stupendous, we lesser men are left at a loss. Its magnitude
demands the perspective that time only can lend it. Its dignity
and austerity and its pitiless truth impose upon us that honest
and intelligent silence which even the quickest minds concede is
necessary before an honest verdict.

Truth was his goddess; he wrought honestly and only for her.

He is dead, but he is to have his day in court. And whatever the
verdict, if it be a true one, were he living he would rest content.

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS.



BEFORE THE CURTAIN


A few years ago, as to the most important and most interesting
subject in the world, the relations of the sexes, an author had
to choose between silence and telling those distorted truths
beside which plain lying seems almost white and quite harmless.
And as no author could afford to be silent on the subject that
underlies all subjects, our literature, in so far as it
attempted to deal with the most vital phases of human nature,
was beneath contempt. The authors who knew they were lying sank
almost as low as the nasty-nice purveyors of fake idealism and
candied pruriency who fancied they were writing the truth. Now
it almost seems that the day of lying conscious and unconscious
is about run. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall