Part 25

For of course I haven't lost my interest in sociological problems.

In fact I'm having some new dresses made -- simple, quiet looking things, you know -- for the express purpose of visiting the very poor in and asking them questions about themselves.

Though I must admit that since helping the war sufferers came into fashion friendly visiting has rather gone out.

MAMA IS SO MID-VICTORIAN

WE'VE been taking ;up Hedonism lately -- our Little Group of Modern Thinkers, you know -- and it's wonderful, just simply WONDERFUL!

Though Mamma -- poor dear Mamma is so hopelessly old fashioned; -- has entirely the wrong idea about it.

"Hermione," she said to me the other evening, after the little talk, "WHAT did the lecturer call himself?"

"He's a Hedonist," I said.

"Indeed!" she said, "and what sort of modern impropriety is Hedonism? Is it something about Sex, or is it something about Psychics?"

I simply couldn't speak.

I just gave her a look and walked out of the room. It is absolutely useless to attempt to explain anything to Mamma.

She is so Mid-Victorian!

And Mid-Victorianism has quite gone out, you know. Really. The loveliest man gave us a talk on the Mid-Victorian recently, and when he was done there wasn't a one of us that didn't go and hide our Tennysons and Ruskins.

Although I always WILL like "Come into the Garden, Maud."

But he did it with such HUMOR, you know. Isn't a sense of humor a perfectly WONDERFUL thing?

A sense of humor is a sense of proportion, you know -- he brought that out so cleverly, the anti-Mid-Victorian man did.

Though so many people who have a sense of humor are so -- so, well so QUEER about it, if you get what I mean. That is, if you know they have one, of course you're naturally watching for them to say humorous things; and they're forever saying the sort of things that puzzle you, because you have never heard those things before in just that way, and if you DO laugh they're so apt to act as if you were laughing in the WRONG place!

And one doesn't dare NOT to laugh, does one? It's really quite unfair and unkind sometimes! Don't you think so?

We took up a volume on The Analysis of Humor one winter -- our Little Group of Serious Thinkers, you know -- and read it completely through, and before the winter was over it got so there wasn't a one of us that dared NOT to laugh at anything any other one said and -- well, it got rather ghastly before spring. Because even if someone wanted to know if a person needed an umbrella someone else would laugh.

Well, I must be going now. I have a committee meeting at three this afternoon. We're going in for this one-day Women's Strike, you know -- our little group is.

VOKE EASELEY AND HIS NEW ART

FOR my acquaintance with Voke Easeley -- --

(Hermione's reporter, and not Hermione herself, is speaking now.) -- --

For my acquaintance with Voke Easeley and his new art, I am indebted to Fothergil Finch.

Fothergil is a kind of genius hound. He scurries sleuthing around the town ever on the scent of something queer and caviar. He is well trained and never kills what he catches himself; he takes it to Hermione; and after Hermione has tired of it I am at liberty to do what I please with it.

The most remarkable thing about Voke Easeley at a casual glance is his Adam's apple. It is not only the largest Adam's apple I have ever seen, and the hardest looking one, and the most active one, but it is also the most intelligent looking one. Voke Easeley's face expresses very little. His eyes are small and full and green. His mouth, while large, misses significance. His nose, indeed, is big; but it is mild; it is a tame nose; one feels no more character in it than in a false nose. His chin and forehead retreat ingloriously from the battle of life.

But all the personality which his eyes should show, all the force which should dwell in his nose, all the temperamental qualities that should reveal themselves in his mouth and chin, all the genius which should illumine his brow -- these dwell within his Adam's apple. The man has run entirely to that feature; his moods, his emotions, his thoughts, his passions, his appetites, his beliefs, his doubts, his hopes, his fears, his resolves, his despairs, his defeats, his exaltations -- all, all make themselves known subtly in the eccentric motions of that unusual Adam's apple.

When I saw him first in action I did not at once get it. He stood stiffly erect in the center of Hermione's drawing-room, surrounded by the serious thinkers, with his head thrown back and his Adam's apple thrust forward, and gave vent to a series of strange noises. Beside him stood a very slender lady, all dressed in apple green, with a long green wand in her hand, and on the end of the wand was an artificial apple blossom. This she waved jerkily in front of Voke Easeley's eyes, and his Adam's apple moved as the wand moved, and from his mouth came the wild sounds in response to it.