"If only one could obtain truthful answers," the Minor Poet, "what a
flood of light they might let fall on the hidden half of life!"

"It seems to me," said the Philosopher, "that, if anything, Love is
being exposed to too much light. The subject is becoming
vulgarised. Every year a thousand problem plays and novels, poems
and essays, tear the curtain from Love's Temple, drag it naked into
the market-place for grinning crowds to gape at. In a million short
stories, would-be comic, would-be serious, it is handled more or
less coarsely, more or less unintelligently, gushed over, gibed and
jeered at. Not a shred of self-respect is left to it. It is made
the central figure of every farce, danced and sung round in every
music-hall, yelled at by gallery, guffawed at by stalls. It is the
stock-in-trade of every comic journal. Could any god, even a Mumbo
Jumbo, so treated, hold its place among its votaries? Every term of
endearment has become a catchword, every caress mocks us from the
hoardings. Every tender speech we make recalls to us even while we
are uttering it a hundred parodies. Every possible situation has
been spoilt for us in advance by the American humorist."

"I have sat out a good many parodies of 'Hamlet,'" said the Minor
Poet, "but the play still interests me. I remember a walking tour I
once took in Bavaria. In some places the waysides are lined with
crucifixes that are either comic or repulsive. There is a firm that
turns them out by machinery. Yet, to the peasants who pass by, the
Christ is still beautiful. You can belittle only what is already
contemptible."

"Patriotism is a great virtue," replied the Philosopher: "the
Jingoes have made it ridiculous."