THE SONG OF THE SNORE
FOTHERGIL FINCH, Hermione's friend, the
vers libre poet, dodges through life harried
and hunted by one pursuing Fear.
"Some day," he said to me—
(It is Hermione's Boswell who is speaking in this sketch, in the first person, and not Hermione, the incomparable.)—
"Some day," Fothergil Finch said to me, the other night, in a tone of intense, bitter conviction, "some day It will get me! Some day It will overtake me. The great Beast, Popularity, which pursues me! Some day It will clutch me and tear me and devour my Soul! Some day I will be a Popular Writer!"
It is my own impression that Fothergil's fears are exaggerated; but they are very real to him. He visualizes his own soul as a fugitive climbing higher and higher, running faster and faster, to escape this Beast. Perhaps Fothergil secretly hopes that the speed of his going will induce combustion, and he will leap from the topmost hills of Art, flaming, directly into the heavens, there to burn and shine
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