Page:Anthology of Modern Slavonic Literature in Prose and Verse by Paul Selver.djvu/152

128 life entangles him. He applies his standard and makes his demands. But life does things differently. Its novels flow along in a broad river-bed, they are seemingly without form, logic and meaning,—but only seemingly. If we had eternity's calm and angle of vision, we should find in them everything,—masterly form, iron logic and deep meaning. But we deal with life in the same way that we deal with nature; where we are short-sighted, we lay the blame on them, and where we do not comprehend, we speak of them as muddled-headed authors: but chiefly, I think, we reproach them for their lack of good taste and aesthetical feeling, as if these eternal masters were compelled to acknowledge the hoary standards of beauty set up by our schoolbooks and the chameleon-like dictates of our ephemeral critics!

Now I reproached life for its lack of good taste and aesthetical feeling when, contrary to expectation, I received Vlasta's letter. She was, she said, serving in a ham and beef shop in the Celetná Ulice. A fine novel! The heroine behind the counter of a ham and beef shop! And she wrote that I was to come at ten o'clock when they closed, and that she had lots of things to tell me. I was there by nine; I sat down in the eating-room and Vlasta brought me the sausages I ordered. And she related that she had been obliged to go home to some village beyond