contributed to a magazine years ago, he compares the artist in
paint or in words to the keeper of a booth at the world's fair,
dependent for his bread on his success in amusing others. In his
volume of poems he almost apologises for his excellence in
literature:



'Say not of me, that weakly I declined
The labours of my sires, and fled the sea,
The towers we founded, and the lamps we lit,
To play at home with paper like a child;
But rather say: IN THE AFTERNOON OF TIME
A STRENUOUS FAMILY DUSTED FROM ITS HANDS
THE SAND OF GRANITE, AND BEHOLDING FAR
ALONG THE SOUNDING COASTS ITS PYRAMIDS
AND TALL MEMORIALS CATCH THE DYING SUN,
SMILED WELL-CONTENT, AND TO THIS CHILDISH TASK
AROUND THE FIRE ADDRESSED ITS EVENING HOURS.'


Some of his works are, no doubt, best described as paper-games. In
THE WRONG BOX, for instance, there is something very like the card-
game commonly called 'Old Maid'; the odd card is a superfluous
corpse, and each dismayed recipient in turn assumes a disguise and
a pseudonym and bravely passes on that uncomfortable inheritance.
It is an admirable farce, hardly touched with grimness, unshaken by
the breath of reality, full of fantastic character; the strange
funeral procession is attended by shouts of glee at each of its
stages, and finally melts into space.