Page:Et Cetera, a Collector's Scrap-Book (1924).djvu/37

 fat black horses, your bobbing feathers, your starved and shivering footmen conducting a yellow box in a showcase to a field covered with monstrous wedding-cake ornaments, and I have asked myself who this Death could be, that was satisfied with so poor a ritual.

D. V.: My dear sir!

Philip: You make us ridiculous where, if you had any real significance, you would make us noble. You come slinking in behind the doctor and afflict a man with an absurd disease like the mumps. We cover his eyes with pennies and tie up his jaw, and hide him away so that our children may retain a decent pride in human nature. But we know that it is not the end. The thing’s incredible—a wood-louse would command a braver destiny. As for a poet!

D. V.: A poet!

Philip: I tell you, man, it will take a god to destroy me, and he will destroy me as he made me, with sweat and tears and anguish of heart. Even then I shall leave my inspiration, that part of me which lies beyond his power of creation, like a stain of blood on his murderous hands.

D. V.: I did not know that you were a poet. I should have been more careful.

Philip: You are fit to rock tired babies to sleep, and as far as I can see you are fit for nothing else. For the rest, I know that you are less, and not more than man. If I choose I can throw you out of the