This thought leads to a word in general on primitive types. Although it is becoming the fashion to be interested in them, and hence many poor specimens both in prose and verse will get into print, yet the writing of such simple and idealistic things by way of reaction from our intense and often hectic realism, is surely in the main wholesome, regardless of the value of the individual pieces. Years ago Count Tolstoy said, "The artist of the future will understand that to compose a fairy-tale, a little song which will touch, a lullaby or a riddle which will entertain, a jest which will amuse, or to draw a sketch such as will delight dozens of generations or millions of children and adults, is incomparably more important and more fruitful than to compose a novel, or a symphony, or paint a picture of the kind which diverts some members of the wealthy classes for a short time and is then forever forgotten. The region of this art of the simplest feelings accessible to all is enormous, and it is as yet almost untouched." Of course the hope of literary excellence for such an epoch, if it comes, will lie in the possibility of the pieces being kept as Tolstoy's own are, very near to the naïve. =The Artist= One evening there came into his soul the desire to fashion an image of _The Pleasure that abideth for a Moment_. And he went forth into the world to look for bronze. For he could think only in bronze. But all the bronze of the whole world had disappeared, nor anywhere in the whole world was there any bronze to be found, save only the bronze of the image of _The Sorrow that endureth Forever_. Now this image he had himself, and with his own hands, fashioned, and had set it on the tomb of the one thing he had loved in life. On the tomb of the dead thing he had most loved had he set this image of his own fashioning, that it might serve as a sign of the love of man that dieth not, and a symbol of the sorrow of man that endureth forever. And in the whole world there was no other bronze save the bronze of this image. And he took the image he had fashioned, and set it in a great furnace, and gave it to the fire. And out of the bronze of the Image of The Sorrow that endureth forever, he fashioned an image of _The Pleasure that abideth for a moment_. --Oscar Wilde. "Poems in Prose" (Fortnightly Review, July 1, 1894). =The House of Judgment= And there was silence in the House of Judgment, and the Man came naked before God. And God opened the Book of the Life of the Man.