"length" and the proper "breadth" of this speech should next consider the third dimension, which is "thickness", which meaneth "substance"-that is, the real solid thing he hath to say. So if a man do make a speech, with due regard to its real dimensions of "length" and "breadth" and "substance", and the substance be of first-class quality,-which, of course, is not a dimension but an attribute

But now I am interrupted in my discourse by an awful noise. -"What is this tedious thing you do now? You are spouting wisdom which, though true, was all enunciated long ago, in fact long before you were born, or thought of; and if you should die at once, your place in Reason and Philosophy would not, to put it mildly, be unfillable. Of course, if a man do consider all these things that you do mention he would make a perfect speech; it is absurd the way you carry on!"

But is it absurd? Remember, I am only partly through my discourse. I spoke of five dimensions; and how in the name of common sense can a man talk about the fourth and fifth dimensions unless he first do make some passing mention of the other three, that people do or should know all about? And furthermore, I say that a man doth not make a perfect speech if he use only these three dimensions properly, because it would then be a perfect speech in a most restricted way, and perfection that is qualified is perfection not at all.

Now the fourth dimension it is Time. Now Time, mark you, is a real dimension when it concerneth speech, for there be many speeches which certainly be wellnigh perfect, only they were spoken at a most unseemly time; all of which you know.

And the fifth dimension is one of Space, which meaneth "place" for all human practicability; and the dimension Space, which meaneth "place", hath much to do with speech, for a speech may otherwise be perfect, except it be spoken in a most outlandish place for such a speech as that;—all of which you know.

Now, knowing all these things so well, it is quite evident that on occasion you can talk in five dimensions, and if one can talk in five dimensions it follows surely that he can think in five dimensions; but you don't most always talk in five dimensions,

for I have heard you, though I know not what goes on within your head-for quite often you do talk in only one dimension, that is length. That is, you just talk and talk and talk, saying nothing nothing that any other man could make head nor tail of, though it might mean something to yourself;-which is a speech having but one dimension, "length".

Then again, when you do feel a little better, you do talk a certain "length" and also your talk hath a certain broadness; but lacking "substance",-meaning "thickness",-your speech is seeming flat, the substance, meaning "thickness", doubtless being in your head.

And again, feeling very much improved, you do talk with due respect to the three dimensions of "length" and "breadth' and "thickness", but you really do poorly, for you disregard both "time" and "space". For instance,-suppose you speak at proper "length" and "breadth" and "substance" on how to make a saw, and all men say it is a most wonderful discourse on how to make a saw; but suppose you make this speech most wonderful at the funeral of a friend, thus disregarding both dimensions of "time" and "space", then would the people say, "Surely this man hath lost his mind."

Then suppose sometime you conceive a most brilliant speech of a patriotic nature and you be determined to make it square with all the dimensions that I have spoken of, and you conceive it quite properly, for it surely is of proper "length" and "breadth" and "substance"; and being of a patriotic nature you deliver it on July the Fourth, which is the proper "time" for such a speech; and for the dimension "space", which meaneth "place", you select a cider barrel standing on its end, which in lieu of something better is really not so bad for "place";—and so your speech goes right well, and you do get most thunderous applause, which is really because your speech it squares so well with the five dimensions, including "place", of course. But now suppose an accident doth happen, the top of the cider barrel doth cave in, and you do continue speechifying up to your waist in cider,— the speech of course it loses force on account of a very slight change of place.

"Now," saith my listener, "the way you undertake to improve

my mind I find most painful, and it doth remind me of the dentist-man when he doth improve my teeth; and I believe I'd rather serve a term in jail, and thus get away from this mathematic stuff."

That would not solve your troubles, for a term in jail be a strictly mathematic proposition; for a jail hath length and breadth and thickness, and a certain capacity, small but ample for its purpose; and although there be an amplitude of time there be a scarcity of space.

“Well, at least I can go home and go to bed; and although a bed be a flatness having length and breadth, as I be a muchexhausted man mayhap I may sleep a dreamless sleep for a season, and thus be unconscious of all things that there are,— including the five dimensions."

So, as I have no listener, I be compelled to close my discourse. DUDLEY H. WIGGINS.

ADELAIDE CRAPSEY: POET AND CRITIC

BY LLEWELLYN JONES

IT may be substantially true, as Emerson said, that:
One accent of the Holy Ghost

This heedless world hath never lost,

but the world has grown appreciably more heedless since Emerson wrote, with relatively fewer people in it who have time to do the necessary sifting for the authentic accents. For a few years I was almost afraid that the heedless world was going to lose the precious little collection of poetry which was published after the death of Adelaide Crapsey, especially as in one large city bookstore I saw copies of the first edition of her little book, Verse, put on a ten cent table. But now that the volume has been reissued it is to be hoped that its intrinsic worth will overcome the world's heedlessness, and that Adelaide Crapsey will take her place as one of the outstanding woman poets of the day-a place beside Emily Dickinson and Alice Meynell, surpassing the one in selfconscious technique, and linked to the other by the fact that she was critic as well as poet, but in the company of both not only because she wrote beautiful poetry but because it is the poetry not of mere imagery but of the adventure of the spirit: the more important part of Miss Crapsey's verse dealing with the greatest adventure of all: the meeting, foreknown and awaited, with inevitable death.

That Adelaide Crapsey should have been a spiritually courageous person is not surprising to those people who know her father, Dr. Algernon Crapsey, one of the illustrious heretics of his day, a man with burning convictions and a sufferer through his expression of them. His daughter Adelaide was born in 1878, and died of tuberculosis in 1914. After her graduation from Vassar she studied at the School of Archæology in Rome, and then took up teaching as a means of livelihood, and as a life

work entered upon an elaborate study of English metrics-of which I shall have more to say later.

She wrote much poetry in her earlier years, but the most part being occasional, she destroyed it, and the verse she left behind her was gathered together during the last year of her life-spent at Saranac Lake in a vain effort to fight tuberculosis. Much of it indeed was written during that period-the poetry of death written by one who did not, like the average poet, think of death but who saw it coming and who deliberately shaped her sheaf of poems as a memorial:

Wouldst thou find my ashes? Look

In the pages of my book;

And, as these thy hand doth turn,

Know here is my funeral urn.

Miss Crapsey was a pagan in the classical rather than in the popular sense of the word, and she would have her funeral urn a thing of beauty. And so around it we find a wreath of blossoms of poetry, a small flower of a new shape: Cinquains, she called them, and they may be described as little poems that do, under the law of English prosody, what the hokkus and similar forms do for Japan. Of course our "free verse" writers try to write actual hokkus and tankas in English, but the results are disappointing, as there is no magic for us in a mere arbitrary number of syllables. But Miss Crapsey did not merely count syllables, but devised her five line poems in an iambic series, adapted to decoration, as in Blue Hyacinth

In your

Curled petals what ghosts

Of blue headlands and seas,

What perfumed immortal breath sighing

Of Greece;

—but decoration with a far-reaching suggestiveness—and equally adapted to moods, as in Night Winds:

The old

Old winds that blew

When chaos was, what do

They tell the clattered trees that I
Should weep?