His achievement, in fact, consists precisely in the success with which
he gives those materials a striking newness, and gets a novel vitality
into those designs. He takes the ancient and mouldy parts of speech--the
liver and lights of harangues by Dr. Harding, of editorials in the New
York _Times_, of "Science and Health, with a Key to the Scriptures," of
department-store advertisements, of college yells, of chautauqual
oratory, of smoke-room anecdote--and arranges them in mosaics that
glitter with an almost fabulous light. He knows where a red noun should
go, and where a peacock-blue verb, and where an adjective as darkly
purple as a grape. He is an imagist in prose. You may like his story and
you may not like it, but if you don't like the way he tells it then
there is something the matter with your ears. As for me, his experiments
with words caress me as I am caressed by the tunes of old Johannes
Brahms. How simple it seems to manage them--and how infernally difficult
it actually is!

H. L. MENCKEN.

_Baltimore, October 1st, 1921_.




_Contents_

CHAPTER

THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY

I THE EPISODE CALLED THE WEDDING JEST