The Washington herald., 1921-07-31
ny CosMo HAMILTON.

Tue question was once put TO
Diogepes. What hope is; and his
answer was, The dream of a wax
ing man" And again. very late In
his life, someone said to him:
what is it to be romantic?' 1T
is" he replied. the ability to de-
eeiye yourself
have an idea that hope and the
cifttaf being romantic go hand IN
hand, and at the back of both there
is the desire to be happy and 10
give happiness.
Inthe case of James NJ. Barrie,
whoesat down in his large and airy
room in the Adelphi Terrace. looked
over the Thames at a broken line
of drab buildings and romanced
Peter Pan, IL was in the nope OF
touching the hearts and inspiring
the fila gination of generation after
cenera.ion of children and those OF
us who refuse to grow up. In the
case, also, of Cervantes, who put
Don Quixote into the gallery Oh
everlasting portraits, being roman
tic was with the hope reintroducing
chiyairy and knightliness into a
world that had forgotten BOTH L
could give a list of other great ro-
maneers, which would certainly IN
clude Daniel Defoe and kooert
Louis Stevenson, to prove that the
art Of romancing has the nope az
the back Of 1t of building unior-
gettable dreams. and peoplns the
ina gination with characters VINO
never lived. but who will never o'e'
Dreams of Hope.
There is hope. also. in the wax
ing dreams of those people, alnios'
Invariably women, who are roman
tic minded in everyday life, ana
who. with the aid of both these
gifts- turn their cottages into cas-
Ties. their geese into swans anu
tint their spectacles with the coior
Of the rose to look upon the earlh
most sordid corners-the nope OF
being happy. Il
know a romantic girl VINO az
though she doesn't know II. causes
more laughter in the bosom OF ner
family than all the hard-oakeo
Jokes invented. Nature has not en-
dowed her with the raVishlns
beauty of any of those youns
women who give us such supercil-
Gus looks from the pages OF mo-
tion picture magazines. In otneF
words, she is an ugly duckhns' tah'
and 7 am bound to say, ungainIy'
with feet that turn in when she
walks and elbows that turn out,
with hair of the wrong shade OF
red 'ar4d-not to hit her too hard
a face. ! feel that this is cruei
description. and l regret II, and so
as a matter of fact will everyone
eIse-except herself. She, being ro-
rOrnantfc-minded and possessing
therefore the gift Of making things
look not as they are but as sho
wants them to he, is quite con-
WINGED that she is frequently mis-
taken for Mary Pickford. or for
any one of the other beautiful
creatures who happen to be in the
public eve at the moment. That. of
course.-is a good beginning. She is,
in addition to this, the heroine of
every new book and every new
play and I can always tell in a flash
which book is the one she had last
read and which the play last seen
because of her manner and heI
smile and her mode of speech. Be
ing 50 beautiful to herself. and be-
ing beautiful is her waking dream
her passage through life is neces-
sarily interrupted not only by ro-
mantle affairs with utter strangers,
but with the men in her own small
circle. She is convinced. because
she wants to be, that every male
eye blinks at the sight OF her and
every male head turns as she
passes And she carries the ability
of self-deception into channels
which will bring her into her fam
lily eye. Never does she take a
walkS il 1t Is only from the sum-
mer cottage to the village and
back. without encountering a great
adventure. Sometimes a common or
garden sparrow which has hoped
across her path becomes the blue
bird of Maeterlinck. Sometimes the
ungroomed donkey of the village
tinker is translated into a mag
Office in the city can turn her hall
bedroom into a boudoir fit for a
duchess, and her six pots of gera-