But who would not be bewitched by the
pretty sunlight that finds its way into the gardens of Plessy? I knew
I was going to walk with Doris by a sea blue as any drop-curtain, and
for a moment Doris seemed to be but a figure on a drop-curtain. Am I
very cynical? But are we not all figures on drop-curtains, and is not
everything comic opera, and "La Belle Helene" perhaps the only true
reality? Amused by the idea of Jason or Paris or Menelaus in Plessy, I
asked Doris what music was played by the local orchestra, and she told
me it played "The March of Aida" every evening. "Oh, the cornet," I
said, and I understood that the mission of Plessy was to redeem one
from the coil of one's daily existence, from Hebrew literature and its
concomitants, bishops, vicars, and curates--all these, especially
bishops, are regarded as being serious; whereas French novels and
their concomitants, pretty girls, are supposed to represent the
trivial side of life. A girl becomes serious only when she is engaged
to be married; the hiring of the house in which the family is reared
is regarded as serious; in fact all prejudices are serious; every
deflection from the normal, from the herd, is looked upon as trivial;
and I suppose that this is right: the world could not do without the
herd nor could the herd do without us--the eccentrics who go to Plessy
in quest of a golden fleece instead of putting stoves in the parish
churches (stoves and organs are always regarded as too devilishly
serious for words).
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