THE EPIGRAM AND ITS GREATEST MASTER 1 3 



for his eyes were ever toward the lender of money, and his purse was 



generally filled only with cobwebs. 



Lend Sponge a guinea! Ned, you'd best refuse 

 And give him half. Sure that's enough to lose. 



But now the faces no longer wait to be summoned, they are fairly 

 streaming past us. The aged dame wedded for her attractive combina- 

 tion of accumulated wealth and wasting cough; the well-matched 

 couple who ought to agree better because they are so thoroughly alike, 

 "each as bad as bad can be;" the shopper who handles all the richest 

 wares from the highest shelves and spends a farthing ; the representative 

 of the jeunesse doree who does ever}^thing prettily, almost "'cutely," from 

 tennis to astronomy; the beau who sends countless billets-doux and 

 receives none; the busybody who whispers mysteriously in your ear 

 what might be proclaimed from the housetops; the lawyer who "runs 

 on from Magna Charta to old King John," but utters never a word about 

 the sheep — all of these belong no more to Roman hfe two thousand 

 years ago than to American life in the twentieth century. 



But where shall we interrupt this hne of hurrying faces ? The coach- 

 man who brought a double price because he was deaf comes to claim as 

 his descendant the canny caddy who is bUnd enough for two. The 

 young Roman society man reciting his own verses after pleading the ade- 

 quate excuse of a sore throat sees a congenial sister in the young society 

 woman who sings in spite of such a cold. At some of the faces we must 

 glance twice before they are recognized. "Who are you?" "I was the 

 victim of many fires who always received generous contributions from 

 kindly friends until I burned my house once too often." "And who are 

 you now ?" "I am the insurance joke, without which Life would die." 

 "Who were you with the laughing half-offended face ?" "I was Baiae, 

 sweetest of seaside resorts, always maligned as the cause of too many 

 flirtations." " To me," Martial said, " a lady came a Penelope and from 

 me departed a Helen." "And who are you now?" "I am Ostend or 

 Saratoga or any other sea-and-sun-kissed strand where a man and 

 a woman search each other's eyes for the Httle winged god and remember 

 or forget." With these our line of faces has only begun; the others are 

 just as famihar, but we must let them flit by unnoted. 



