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Title: The Philistines
Author: Arlo Bates
Release Date: July, 2005 [EBook #8570]
[This file was first posted on July 24, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: US-ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THE PHILISTINES ***
THE PHILISTINES
BY
ARLO BATES
To my three friends who, by generously acting as amanuenses,
have made it possible that the book should be finished, I take
pleasure in gratefully dedicating
"This is no square temple to the gate of which thou canst
arrive precipitately; this is no mosque to which thou canst come
with tumult but without knowledge."
XXIV. THERE BEGINS CONFUSION
XXV. AFTER SUCH A PAGAN CUT
XXVI. O, WICKED WIT AND GIFT
XXXV. HEARTSICK WITH THOUGHT
XXXVI. FAREWELL AT ONCE, FOR ONCE, FOR ALL AND EVER
XXXVII. A SYMPATHY OF WOE
When Arthur Fenton, the most outspoken of all that band of protesting
spirits who had been so well known in artistic Boston as the Pagans,
married Edith Caldwell, there had been in his mind a purpose, secret
but well defined, to turn to his own account his wife's connection with
the Philistine art patrons of the town. Miss Caldwell was a niece of
Peter Calvin, a wealthy and well-meaning man against whom but two grave
charges could be made,--that he supposed the growth of art in this
country to depend largely upon his patronage, and that he could never
be persuaded not to take himself seriously. Mr. Calvin was regarded by
Philistine circles in Boston as a sort of re-incarnation of Apollo,
clothed upon with modern enlightenment, and properly arrayed in
respectable raiment. Had it been pointed out that to make this theory
probable it was necessary to conceive of the god as having undergone
mentally much the same metamorphosis as that which had transformed his
flowing vestments into trousers, his admirers would have received the
remark as highly complimentary to Mr. Peter Calvin. To assume identity
between their idol and Apollo would be immensely flattering to the son
of Latona.
Fenton understood perfectly the weight and extent of Calvin's
influence, yet, in determining to profit by it, he did not in the least
deceive himself as to the nature of his own course.
"Honesty," he afterward confessed to his friend Helen Greyson, who
scorned him for the admission, "is doubtless a charming thing for
digestive purposes, but it is a luxury too expensive for me. The gods
in this country bid for shams, and shams I purpose giving them."
So well did he carry out his intention, that in a few years he came to
be the fashionable portrait-painter of the town; the artist to whom
people went who rated the worth of a picture by the amount they were
required to pay for it, and the reputation of the painter in
conventional circles; the man to whom a Boston society woman inevitably
turned when she wished the likeness of her charms preserved on canvas,
and when no foreigner was for the moment in vogue and on hand.
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