St. Landry democrat., 1886-04-24

| tWo-and-tWenty can commonly boast
of, he believed himself TO have been I'M
justly used,
1t seemed necessary to relate this
episode of his career for two reasons
it strikes a keynote of his character, and
it furnishes an explanation for his after
| mode of life.
| CHAPTER IL.
! 1t was about the time of the events
| just recorded that Mr. Ronald Marsh
dawned upon London. There are va
rious ways of dawning. The gray way
is perhaps esteemed the most prosper
Gus, but Mr.. Marsh dawncd in vivid
splendors, and his glories at the begin
ming were inclined to be tempestuous.
London is biggish place to dawn
upon, and the luminary whose rays
pierce every Granny and corner of it
must rise high and shine bright indeed.
Now, Mr.. Marsh made no pretense
| though he knew himself sun of the
first magnitude) to shine upon the vul
gar. The fog of their understanding
was obviously too dense for him. He
did not even count upon illuming the
whole of the polite world, as yet. There
are men and women in the highest Cir
| Giles who never get a thrill of warmth
or ray of conscious light out OF -Esch-
ylus or Shakespeare. Not that Mr..
Marsh thought much of .Eschylus or
Shakespeare, but they had passed up,
till now as among the earth's greatest,
and they We're well enough in the way
of parallel or illustration. He was con-
tent for the present to be seen and
known of few. He would have been
content in any way, not to be seen or
known at all-at least, he had the mod
e>ty to say so to shine unheeded and
to rejoice in his own strength and ra-
dance.
He dawned, then, in fitful splendors,
and his signs and portents were first
noted in the house of Lady Marguerite
Capucine, where he appeared in I'M
starched linen and apparel of strange
device, and with a head of hair like a
disorderly halo. He had no actual
companions, but two or three satellites
accompanied him. rising at his risings
and setting at his settings Their
own: they wore their hair at as great a
length and in as picturesque disorder:
their sombreros ard their cloaks were
as brigandish as their leaders. They
thought great things of themselves and
Of each other; but they swore by the
leader, and proclaimed him the Emanci-
pator OF Human Thought. They used
to say, with every evidence of sincerity,
that when the Leader gave his poems
to the world the pillars of a WORKOUT
system would be shaken.
The Leader could occasionally be pre-
vailed upon to repeat or read mere
fragmentary extract from his work, and |
the appetite of his followers grew with |
what it fed on. In these excerpts the |
world was called upon to break its fet-
ters-not particularized with clearness
and there were nightly sonorous
passages about the degraded gods
and the need for their complete abo-
lition.
Nobody can live always at EXTREMIST |
and Mr.. Ronald Marsh
went about sometimes quite like an
ordinary person. At these times he
for the most part with people
who were literary, artistic and theat-
rlcal. Bohemia is a sparsely-peopled
country now. One or two men who
really knew its crowded haunts and its
few solitudes, its cheerful highways and
sad byways, wrote about it and made
it familiar to the world. Then came
the inevitable cloud of imitators and
pretenders, and made poor old b.
hemia an impossible place to live in
any longer. Its name is so cheapened
that the very mention of it has ring
If sham sentiment and sham mirth;
even its tried gold has been so lacquered
hat it looks like pinchbeck. But there
was Bohemia worth knowing even so
ate as Ronald Marsh's day, and the
great young man sometimes strayed
nto it, and tried to feel as if he were
native there.
There was, and is, a dingy back room
n one of the Oldest houses in the Strand,
mere box of an apartment, in
which, lby crowding themselves UNI
ten men of average breadth
# beam can sit around the clumsy CEN ,
er-table. Half one side of the room is
by window, but the smoke
ncrusted wall of a neighboring build
ng rises within two yards of it, and a .
,ruesome twilight reigns within the
partment even at noontde. There,
nee a week, in the days of which l .
write, spectral-looking figures sat and .
eld high converse on books and pict- ,
res and the drama, and on the men
nd women who wrote, or painted. or j, !
layed. The air was heavy with tobac-
o-smoke and the scent of strong pota-
les, and a newcomer, entering from
he fresher air of the Strand, had some c
do to make out the inmates of the c
Dom. The spectral nine welcomed the 6
oct with grave voices, and wedged