Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/89



Though the table of contents in Mr. Brownell's American Prose Masters indicates that the book contains but six masters, a reflective reader soon perceives that it contains a seventh, to whom the rest are indebted for no small part of the interest which they seem to possess in their own right. It is the fate of most celebrities, soon after their vogue is over, to be ushered respectfully into an honorable but dusky chamber which has more the air of a museum than of a living room. The warm appreciation of a living classic cools swiftly, in the presence of his marble effigy, to cold commemoration. Teachers and young pupils stroll listlessly through the dusky hall of fame, and, pausing for a moment before some "pallid bust," remark with perfunctory reverence, "This is Cooper," or "That is Emerson." Then they pass on—without stirring the accumulating dust of oblivion. But now and then a master, visiting the "museum," pauses before the same figures and begins to speak understandingly, with special knowledge, with acute discrimination of innumerable neglected values. It is as