THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY A Comedy in Letters BY JAMES LANE ALLEN AUTHOR OF "THE KENTUCKY CARDINAL," "THE KENTUCKY WARBLER," ETC. There is nothing so ill-bred as audible laughter.... I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason nobody has ever heard me laugh. --Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his Son. GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1919 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN To THE SPIRIT OF COMEDY INCOMPARABLE ALLY OF VICTORY LIST OF CHARACTERS EDWARD BLACKTHORNE...............Famous elderly English novelist BEVERLEY SANDS....................Rising young American novelist BENJAMIN DOOLITTLE....Practical lawyer, friend of Beverley Sands GEORGE MARIGOLD............................Fashionable physician CLAUDE MULLEN............Fashionable nerve-specialist, friend of George Marigold RUFUS KENT.......................Long-winded president of a club NOAH CHAMBERLAIN......Very learned, very absent-minded professor PHILLIPS AND FAULDS.....................................Florists BURNS AND BRUCE.........................................Florists JUDD AND JUDD...........................................Florists ANDY PETERS..............................................Florist HODGE......................Stupid gardener of Edward Blackthorne TILLY SNOWDEN.............Dangerous sweetheart of Beverley Sands POLLY BOLES..........Dangerous sweetheart of Benjamin Doolittle, friend of Tilly Snowden CLARA LOUISE CHAMBERLAIN......Very devoted, very proud sensitive daughter of Noah Chamberlain ANNE RAEBURN..........Protective secretary of Edward Blackthorne CONTENTS PART SECOND PART THIRD THE EMBLEMS OF FIDELITY EDWARD BLACKTHORNE TO BEVERLEY SANDS _King Alfred's Wood, Warwickshire, England, May 1, 1910._ MY DEAR MR. SANDS: I have just read to the end of your latest novel and under the outdoor influence of that Kentucky story have sat here at my windows with my eyes on the English landscape of the first of May: on as much of the landscape, at least, as lies within the grey, ivy-tumbled, rose-besprinkled wall of a companionable old Warwickshire garden. You may or you may not know that I, too, am a novelist. The fact, however negligible otherwise, may help to disarm you of some very natural hostility at the approach of this letter from a stranger; for you probably agree with me that the writing of novels--not, of course, the mere odious manufacture of novels--results in the making of friendly, brotherly men across the barriers of nations, and that we may often do as fellow-craftsmen what we could do less well or not do at all as fellow-creatures.