Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Hermione Takes Up Literature

by Don Marquis

HERMIONE TAKES UP LITERATURE

WE'VE been going in for Astrological Research lately—our Little Group of Modern Thinkers, you know—and we've picked our own personal stars.

Only it seems such a shame, doesn't it, that one isn't allowed to change stars? Keeping the same star all your life is rather monotonous, don't you think?

Though, of course, if one changed and got some one else's star things might be frightfully complicated, mightn't they?

But it would make a charming little story, wouldn't it, for a girl to change stars, you know, and find that her new star belonged to some quite nice young man, and, of course, after that, their destinies would be one.

I get some of the most original plots for stories!

Fothergil Finch has often said to me that that is one difference between genius and talent. When you have genius, you know, things like that just come to you; but if you only have talent you must work and work for them. "If I only had your spontaneity, Hermione!" Fothergil often says.

And really, it's never been any trouble for me at all to dash off an idea, though of course they would have to be touched up by the editors a little before they could be printed.

Fothergil said the other night I should try poetry.

"Why, Fothy," I said, "if I lived a hundred years I never could make two lines rhyme with each other!"

But he said rhyme was out of fashion anyhow, and—would you believe it?—while we were talking I got an idea for a poem and just dashed it off then and there—a vers libre poem you know, and it goes:

What becomes of
People when they die?
I used to ask when I was a little child,
And now even since
I am grown up I am not sure that I know!

"Fothy," I said, "it was so easy—that makes me afraid it isn't really good!"

"Ah," he said, "that modesty proves you are a genius! Heavens, what would I not give to have your spontaneity, your modesty, your spontaneity——" But I interrupted him. Another idea had come to me—just like that, and—would you believe it?—I dashed off another one, right then and there! It went:

I see the rain fall.

It is no effort for the rain to fall.

Why is it no effort?

Because it falls spontaneously!

O Spontaneity! Spontaneity!

Rain is genius,

Genius is rain!

Fall, fall, rain!

Fothy is going to get them printed—he knows a lot of vers libre publishers—if Papa will only put up the money. And one nice thing about poor dear Papa is that he always will put it up.

So that night I wrote twenty or thirty more of them, and they were all good—all works of genius—they all came to me just like the first ones!

The last one came to me just as I was going to bed. I looked out of the window and saw the moon and ran and got a pencil and wrote:

I see the moon out of the window.

I wonder what it thinks of me?

Wouldn't the moon and I both be surprised

If we found that neither one of us

Thought anything at all about the other?

The book's going to be vellum, you know, and that sort of thing. I'm going to have a gown just like the cover and give a fête when it comes out.

The worst thing about being literary, though, is that it makes one feel so responsible for the gift, if you know what I mean, doesn't it?