Iole Read online

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  WORKS OF ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

  Cardigan A King and a Few Dukes The Maid-at-Arms The Conspirators The Reckoning The Cambric Mask Lorraine The Haunts of Men Maids of Paradise Outsiders Ashes of Empire A Young Man in a Hurry The Red Republic In Search of the Unknown The King in Yellow In the Quarter The Maker of Moons The Mystery of Choice Iole

  FOR CHILDREN

  Outdoor-Land River-Land Orchard-Land Forest-Land

 

 

  IOLE

 

  "The little things," he continued, delicately perforating the atmosphere as though selecting a diatom.]

  IOLE

  By

  ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

 

  D. APPLETON & CO. New York MDCCCCV

 

  Copyright, 1905, by

  ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

  _Published May, 1905_

  TO

  GEORGE HORACE LORIMER

 

 

 

  PREFACE

  Does anybody remember the opera of _The Inca_, and that heartbreakingepisode where the Court Undertaker, in a morbid desire to increase hisprofessional skill, deliberately accomplishes the destruction of hismiddle-aged relatives in order to inter them for the sake of practise?

  If I recollect, his dismal confession runs something like this:

  "It was in a bleak November When I slew them, I remember, As I caught them unawares Drinking tea in rocking-chairs."

  And so he talked them to death, the subject being "What Really is Art?"Afterward he was sorry--

  "The squeak of a door, The creak of the floor, My horrors and fears enhance; And I wake with a scream As I hear in my dream The shrieks of my maiden aunts!"

  Now it is a very dreadful thing to suggest that those highly respectablepseudo-spinsters, the Sister Arts, supposedly cozily immune in theirpolygamous chastity (for every suitor for favor is popularly expected tobe wedded to his particular art)--I repeat, it is very dreadful tosuggest that these impeccable old ladies are in danger of being talkedto death.

  But the talkers are talking and Art Nouveau rockers are rocking, and thetrousers of the prophet are patched with stained glass, and it is a dayof dinkiness and of thumbs.

  Let us find comfort in the ancient proverb: "Art talked to death shallrise again." Let us also recollect that "Dinky is as dinky does"; that"All is not Shaw that Bernards"; that "Better Yeates than Clever"; thatwords are so inexpensive that there is no moral crime in robbing Henryto pay James.

  Firmly believing all this, abjuring all atom-pickers, slab furniture,and woodchuck literature--save only the immortal verse:

  "And there the wooden-chuck doth tread; While from the oak trees' tops The red, red squirrel on thy head The frequent acorn drops."

  Abjuring, as I say, dinkiness in all its forms, we may still hope thatthose cleanly and respectable spinsters, the Sister Arts, will continuethroughout the ages, rocking and drinking tea unterrified by themillion-tongued clamor in the back yard and below stairs, where thumband forefinger continue the question demanded by intellectualexhaustion: "L'arr! Kesker say l'arr?"