NATURE'S FONDNESS FOR POLKA DOTS 



On third and fourth thoughts, one is con- 

 vinced that not even with the star-spangled 

 skies does nature end her experiments in 

 this line, since no one ever caught her end- 

 ing anything, when she knows a smoother 

 way of shading it into something else, or of 

 hiding her trail by crossing an invisible 

 stream to an invisible territory, if one may 

 change the figure. 



Crossing this invisible stream after her, 

 one comes out on the other side in the im- 

 material realm of mind, where one finds our 

 dear old Sorceress still at her old tricks, ex- 

 perimenting with intellectual polka dots to 

 give tone and variety against a background 

 of neutral souls in dull gray tints. How 

 otherwise may we account for the fine 

 dappled fancies of the wits and poets, the 

 pied epigrams of the proverb-makers and 

 the mental polka dots de luxe of Shake- 

 speare? 



And if in this province one asks how and 

 why, it may be possible that some philoso- 

 pher will tell us that here also the intellec- 

 tual polka dot is the result of the "aesthetic 



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