Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/200

188 with intense and personal passion to the esoteric alone, or else veiling himself even from them in a vague mysteriousness of allusion. He is well within his rights, of course, in all these things—as well within his rights as are his critics within theirs when they frankly accept his revelations of his own individual existence as an appreciable element in the production of his work.

In the Departmental Ditties, his self-explanations take the shape of a preliminary finger-post for public inspection, and of a final communication, airily inscribed, 'To whom it may concern,' but so discreetly worded withal that it is fair to raise against it the accusation of a somewhat unwarranted obscurity. When he published his first short volume of stories, Soldiers Three, he wrote for it an envoi that disclosed unexpected depths of feeling. It was evident that he took his work very seriously. He spoke of the obscure agony of its production, there in the town of his banishment—

He spoke of his sense of having achieved the power of creation over his dramatis personœ, these 'rude figures of a rough-hewn race.' He spoke of his certainty of the praise of 'the long 'bazar,' and lastly