FullReads

“In JOHN CHARTERIS appeared a man with an inborn sense of the supreme interest and the overwhelming emotional and spiritual relevancy of human life as it is actually and obscurely lived; a man with unmistakable creative impulses and potentialities; a man who, had he lived in a more mature and less self-deluding community–a community that did not so rigorously confine its interest in facts to business, and limit its demands upon art to the supplying of illusions–might humbly and patiently have schooled his gifts to the service of his vision. . . . As it was, he accepted defeat and compromised half-heartedly with commercialism.”

And men unborn will read of Heloise,
And Ruth, and Rosamond, and Semele,
When none remembers your name’s melody
Or rhymes your name, enregistered with these.

And will my name wake moods as amorous
As that of Abelard or Launcelot
Arouses? be recalled when Pyramus
And Tristram are unrhymed of and forgot?–
Time’s laughter answers, who accords to us
More gracious fields, wherein we harvest–what?

JOHN CHARTERIS. Torrismond’s Envoi, in Ashtaroth’s Lackey.

“Our distinguished alumnus,” after being duly presented as such, had with vivacity delivered much the usual sort of Commencement Address. Yet John Charteris was in reality a trifle fagged.

The afternoon train had been vexatiously late. The little novelist had found it tedious to interchange inanities with the committee awaiting him at the Pullman steps. Nor had it amused him to huddle into evening-dress, and hasten through a perfunctory supper in order to reassure his audience at half-past eight precisely as to the unmitigated delight of which he was now conscious.

Nevertheless, he alluded with enthusiasm to the arena of life, to the dependence of America’s destiny upon the younger generation, to the enviable part King’s College had without exception played in history, and he depicted to Fairhaven the many glories of Fairhaven–past, present and approaching–in superlatives that would hardly have seemed inadequate if applied to Paradise. His oration, in short, was of a piece with the amiable bombast that the college students and Fairhaven at large were accustomed to applaud at every Finals–the sort of linguistic debauch that John Charteris himself remembered to have applauded as an undergraduate more years ago than he cared to acknowledge.

Pauline Romeyne had sat beside him then–yonder, upon the fourth bench from the front, where now another boy with painstakingly plastered hair was clapping hands. There was a girl on the right of this boy, too. There naturally would be. Mr. Charteris as he sat down was wondering if Pauline was within reach of his voice? and if she were, what was her surname nowadays?

Then presently the exercises were concluded, and the released auditors arose with an outwelling noise of multitudinous chatter, of shuffling feet, of rustling programs. Many of Mr. Charteris’ audience, though, were contending against the general human outflow and pushing toward the platform, for Fairhaven was proud of John Charteris now that his colorful tales had risen, from the semi-oblivion of being cherished merely by people who cared seriously for beautiful things, to the distinction of being purchasable in railway stations; so that, in consequence, Fairhaven wished both to congratulate him and to renew acquaintanceship.

He, standing there, alert and quizzical, found it odd to note how unfamiliar beaming faces climbed out of the hurly-burly of retreating backs, to say, “Don’t you remember me? I’m so-and-so.” These were the people whom he had lived among once, and some of these had once been people whom he loved. Now there was hardly any one whom at a glance he would have recognized.

Nobody guessed as much. He was adjudged to be delightful, cordial, “and not a bit stuck-up, not spoiled at all, you know.” To appear this was the talisman with which he banteringly encountered the universe.