nodded.

"Had your father red hair?" The prisoner again nodded. "Was it not the habit of your childhood to ape your so-heartily-belovedmother's every action?"

Again the prisoner nodded.

The great specialist turned a significant eye on the magistrate who, after a second of hesitation, pronounced, "Release him. What is man against the Oedipus Complex?"

The starving but Viennese court-room rang with applause. The released man knelt at the great specialist's feet and sobbed, "Durchlaucht!"

James Branch Cabell

THE Virginia creeper rustled about the mullioned window and little Astyanax, the pet wyvern, was making frantic jumps at the window sill as I stole along the veranda. He whimpered small flames into the May air and followed me through the Georgian doorway when the dark major-domo let me in. Astyanax dashed up the hall to a locked door shrouded in tapestries which seemed to disengage perfumes of antimony, nard and the irresistible bakharis. A poultergeist, who was doing nothing in particular on top of the tall clock, jumped down to my shoulder and gibbered things . . . well, yes, you know the kind of things a housebroken poultergeist gibbers? Hanging my hat on a convenient projection of a terra cotta Ammon Ra, I passed through the tapestries and entered the library.

Nothing happened. I noted a tiny wax figure pinned to a faded map of Provence by a bodkin thrust through its midriff. Its minute features were vaguely familiar. It wasn't, I thought, unlike the author of ... of ... of —Oh, to be sure, of Richard Yea and R ay. The small face seemed to wear an envious scowl. But Astyanax was tugging my shoelace and whimpering. Rounding a statue of Nikanor Saevitius and brushing with my sleeve some dust from the piled volumes of W. Carew Hazlitt, I came upon an alcove containing a desk.

But there was no one at the desk. The sword Impavide was gone from its pegs on the wall. A trap door lay open in the floor and a mounting rill of incense reminded me of hours spent, long since, in the pleasant caves of Elephantis. A bit of palimpsest propped against the Prem Sagar took my eye. Picking it up, I read, "Address me, Poste Restante, Poictesme until Thursday. After that, Aux Soins de la Dame Anaitis, Tour Fremissant, Cocaigne, Pays de la Lune."

Joseph Conrad, Esq.

THE SCOTCH gardener, McSwame, poised the box above an autumnal bonfire of leaves and broken peastakes. He stood with uncertainty legible in the weathered lines of his childlike face—a face maculate about the jaw with touches of tobacco. He regarded the box in his hands with a simple perplexity. The tattooing of his hairy forearms had, in the passage of twenty-five landbound years, slightly faded, but his grip on the box had all the calm austerity acquired in roving seasons as a ship's carpenter. He had been known as Green Eyed Angus in all ports adjacent on or appertaining unto the waters, shallow and pellucid, of the charming and treacherous Bay of Bengal. Now he stood, perplexed and hesitant, gazing at the box which expanded among his fingers as an illusion of wealth, of honour, of obliquity.

His master advanced down the garden walk. Incrusted, lichenous with the habit of marine obedience, McSwame looked at the familiar blue coat and asked, "Wull ye be throwin' this wee box in the fire, sir?"

The gentleman glanced at the card lashed to the box and inscribed: The Complete Works of Bulwer Lytton in Twelve Volumes from The United Female Book Reviewers of North America. A shudder which seemed to testify to the atrocious internal sufferings raised his burly shoulders. His bearded lips ejaculated without haste the monosyllabic word, "Hell!"

McSwame dropped the box into the fire.

Drifting gently in the windless air, the smoke rolled low above the tranquil turf of the garden and formed about these stationary figures an image of the reposed and melancholy sea.