establishment and moved to Italy with her Poet. Still others maintain
that Pansy, Gill the Grip and Maxy the Firebug never existed in real
life - were merely the mind-children of a Symbolist and a dreamer of
dreams.

To the latter theory I incline at a scholarly angle. This Cycle may be
taken, perhaps, not so much as a living record of human experience as a
lofty parable sounding the key-note of all human life. Gill the Grip is
the Iago, the Mefistofele, the symbolism of a malevolent destiny. Maxy
the Firebug may be the Poet's interpretation of the Social Unrest, of
Doubt, of progressive irresponsibility. Would it be going too far, then,
to say that Pansy stands to us as the symbol of Pan-girlism - as an
almost Anacreontic yearning for the type? Or may not these Sonnets be
taken, in a way, as a modern Vita Nuova wherein a Sixth Avenue Alighieri
calls to his Beatrice and mourns within when,

"Pansy-girl refuses to occur?"

So much for the Poet and his Purpose. Should any one of the readers of
this Cycle doubt the enduring greatness of the lines, let him consider
that I, Wolfgang Copernicus Addleburger, have seen fit to introduce them
to immortality.



[1] Since the salary-books of the Metropolitan Street Railways show,
during the year 1906, 182 conductors named Smith in their employ, 38 of
whom were named William Smith and 12 William Henry Smith, it is easy for
the reader to conceive my task in establishing the identity of our Poet.
W. C. A.