TRANSIT—

"Everyone likes me," said the man.

"That is Popularity," whispered the little star.

"Everyone likes me and envies me," said the man, a year later.

"That is Fame," whispered the little star.

"Everyone despises me," said the man, a year later still.

"That is Time," whispered the little star.

X

THE INTRUDER

It was moonlight in the court yard where languished among the flowers a lover and his mistress.

The lover, presently, and for the first time since he had known his fair lady, felt Wit flying close to his lips.

The little god of Love who had dwelt with the lovers in the court yard since first they had come there, sensing the flutter of the intruder's wings, took to his heels and slid between the bars of the great bronze gate into a neighbouring garden.

XI

MEMORY

Memory, wandering back over the great highway of the years, paused by the wayside to gather some of the flowers that embroidered the road. While Memory so bent himself, there confronted him suddenly a young woman, and Memory saw there were tears in her eyes. "Who are you?" asked Memory, for though about the young woman there was something vaguely he knew, he could not recall her.

Through her tears the young woman looked at him and said, "Of all of us you knew, me alone you have forgotten and do not remember. I am the woman who truly loved you."

XII

MAXIM

The young man, sitting at the feet of a philosopher, noticed a cynic smile tugging at the silence of the philosopher's lips.

"I was thinking," observed with an alas presently the philosopher, "that one is always a woman's second lover."

XIII

THE GREATER LOVE

"I love you," said the wife to her husband, looking up from the book she was reading, "because you are a successful man."

"I love you," said she to her lover, drawing his head close to hers, "because—because you are a failure."

XIV

THE PUBLIC TASTE

A number of jackasses were sent to pasture in a meadow that was all green grass and dandelions and buttercups and daisies. At the far end of the meadow was a large billboard upon which was pasted the flaming lithograph of a moving-picture actor standing on his head on the top of an upright piano. The jackasses, immediately they entered the meadow, made a bee-line for billboard and began omnivorously to pasture off the lithograph.

XV

THE FUTURE

Time snatched the roses from the girdle of a man's Past and tore her gown of silvered chiffon and brought her thus before him.

"And who is this, pray?" bade the man.

"This," replied Time, "is your Future."

XVI

SIC PASSIM

"For what qualities in a man," asked the youth, "does a woman most ardently love him?"

"For those qualities in him," replied the old tutor, "which his mother most ardently hates."

XVII

THE SEVERER SENTENCE

He had done a great wrong to a good woman, and the congress of the gods sat upon his punishment.

"Be it decreed by us," spoke the god at the far end of the table, "that he be compelled to walk, with the pace of a tortoise, through Hell."

"Be it decreed rather by us," spoke the god at the head of the table—and all the gods, hearing him, nodded grimly their approval—"that he be compelled to race, with the pace of a hare, through Paradise."

XVIII

RACHE

"I hate my enemy with a hate as bitter as the hate he bears me, and I would do that to him that would for all time weaken both him and his power against me," muttered the man.

"That is easy," whispered Revenge in the man's ear. "Flatter him extravagantly for the qualities he knows he doesn't possess."

XIX

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS

An anarchist threw a bomb at the equipage of a king, and missed him.

A dancer threw a kiss to his box....

XX

RESPECT

The mistress of the man on trial for bigamy was in tears.

"What is it, dear?" the man asked of her, tenderly.

The woman's frame shook under her sobs. "You don't respect me," she wailed. "Because if you did, you'd marry me."

XXI

TEMPERAMENT

The rage of the artiste knew no bounds. That she should be thus annoyed just before her appearance in the great scene! She stamped about her dressing-room; she threw her arms heavenward; she brushed the vase of roses from her table; she slapped her maid for venturing at such a moment to speak to her; she sank exhausted into an armchair, a bottle of salts pressed to her nostril.

It was full fifteen minutes before she recovered.

Then she went out upon the stage and began her famous interpretation of the great scene in which she chloroforms the detective, breaks open the safe, shoots the policeman who attempts to handcuff her, smashes the glass in the window with the piano stool and makes her getaway by sliding down the railing of the fire-escape.

XXII

IMMORTALITY

The little son of the reverend man of God stood at his father's knee and bade him speak to him of immortality.

And the reverend man of God, his father, spoke to him of immortality, eloquently, impressively, convincingly.

But what he spoke to him of immortality we need not here repeat, for the while he spoke out of the romantic eloquence of his heart, his matter-of-fact mind kept incorrigibly whispering to him that immortality is the theory that life is a rough ocean voyage and the soul a club breakfast.

XXIII

INSPIRATION

A poet, searching for Inspiration, looked into the hearts of all the women he knew. But all the hearts of these were empty and he found it not. And then, presently, in the heart of one woman whom he had forgotten, at the edge of a deep forest, he found what he sought for. For the heart of this woman was full. And as he looked at this heart, it seemed to him strangely familiar, as if, long ago, he had seen it before. And as he looked, the truth dawned fair upon him. The heart was his own.