FullReads

“Reading them!” he cried, “but you don’t know Greek or Latin.”

“But I know English,” I answered; “they have all been translated into English. You never told me that!”

It appeared it was not the same thing. There were subtle delicacies of diction bound to escape even the best translator. These subtle delicacies of diction I could enjoy only by devoting the next seven or eight years of my life to the study of Greek and Latin. It will grieve the University professor to hear it, but the enjoyment of those subtle delicacies of diction did not appear to me–I was only fourteen at the time, please remember–to be worth the time and trouble.

The boy is materially inclined–the mourning American professor has discovered it. I did not want to be an idealist living up a back street. I wanted to live in the biggest house in the best street of the town. I wanted to ride a horse, wear a fur coat, and have as much to eat and drink as ever I liked. I wanted to marry the most beautiful woman in the world, to have my name in the newspaper, and to know that everybody was envying me.

Mourn over it, my dear professor, as you will–that is the ideal of youth; and, so long as human nature remains what it is, will continue to be so. It is a materialistic ideal–a sordid ideal. Maybe it is necessary. Maybe the world would not move much if the young men started thinking too early. They want to be rich, so they fling themselves frenziedly into the struggle. They build the towns, and make the railway tracks, hew down the forests, dig the ore out of the ground. There comes a day when it is borne in upon them that trying to get rich is a poor sort of game–that there is only one thing more tiresome than being a millionaire, and that is trying to be a millionaire. But, meanwhile, the world has got its work done.

The American professor fears that the artistic development of America leaves much to be desired. I fear the artistic development of most countries leaves much to be desired. Why the Athenians themselves sandwiched their drama between wrestling competitions and boxing bouts. The plays of Sophocles, or Euripides, were given as “side shows.” The chief items of the fair were the games and races. Besides, America is still a young man. It has been busy “getting on in the world.” It has not yet quite finished. Yet there are signs that young America is approaching the thirty-nines. He is finding a little time, a little money to spare for art. One can almost hear young America–not quite so young as he was–saying to Mrs. Europe as he enters and closes the shop door:

“Well, ma’am, here I am, and maybe you’ll be glad to hear I’ve a little money to spend. Yes, ma’am, I’ve fixed things all right across the water; we shan’t starve. So now, ma’am, you and I can have a chat concerning this art I’ve been hearing so much about. Let’s have a look at it, ma’am, trot it out, and don’t you be afraid of putting a fair price upon it.”

I am inclined to think that Mrs. Europe has not hesitated to put a good price upon the art she has sold to Uncle Sam. I am afraid Mrs. Europe has occasionally “unloaded” on Uncle Sam. I talked to a certain dealer one afternoon, now many years ago, at the Uwantit Club.

“What is the next picture likely to be missing?” I asked him in the course of general conversation.

“Thome little thing of Hoppner’th, if it mutht be,” he replied with confidence.

“Hoppner,” I murmured, “I seem to have heard the name.”