'And' Being Impressed: At Odd Moments real tone rer title clea Pee al Yount Stantial fect or coen in substantial matters wot the least. fin they provide far nal 'The historian might well look back with unfeigned amusement upon certain impressions of most of us. He could very well drain from some of my own impression Pictures all the colours, until Should scarce be able to' recognize them as the bright hued portraits which hung in my gallery. He night say "What a distortion of Feality! This picture of yours the merest figment of fantasy. It will not even appear in the recor Tt has no place in that solid phalanx of facts by which humanity marches forward and civilizes itself and gains a reputation."
T should be forced to sigh "True, true, all true! This historian fellow is right beyond argument. Yet I prefer to keep my gallery of impressions intnct—at least those Which do not die a natural death anyway by the passing of time,"
"The historian could doubtless cheek up: even on: my choicest pressions, finding an error in colour and design here, in texture there, or a glaring faut in craftsmanship elsewhere, But they should with-Stand this onslau, ht of accuracy, Decause impressions are always their own' fortresses and quite im= pregnable, What would the historian say, 1 wonder, about a certain gathering of Inst week. Impresston's tints of are not yet dugd. Such a—pleasant affair' it was and inst five. There was room filled with Yistening people; a_ well-informed and impromptu. speaker on urgent theme, The Advance of Russia, Into Asia! with his passion for accuracy, freed the historian
Shanghai, January 1927," as 9 Miateline, and of course we are all Tmpresstons, might were) down inclined' to curiosity as to what else he would write down as a "follow-up." That being impossible to Know, one let one's mind wander with the speaker in a course that led through Russi centuries. Beyond the speaker's modulated voice passed the long I|trail of Mongol hordes swarming lover the steppes of Russia in past centuries; vague indefinable movements of the nomad which found jan echo, somewhere, at the back of the mind. Thin coils of historical smoke and the historian piercing. through it with penetrating eyes!
Then an impression decided to alight for a moment and forget history and interpretation of history. Out of the corner of the room the ruddy tints of a woman's red hair shone through the smoke. The vagabond, Impression, was off again on his merry way, without so much as a by your leave, He Jdwelt upon that fluffy mass with a particular concentration of his own. He knew that the historian of the future was shaking his head at that moment; there could be no [doubt of it, In the interpretation of historical fact what earthly place feould a woman's hair have in the records, the historian would inquire, Once'more I sigh at the waywardness of impressions. Why must they always intrude into serious and thoughtful places? And yet, and yet, though I grant that the vagabond could never play a sufficiently ied part in the modern state to assort itself in affairs of history what a place it docs hold in the purely personal!
While the historian scrawls, very carefully close one eye the better to judge the angle of the new picture that has been added to impression's gallery of old and new and faded and bright moments. Perhaps it is a flippancy, but who would really like to feel that a woman's glorified red hair had no place in the records.—J. 0'T
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.