THE MOTHER OF COMMON SENSE
and fickle Mistress? And though it had stood the test-fire of sacrifice, who is qualified to pronounce it genuine or false? My friend answered these questions to his own satisfaction and went one day to the market-place. But the market-men would not listen, would not be detained. The jewellers of art shook their heads; the merciers and the milliners of literature smiled; the grocers were amused; the antiquarians were annoyed. And everywhere the little terracotta gods of the bazaar, like old Buddha himself, gazed eternally upon their navels.
The dreamer of golden dreams returned to his studio and straightway burned the image of his Beloved. And he pinned on the wall, above his typewriter, the following: I lost my faith one morning in the market-place and found it the following day in a cash register.
Even the cash register, as far as he was concerned, would not disclose the secret of the transmutation. Although he invoked it every day for several months, tried to
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