THE TALE OF THE FIRST RAMATIST

Evening Star, Issue 16911, 7 December 1918, Page 3

THE TALE OF THE FIRST RAMATIST

[By L.L.H.]

Leave your metaphysical problems for a ■while, dear boy, and lot me tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a man who spent his days, hiovcd by some inner impulse, scratoliing upon the sand with a broken branch. It was in the Far Backnogs, this, you know. One day his stick traced out a sort of roughish circle, and suddenly the idea struck him that it looked like a human head! With feverish haste he dabbed in two small circles, not by any means alike in size or placed symmetrically, and a larger one—in the whirl or his artistic seizure it had escaped him wholly that men have noses—and having finished his drawing, having gazed on it spell-bound for quite ten minutes of Far Backness time, he suddenly let out a whoop that would have made the fortune of a Redskin, and hurled himself along the beach at a mad gallop, frightening the sen. birds into fits with, his wild yells of primitive delight. Then he came back at _a steady trot, and sat down and admired his handiwork. Rater he learned the trick of putting on a neck, a body, and the legs, out with no wild halloos, no mile-long gallopings; this was a serious piece of craft work. And then his days were spent in covering the sand with figures, of the sort one finds upon a child’s first slate; all else was dream.

One day as he went through the forest he suddenly stood still and stared. Whatever at? Just at a piece of broken tree he had seen ten thousand times before, but never juet as now-; for—somehow —it looked, this time, like ft man ; ever so much likerthan the drawings on the sand! Ho was amazed. Ho did not octasise —ho was too utterly astonished ; but with infinite pains he finished Nature’s damage, broke off the part, and boro it homo with him instead of tho contribution to the larder he had gone for; and then there was a domestic cyclone, over which I drop the veil. Ho let that blow itself to peace, as he had done in the case of myriads before it, and gave himself up to admiration of his find. His wifo would nope of it; at last she said : “ It’s a silly thing anyhow—it hasn't any toes and fingers!” That struck the man ns rather a useful hint, and ho set to work to make them, and very naturally spoiled the thing entirely. Then, thrown on his own resources, after vainly searching the forest through for another “ mati# ready made, he set to work on a piece of common log, and after weeks of concentrated labor made a fairly respectable golliwog-like doll. It was really an achievement; but his wife bad nought but scorn for it. After a month or so she crushed him with this terrible critical millstone : “It's a silly thing, anyhow; it can’t move its legs or arms !” Many a life-giving word has been spoken in scorn! The man looked at his doll, considered, caught the inspiration of her thought, and turned to her in such a rush of reverential wonder that she thought that he was mocking her; and when he kneeled down, saying slowly “ Whatever made you so amazin’ wise?” she ran away and hid herself for three whole days! He did not notice her absence—he was ■workin'-' at the “ silly old thing.” When she came hack the man said : “Look at this!" She looked, and nearly hnwWl with sudden mirth, but with a mighty effort, and recalling the reverence of his last look before she fled, she held herself in hard ; and from that moment of self-abnegation dates the libel that woman is devoid of humor. The man had lopned tho arms and legs off from the “silly old thing,” and after fifty disappointments had succeeded in fixing them in their old places with pegs and twisted grass. It was a marvdlons thing to look at; hut—“ See!” he cried, “it can move its arms!” and he plaved with it as a child to-day with her beautiful composition doll. “It can walk!” he cried: and it did, in its own gbastlv fashion, while the woman watched with breath suppressed, in a sort of dreadful fascination.

At last the wonder of it all slipped into her soul. It was her turn to look with reverence upon the artist; but she could not quite give way to the strange feeling, and said, a little flippantly: “ Jlv dear, you are really very clever!” But the man had caught the. undercurrent, and ho clasped her in a perfectly tremendous Far Back hug; and they cried a little in tho queer Far Back way—something like very largo cats on a wall : and then they danced a wild, grotesque Far Back dance, to which the world-famed can-can wasn’t a circumstance. And the man took to making “practicable” dolls-—what we call puppets: and all his life besido was dream. But then his wife had understood, and she was patient with hbn, and didn't mind asking him to do things, and even asking him several limes over. In course of time the man learned to tic pieces of rope of sorts to the ends of tho limbs of ins puppets ; then he would make them dance and caper and play pranks unending. One day he got up on the roof to do it, and was seen of men. There was soon a crowd of onlookers, and tho man was inspired to attempt new puppet feats ; and his wifo was also inspired—she got a big skin bag and took up a collection In time the man became famous in the land. Ho would give his entertainments in the overling under a mighty tree. Prom its high branches, the original monkey tenants having been dispossessed, he managed his puppet play, and ail was weil. Tho woman looked after tho front of the house, as modem showmen say, and tho family prospered greatly; but But in the course of time tho man grow more and mora interested in bis figures—his clever dolls ; he lived for them. When not at work of an evening ho sat absorbed in flunking of the Inst night's performance or the coming one. His wife could not arouse him. For the gains he cared no jot; for the pleasing of his patrons he cared no jot. His life was centred in the dolls; to all intents and purposes they were he! And then Fate took a hand in. as Fate will.

One night when ho climbed the tree a little late, to his amazement tho puppet was at work; it was doing its little “turn” all on its own account—doing it frightfully badly, he thought. There exemed to bo some suspicion in the audience that all was not as it should be, for the hearty peals of laughter were to seek; here and there a sudden burst at tho wretched performing doll-thing, rather than with it, he thought, was heard, suddenly stifled. _ A great wave of shame swept over Kim, “They will think I am doing it 1 ’ he thought. For a time he was crushed, utterly crushed. Tho performance was .so crude, so wanting in the Far Back graces; and they would put it down to him. O cmee the puppet, curse the puppet 1 But then a strange thing happened. He began to feel an interest in the thing as it pranced and bowed and sat and rose and walked. He began to see that he had done it an injustice: that it was doing everything precisely as be had made it do it; that the audience was not suspicious in tho least that aurJifc was wrong. Tim situation began to .grow absorbing. He realised that he had been associating himself with that thing! It was good to stand back from it and look at it, and feel that though tho people down below still thought of it as his performance ho was a free man, better than ten thousand puppets. True, he had made it, had made them think of it in connection with himself—.why, it was himself, in a way, after all. He watched the doll and its doings with over keener critical intent. How far did it in truth express ail ho had sat dreaming through the days? How much of him got through—reached them? The shame was gone, tho pain was gone ; it was all so tremendously interesting! He noted the success, the failure, the grace, the clumsiness { he saw how wood and fibre could only nerve so far; he saw that tho dress was rieht, but the stiff limbs wrong as wrong. Suddenly the fact that It did not speak struck him so .forcibly that he r.earlv fell from the free with id-suppressed merriment. Far Back merriment was rather gusty, you knew. Then Came the Inspiration; and if the woman had been there, and seen and shaicd the glory of the mam.*nt, eho would have kneeled to him, and let he? flippancy go hang. For be saw that if he would id! all Unit ha knew, all that he felt, all that he was. to these his clients he must get into tiie dress; ai. pliant limbs must

take the place of tho stiff old wooden things; his tongue must sing—there must bo no silence more! Ho slipped off the tree and went walking about all night for joy of his discovery; and when ho did oomo homo Us wife scarce knew him, so transfigured was .he by the Great Conception.

He practised for a few weeks all alone, and then, one truly memorable night, when all tho land was gathered, almost, to see the very latest variation of (ho doll performance—phew! How tell what happened? The doll came on, but never doll had walked like that before, and the audience sat up and stared with open mouths. As tho doll went through its work the wonder grew. Plaudits rang out; far back hurrahs were shouted. The woman sent back members of her family for more skin bags, so great tho revenue. Then the drill stopped in the middle of the stage, and, when a silence fell, opened its mouth and broke out into song. It was Far Back song, you know; but ob — ob—oh—the marvel of it to those Far Back listeners! They eat like dolls themselves ; they rocked, all helpless, on the waves of sound ; they cried in the strange Far Back fashion, but softly—er—comparatively softly—for the charm was on them, and they would not miss one word. The woman was the speJiboundest of them at!. She was the first to read the riddle. She had noted tho mart's strange humrnings, and feared he was going to die. When tho song ended that great audience rose as one man and yelled. It was roHof, delight, and homage all combined in one wild tumult of sound; and the doll bowed and disappeared. After a long, long time, when something liko coherence came again, the woman stood up valiantly and tried to speak ; but she couldn’t get a word out, and tho excited audience gradually dispersed. She managed to speak later on, though, when tho First Dramatist came home, wondering a little whether she were angry, or pleased, and what there’d be for supper. She was waiting for him, and if -over a man got all that the heart of man desires of private worship, shown in smothering kisses, ribthreatening hugs, playful hair-raggings, and a myriad of “ Oh, you’s !”—well, the First Dramatist, believe me, got it. And tho moral, dear boy, is this ; that if ho had never played with a stick on the sand he would never have drawn a figure ; and if ho had never drawn a, figure he would never have made a doll; and if he had never made a drill ho would never have learned what dolls could do, never liave grown so absorbed in them as to be in danger of individual extinction ; and if bo had never flung himself into the dollwork like that ho would never have seen a doll perform on its own account, and learned, for ono thing, that ho was ten thousand times greater than any doll erf Ins constructing; for another, that he could animate his doll’s especially valuable features himself. And those two lessons were very well worth the learning, eh? And now you can go Back to your metaphysical problems. Night-night.