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 been gathered into the blue mist of oblivion, leaving the soft contours of the Bacchic landscape bathed in pure beauty. I don't find it so. I see—"

I hesitated. In a company like this, it is a bit awkward to talk on the killjoy side of a question. But Oliver rallied me forward.

"Tell us what you see. Professor," he said. "Life or death, give us only reality. Show us the sad pictures in the prohibitionist gallery of disillusion. We'll try to look interested."

"Well," I said, "Willys's praise of this beautiful old custom of getting drunk now and then did press a button in my gallery of memories and light up a few old pictures. They are relevant only because I did have, in my earlier years, about the average American's chance to feel the æsthetic value of this vanishing phase of our popular culture. I see pictures. As Whitman says, 'The shapes arise.

"Whitman was a priest of Dionysus," said Willys.

"So was Emerson," I said, "and so, according to my lights, am I. The shapes arise. I see a strayed reveler, with no vine leaves in his hair,—only a shirt, trousers, and suspenders,—lying on his back, and shouting children towing him by a rope