creed, and in alliance with the spirit of the _cinque cento_ Italian
Renaissance Schools of Painting and Architecture. Practically
speaking, he conceived a train of adept ideas, at times fanciful, and
at times morbid, transforming them adroitly by adept excursions of
cross-lit introspection, accentuation, and by dint of manual caress,
as the first of players upon stringed instruments.

Music, I would apologetically infer, being the middle, the rallying
feature, of Mr. J.H. Shorthouse's verbose apology. If fictionizing in
prose, he writes with brief orange-hued flashes of liquid ether; each
of short, all but, brief span. Characteristically, he belongs to the
same school and unapproachable law as the French organist-composer,
C.M. Widor: stringent, petulant observance of free uncurbed metronome
time, allied to picturesque handling; punctuality of tidal consort
rigidly regarding, when each, the one to the other, linked; less a
care, by virtuous intuition displaying for lyric measure. The writings
of Nathaniel Hawthorne more forcibly and piquantly evince cylindrical
flow, and strike at the object lesson with less artificial, _cadavre_,
fastidious touch; but Mr. Shorthouse, speaking strictly, as to temper
and _tempo_ is a trifle more rugged; and never a shadow of suspense
suffered he to stir a hand's breadth, that is, rest 'twixt poetic
certainty and doubt, lest the ultimate end should all-attainable be
or not. For freedom from this, and other literary ambiguity, yet never
manifesting anxiety of freeing himself in prose from its insidious and
arbitrary restraint, I attribute his tragical, subtle, gentle power of
"connection," _liaison_; feeling for time; planetary time, be it lunar
time, sometimes unmistakably, solar time; disallowing, by potency of
sentimental touch, a sense of rupture, to linger. A noble stream by
mute comparison, pursuing its course unwavering; interrupted but now
and again, to the vast expansive ocean of shapeliness, of unity.