We were far indeed from suspecting it; he was our fine flower, our
representative man. Yet in the light of later events I can see now,
and plainly enough, where he fell short.
A University Extension Lecturer who descended upon us the other day
and, encouraged by the crowds that flocked to hear him discourse on
English Miracle Plays, advertised a second series of lectures, this
time on English Moralities, but only to find his audience diminished
to one young lady (whom he promptly married)--this lecturer, I say,
whose text-books indeed indicated several points of difference
between the Miracle Play and the Morality, but nothing to account for
so marked a subsidence in the register, departed in a huff, using
tart language and likening us to a pack of children blowing bubbles.
There is something in the fellow's simile. When an idea gets hold of
us in Troy, we puff at it, we blow it out and distend it to a globe,
pausing and calling on one another to mark the prismatic tints, the
fugitive images, symbols, meanings of the wide world glassed upon our
pretty toy. We launch it. We follow it with our eyes as it floats
from us--an irrecoverable delight. We watch until the microcosm goes
pop! Then we laugh and blow another.
That is where the fellow's simile breaks down. While the game lasts
we are profoundly in earnest, serious as children: but each bubble as
it bursts releases a shower of innocent laughter, flinging it like
spray upon the sky.
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