Oscar Wilde was convicted and sent to prison; and of course Frank Harris does not like prisons--he, too, has been sent there by the British ruling caste. It is only natural that he should overlook in his book the significance of the fact which he himself records, that this imprisonment was the best thing that ever happened to Oscar. Harris interceded for him, and was able to get him good food and the right to have his books; he tells us that he noticed during his visits a “spiritual deepening” in Oscar, due to the rigid disciplining of his selfish nature. He was never so well or so much in possession of his mental faculties as when he came out; but immediately he went back to his vomit, and ate and drank and loafed himself to death, according to the customs prevailing in that putrescent leisure class. It seems to me that the true conclusion to be drawn from Frank Harris’ book is that decadent poets should be sent to prison and kept there permanently. Anything to save them from smart society! While Oscar was at large, the pet of the cultured rich, he idled and wrote futile plays; but when he was locked up, he took life seriously, and wrote great literature: “De Profundis,” a study of his spiritual reactions to his disgrace; and “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” a supremely eloquent and noble poem, the poet’s excuse for having lived. Reading these two works we say, by all means let us have prisons for will-less men; places where such unhappy beings may have as much self-government as they can use, together with plain wholesome food, moderate work outdoors, and enforced abstinence from alcohol and tobacco and drugs. Having set up such prisons, let us keep in them, not merely all thieves and highwaymen and esthetes, but men of fashion, princes, lords and dukes, bishops, stock-brokers and fat persons. Says Mrs. Ogi: “You said you were going to label all your jokes.” Her husband, after meditating, remarks: “What Oscar needed was the right sort of a wife.” She answers: “Almost any wife would have told him that a guilty man cannot bring a slander suit.” CHAPTER XCVI THE WHITE CHRYSANTHEMUM “What troubles me,” says Mrs. Ogi, “is that you call this a book of all the arts, and continue to deal with literature.” “In modern times each of the arts has developed a complicated technique; and in order to analyze them all and show what they mean, one would have to know much more than I know. But every now and then it happens that a musician or painter or sculptor is not satisfied with his own art, but uses mine; and then I have him!” “Oh, that mine enemy would write a book,” says Mrs. Ogi.