



Produced by Emmy, MFR, Linda Cantoni, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive). This project is dedicated with
love to Emmy's memory.









PATRINS

_TO WHICH IS ADDED_

  An INQUIRENDO Into the WIT &
  Other Good Parts of HIS LATE MAJESTY
  KING CHARLES the Second


  _WRITTEN BY_
  LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY


[Illustration: SICUT LILIUM INTER SPINAS]


  _BOSTON_
  Printed for _Copeland and Day_
  _69 Cornhill_ 1897


COPYRIGHT 1897 BY COPELAND AND DAY




[Inscription: M.R.D., from her affectionate
old friend who wrote it. 1897]




TO BLISS CARMAN


A _patrin_, according to _Romano Lavo-Lil_, is "a Gypsy trail:
handfuls of leaves or grass cast by the Gypsies on the road, to
denote, to those behind, the way which they have taken." Well, these
wild dry whims are _patrins_ dropped now in the open for our tribe;
but particularly for you. They will greet you as you lazily come up,
and mean: Fare on, and good luck love you to the end! On each have I
put the date of its writing, as one might make memoranda of little
leisurely adventures in prolonged fair weather; and you will read, in
between and all along, a record of pleasant lonely paths never very
far from your own, biggest of Romanys! in the thought-country of our
common youth.

  Ingraham Hill, South Thomaston, Maine,
  October 19, 1896.




Contents


                                                                    Page

  On the Rabid _versus_ the Harmless Scholar                           3

  The Great Playground                                                13

  On the Ethics of Descent                                            29

  Some Impressions from the Tudor Exhibition                          39

  On the Delights of an Incognito                                     63

  The Puppy: A Portrait                                               73

  On Dying Considered as a Dramatic Situation                         83

  A Bitter Complaint of the Ungentle Reader                           99

  Animum non Coelum                                                  109

  The Precept of Peace                                               117

  On a Pleasing Encounter with a Pickpocket                          131

  Reminiscences of a Fine Gentleman                                  139

  Irish                                                              153

  An Open Letter to the Moon                                         169

  The Under Dog                                                      181

  Quiet London                                                       191

  The Captives                                                       205

  On Teaching One's Grandmother How to Suck Eggs                     223

  Wilful Sadness in Literature                                       233

  An Inquirendo into the Wit and Other Good Parts
    of His Late Majesty, King Charles the Second                     247




ON THE RABID _VERSUS_ THE HARMLESS SCHOLAR


A PHILOSOPHER now living, and too deserving for any fate but choice
private oblivion, was in Paris, for the first time, a dozen years
ago; and having seen and heard there, in the shops, parks, and
omnibus stations, much more baby than he found pleasing, he remarked,
upon his return, that it was a great pity the French, who are so in
love with system, had never seen their way to shutting up everything
under ten years of age! Now, that was the remark of an artist in
human affairs, and may provoke a number of analogies. What is in the
making is not a public spectacle. It ought to be considered very
outrageous, on the death of a painter or a poet, to exhibit those
rough first drafts, which he, living, had the acumen to conceal.
And if, to an impartial eye, in a foreign city, native innocents
seem too aggressively to the fore, why should not the seclusion
desired for them be visited a thousandfold upon the heads, let us
say, of students, who are also in a crude transitional state, and
undergoing a growth much more distressing to a sensitive observer
than the physical? Youth is the most inspiring thing on earth, but
not the best to let loose, especially while it carries swaggeringly
that most dangerous of all blunderbusses, knowledge at half-cock.
There is, indeed, no more melancholy condition than that of healthy
boys scowling over books, in an eternal protest against their father
Adam's fall from a state of relative omniscience. Sir Philip Sidney
thought it was "a piece of the Tower of Babylon's curse that a man
should be put to school to learn his