I will lay me down whenever I want to beautifully admire Utamaro and spend half an hour with his lady (“Today I am with her in silence of twilight eve, and am afraid she may vanish into the mist”), in the room darkened by the candle-light (it is the candle-light that darkens rather than lights); every book or picture of Western origin (perhaps except a few reprints from Rossetti or Whistler, which would not break the atmosphere altogether) should be put aside. How can you place together in the same room Utamaro’s women, for instance, with Millet’s pictures or Carpenter’s _Towards Democracy_? The atmosphere I want to create should be most impersonal, not touched or scarred by the sharpness of modern individualism or personality, but eternally soft and grey; under the soft grey atmosphere you would expect to see the sudden swift emotion of love, pain or joy of life, that may come any moment or may not come at all. I recall an evening at “The Vagabonds,” where some ultra-modern paintings were exhibited and bravely discussed. An idiotic friend of mine suggested that the Vagabonds pass an evening in contemplating the canvasses in absolute silence. The obliging chairman, who is a fair parliamentarian, had the suggestion voted upon with the result of one vote in favor of it. I recall that evening in connection with Noguchi’s lines about Koyetsu: What need there be but prayer and silence? There is nothing more petty, even vulgar, in the grey world of art and poetry, than to have a too-close attachment to life and physical surroundings; if our Orientalism may not tell you anything much, I think it will teach you at least to soar out of your trivialism. I refuse to say any more about the book, for I am tempted to quote him all the way through. If you wish to forget yourself and your environment, to melt away in the unreal atmosphere of Japanese prints—read Yone Noguchi’s little book. K. THE SLAV IN CONRAD _Victory, by Joseph Conrad. New York: Doubleday, Page and Company._