The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax

to meet the objection that, while a machine may have great ideas in it, "it does not look it." The average machine not only fails to express the idea that it stands for, but it genera

n one looks for poetry in it, d

hing in it is absurd. Judged merely by its outer signs, the universe over our heads-with its cunning little stars in it-is the height of absurdity, as a self-expression. The sky laughs at us. We know it when we look in a telescope. Time and space are God's jokes. Lo

tal soul than a week-old baby wailing at time and space. The idea of a baby may be all right, but in its outer form, at first, at least, a baby is a failure, and always has been. The same is true of our other musical instruments. A horn caricatures music. A flute is a man rubbing a black stick with his lips. A trombone player is a monster. We listen solemnly to the violin-the voice of an archangel with a board tucked under his chin-and to Girardi's 'cello-a whole human race laughing and crying and singing to us between a boy's legs. The eye-language of the violin has to be interpreted, and only people who are cultivated enough to suppress whole parts of themselves (rather useful and important parts elsewhere) can enjoy a great opera-a huge conspiracy of symbolism, every visible thing in it standing for something that can not be seen, beckoning at something that cannot be heard. Nothing could possibly be more grotesque, looked at from the ou

put with it. Man himself is futile and comic-looking (to the other animals), rushing empty about space. New York is a spectacle for a

y well does not trouble me much. I do not forget the look of the first ocean-engine I ever saw-four or five stories of it; nor do I forget the look of

to me again when he brought me up from his whirl of wheels in the hold to the deck of star

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