On the base was the legend, "The Weeping Lady." After he
had tasted the Sea Siren fare the man from Arizona suspected that both
her grief and her anaemia arose from the fact that she had been fed on
it.
A man in artist's velveteens, minus a haircut, with a large, fat, pasty
face, sat at an adjoining table and discoursed to his friends.
Presently, during an intermission of the music, he rose and took the
rest of those present into his confidence. With rapt eyes on the
faraway space of distant planets he chanted his apologia.
"I believe in the Cosmic Urge, in the Sublimity of my Ego. I follow my
Lawless Impulse where the Gods of Desire shall drive. I am what I Am,
Son of the Stars, Lord of my Life. With Unleashed Love I answer the
psychic beat of Pulse to Pulse, Laughter, Tears and Woe, the keen edge
of Passion, the Languor of Satiety: all these are life. Open-armed, I
embrace them. I drink and assuage my thirst. For Youth is here
to-day. To-morrow, alas, it has gone. Now I am. In the Then I shall
not be. Kismet!"
The poet's fine frenzy faded. He sank back into his chair, apparently
worn out by his vast mental effort.
Clay gave a deep chuckle of delight. This was good.
"Heap much oration," he murmured. "Go to it, old-timer. Steam off
again. Git down in yore collar to it."
To miss none of the fun he hitched a little closer on the bench. But
the man without the haircut was through effervescing. He began to talk
in a lower voice on world politics to admiring friends who were basking
in his reflected glory.
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