ADDRESS TO THE ARTISTS.

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 102, 30 April 1921, Page 15

ADDRESS TO THE ARTISTS.

Do you crave fame, my boy? Abjure ambition To set your name on countless wagging tongues? 'Twere well, then, to select the proper mission, To measure ladders ere you tempt the rungs. . i ■ First, if an audience of real dimensions You seek, and dare be honest with yourself, Stuff art for art's sake, and such-like conventions • \ Of esoteric' piffle, on the shelf. For Fame's no Fame unless it's widely bruited And Fame's no use if you must fi»et expire; Fame is the count of hands that you've recruited Into a claque to faij the daily fire. How simple, then: though some dilate on rigors! All you've to do is find the shortest means, In any line, that yields the biggest figgers,— And lo! the Formula is in your jeans.

' Strive, therefore, for the highest and the noblest— In aggregates: aim not at cloister's door Or recondite redoubt, for no ©ne'e so West Of plaudits that hje does not sigh for more. Letters? You pedeetal a Leonardl M«r- j rick, A Conrad, a Galsworthy, to the heights. j . What folly! Hearken to the shouts hysteric For "Pollyannas," Beaches, and Bell Wrights! Can you deny it? x Likewise, can you beat it? Where one man reads with zest a harsh - critique Of prostituted taste a thousand eat- it— The stuff, I mean! Of course, it's simply pique. Backbiting, hollow envy : these traducers Wastjng their venom on. Olympians!— Pshah, they're not even heard, jaundiced grape-juioars, By the best-seller drunk on—Americans ! ' Then, where do those who'd guide the public get off,. Weighting profound "Reviews" with studious strains? ~\, By a bored world ignored, in vain they let off. Beside the Herbert Kaufm«as and Prank Cranes. And poetry ? Who reads the Frosts, the Lowells, Sa-ssoons and Sandburgs? Sands that unheeded run! An Edgar Guest transcends' them with smug "Oh wells," And' a Walt Mason scores three score to one. x ( / . What is the use? Why lot tradition .' maim us"? What in the end are the Criteria worth? -' ■ i Behold the artist of tho lot most famous — \ Jack Dempsey. best-known man 'in all the earth! —Stanley K. Wilson in New York Even- , ing Post (abridged). ■