rooms at St. Patrick's Hall, people remembered that I had complained of feeling sick. I have never had much feeling of guilt. I lay the blame at the door of Peter's kindliness, which led me to fight in selfdefense. S. FOSTER DAMON HATED she lived, a house apart, Always it held a rich bouquet At last the autumn came, but still Until one dusk, as I passed by, ROBERT SILLIMAN HILLYER Nocturne I FELT the wind on my cheek The night had come. My clothes were wet with dew, Was a brazier to my blood. So long estranged, and now In the wind fanning my brow, And the valley lying dumb, O never come! Never come back! Moo! SUMMER is over, the old cow said, My backbone sags like an old roof-tree, And an apple snatched in a moment's frolic Is just so many days of colic. It is about time that something was said on the general subject of ceilings. Hour after hour, as a child, I lay in quiet and profound contemplation of a number of them, for they were practically the only thing that I could view continually with any degree of composure. They never annoyed. Their uniform blankness was one with my state of mind. I cannot say now with any certainty how much those ancient plaster surfaces influenced my early life. A great deal, though, I expect. I remember one in particular. It supplied the top to my nursery. Right above my crib appeared a curious combination of two or three cracks and a large water-stain dating back to a Saturday night when Delia overdid it in the bath on the floor above; a beautiful calcimine creation with four humps and prominent elbows, trekking across a flyspecked desert. It was a good thing, in its way, and diurnally came in for a bit of solid contemplation. To-day, no doubt, I should call it a camel, but at that period of my interesting life camels were wholly unknown. I had never been to Arabia or Ringling, nor was I permitted to indulge in the æsthetic and gastronomic delights of animal crackers. Practically speaking, I had no teeth. Dimly associated with my yellowing friend is a less important stain. In the light of modern science I should suppose it to have been a spot of casual gravy, but at the time I accepted it as a part of the Eternal Pattern of things, especially ceilings, and immediately adjusted it in my memory as a rather creditable if malicious face. I can still recall it. How dreadful it was! It used to leer at me over my bottle, and had a nasty habit of forming the basis of the most horrible nightmares whenever the old digestion decreed a slack day. It seems incredible that I should remember so much of a season when I was scarce a year old. But who can disprove me? When the memory is cross-examined for the real facts of our childhood there is a delicious backsliding and a fine conflux of years. I find it quite as easy to pull up recollections of the so-called bottle era as of the most ambitious college days. Easier in fact. . . . When I was three the ceiling was redone; and the presence, along with him of the several humps, passed damply away under the glistening swaths of the calcimine brush. We pay a lot of attention to our hats. And yet they cover only one head at a time. A ceiling, on the other hand, simultaneously covers several (without imposing the least restriction on anybody), and often a lot of atrocious furniture as well. But who cares about it? A ceiling is no more to us than a necessary partition in space. Necessary to keep the feet of the fellow higher up from treading on our ears, and (once) a kind of buffer and free target for champagne corks. Who (I repeat), beyond babies, cares for ceilings? Not the artist. The nearer his picture comes to being skied the madder he is. Not the advertiser. Visually (but not otherwise) he will meet you on the level. And not you; and not I. For my part, I have always felt that ceilings were made, more than anything else, to exhibit the strange capacity of the fly to walk upside down. Before there were any ceilings where did the common house-fly obtain that exquisite exercise which keeps him fit to dash round the rim of the cream pitcher and explore the difficult area of Uncle Arthur's whiskers? I confess I do not know. But as things stand now, ceilings are the proving ground of flies. Squads of them may be observed there any hot, June morning, manœuvring about in great solemnity; learning new tricks, I dare say, practicing approach shots for the jam pot, and the proper cadence for use on a bald head. The ceiling is also their refuge, and a wounded or disappointed fly will seek it quicker than the flypaper. He seems assured that none will pursue him there. And certainly I shall be the very last to do it. Almost anything in its proper place is an ornament. A bear in his den, a foot in a shoe, a fly on the ceiling, for example. Of course, some ceilings are more attractive than others. Italian ceilings are situated somewhere up in the vicinity of the clouds, and by their mysterious isolation inveigle us into looking at them. I have often tried, but with only partial success. When the opportunity comes I shall visit an Italian villa I know, steal softly up the stairs, and saw a nice hole through the floor of the guest chamber. Then I shall stick my head through it and have a long look at an honest-to-glory Italian ceiling. I see no other way. Of course, too, there is "the vault of heaven," and "the canopy of stars," and all that sort of natural covering which the poets talk about. No one is fonder than I of a good, cheerful summer sky, if my hay fever isn't too bad and I can find a white duck hat round the house that will fit me; nor of a starry night, for that matter, if you'll stick to the main road. But I was speaking, rather, of the artificial ceiling, such as King Alfred sat under; the common sort, that has for centuries covered impartially emperor and clown. There's the one in the kitchen. Nobody in his right mind, to be sure, would look twice at that. But consider the one in the bathroom, which is no more than one-tenth the size. That is the one ceiling in the whole house with which I am quite familiar. Lying in a temperate bath, I have made a study of it. I have played (mentally) a game of chess on it; and once, when I was younger, I hit it with a wet sponge, trying to kill a mosquito. I missed him. Public places have the decorative instinct toward ceilings. You have surely noticed it. The dome of the Grand Central Station in New York is simply littered with stars of various magnitudes and lively representations of the Olympus family in striking poses—all in all, one of the most satisfactory blue-prints of the heavens I have ever seen. The motive there is a simple one. It is the generous desire of the officials to make the traveller perfectly at home with the universe, so that a small journey in upper five (and porter, call me early!) to Chicago will seem like nothing at all. Or relatively nothing. And there are the hotels. I have seen hotel ceilings (in the dining rooms especially) so incrusted with cupids and cherubs and Rubens-like damsels reclining heavily on thin air that I have buried my face in the soup in sheer confusion. Not for the world, in some places I know, would I turn my eyes aloft. "Look up, not down." Poppycock. A good wall is enough for me. My crib days are over. If there is something to be seen, don't hang it over my head like a sword of Damocles. Put it where I can view it face to face. Even the Bible will bear me out in this. Belshazzar saw the writing on the wall, not on the ceiling. You don't want a stiff neck, do you? No? Well, neither do I. |