The italics are mine. I wonder what poor Pollard would think of it. He saw the shoddiness in Chambers, the leaning toward “profitable pot-boiling,” but he saw, too, a fundamental earnestness and a high degree of skill. What has become of these things? Are they visible, even as ghosts, in the preposterous serials that engaud the magazines of Mr. Hearst, and then load the department-stores as books? Were they, in fact, ever there at all? Did Pollard observe them, or did he merely imagine them? I am inclined to think that he merely imagined them—that his delight in what he described as “many admirable tricks” led him into a fatuity that he now has an eternity to regret. Chambers grows sillier and sillier, emptier and emptier, worse and worse. But was he ever more than a fifth-rater? I doubt it. Let us go back half a dozen years, to the days before the war forced the pot-boiler down into utter imbecility. I choose, at random, “The Gay Rebellion.” Here is a specimen of the dialogue: “It startled me. How did I know what it might have been? It might have been a bear—or a cow.” “You talk,” said Sayre angrily, “like William Dean Howells! Haven’t you _any_ romance in you?” “Not what _you_ call romance. Pass the flapjacks.” Sayre passed them. “My attention,” he said, “instantly became riveted upon the bushes. I strove to pierce them with a piercing glance. Suddenly—” “Sure! ‘Suddenly’ always comes next.” “Suddenly ... the leaves were stealthily parted, and—” “A naked savage in full war paint—” “Naked nothing! a young girl in—a perfectly fitting gown stepped noiselessly out.” “Out of what, you gink?” “The bushes, dammit!... She looked at me; I gazed at her. Somehow—” “In plainer terms, she gave you the eye. What?” “That’s a peculiarly coarse observation.” “Then tell it in your own way.” “I will. The sunlight fell softly upon the trees of the ancient wood.” “_Woodn’t_ that bark you!” And so on, and so on, for page after page. Can you imagine more idiotic stuff—“pierce and piercing,” “you gink,” “she gave you the eye,” “_woodn’t_ that bark you?” One is reminded of horrible things—the repartees of gas-house comedians in vaudeville, the whimsical editorials in _Life_, the forbidding ghoul-eries of Irvin Cobb among jokes pale and clammy in death.... But let us, you may say, go back a bit further—back to the days of the _Chap-Book_. There was then, perhaps, a far different Chambers—a fellow of sound talent and artistic self-respect, well deserving the confidence and encouragement of Pollard. Was there, indeed? If you think so, go read “The King in Yellow,” _circa_ 1895—if you can. I myself, full of hope, have tried it. In it I have found drivel almost as dull as that, say, in “Ailsa Page.” 2 _A Stranger on Parnassus_