THE HAPPY ENDING.

Thames Star, Volume LVII, Issue 15129, 21 February 1922, Page 3

THE HAPPY ENDING.

(By WALT MASON.)

Among back numbers 1 am wending, I like the old things, though they’re stale; and 1 admire the happy ending when I wade through a stirring tale; I know my course needs much defending, since critics at old methods rail. “It isn’t art,” they tell me, sadly, “the way all stories used to cease; the villain always turned out badly, the hero wed the vicar’s niece, and packed his trunks with gems and gladly went honeymooning off to Greece.” Art is a thing of pomp and glory, and I’m its booster and its friend; I claim that art is hunky-dory, my throbbing eulogies ascend: and yet I do not like a story that does not have a cheerful end. The methods of the old-time masters were good enough to be my guides; they soaked their heroes in disasters until disasters stained their hides; but in the end tho smiling pastors united them to blooming brides. The heroes suffered for a season, till chapter twenty-four or five; the dupes of guile and crime and treason,, they wondered why they were alive; but in the end they had no fleas on, and they began to bloom and thrive Tho villains for a time w T ere winners, all things appeared to come their way; they fed their works with costly dinners, and drank cold bottles from Cathay; but retribution smashed these sinners, to Tyburn tree they rode away. The highbrows doubtless I’m offending when I let thoughts like these prevail; and art, perhaps, in ire is lending her help to have me put in gaol; but I admire tho happy ending when I peruse a stirring tale !