The Soldier and the Hunchback ! and ?

THE EQUINOX It is my misfortune and not my fault that I am bound to deliver this elementary Message. “ Man has two sides; one to face the world with, One to show a woman when he loves her.” We must pardon Browning his bawdy jest; for his truth is ower true! But it is your own fault if you are the world instead of the beloved; and only see of me what Moses saw of God! It is disgusting to have to spend one’s life jetting dirt in the face of the British publicin the hope that in washing it they may wash off the acrid grease of their commercialism, the saline streaks of their hypocritical tears, the putrid perspi- ration of their morality, the dribbling slobber of their senti- mentality and their religion. And they don’t wash it!. . . But let us take a less unpleasing metaphor, the whip! As some schoolboy poet repeatedly wrote, his rimes as poor as Edwin Arnold, his metre as erratic and as good as Francis Thompson, his good sense and frank indecency a match for Browning! “Can’t be helped; must be done— So...” Nay! ’tis a bad, bad rime. And only after the scourge that smites shall come the rod that consoles, if I may borrow a somewhat daring simile from Abdullah Haji of Shiraz and the twenty-third Psalm. Well, I would much prefer to spend my life at the rod ; it is wearisome and loathsome to be constantly flogging the tough hide of Britons, whom after all I love. ‘“ Whom the 134