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Updated: May 3, 2025
Unfortunately, except in The Man from Blankley's, these real things are consumed as fast as a midday meal at an American boarding-house, with the result that they are a mixture of realism and convention profoundly unconvincing. Art would be better served by the old-fashioned method, for the playgoer is more willing to concede a whole than a half "make-belief."
And as nothing is so ridiculous, so, few things are so mischievous, as the sincere insincerity, the estrangement from fact, of those who have thus parted with themselves. It is worse, if anything can be worse, than hypocrisy itself. The hypocrite sees two things, the fact and the fiction, the gold and its counterfeit; he has virtue enough to know that he is a hypocrite. But the post-mortem man, the walking legacy, does not recognize the existence of eternal Fact; it has never occurred to his mind that anything could be more serious than "spiritual taking-on" and make-belief. An innocent old gentleman, being at a play where the heroine is represented as destroyed in attempting to cross a broken bridge, rose, upon seeing her approach it, and in tones of the deepest concern offered his opinion that said bridge was unsafe! The post-mortem man reverses this harmless blunder, and makes it anything but harmless by the change; as that one took theatricals to be earnest fact, so this conceives virtue itself to consist in posturing; he thinks gold a clever imitation of brass, and the azure of the sky to be a kind of celestial cosmetic; in fine, formalities are the realest things he knows. It is said, that, in the later days of Rome, the augurs and inspectors of entrails could not look each other in the face during their ceremonies, for fear of bursting into a laugh. But still worse off than these pitiful peddlers of fraud is he who feigns without knowing that he feigns, feigns unfeignedly, and calls God to witness that he is faithful in the performance of his part. This is ape's earnest, and is, perhaps, the largest piece of waste that ever takes place upon this earth. Ape's earnest, it is a pit that swallows whole nations, whole ages; and the extent to which it may be carried is wellnigh incredible, even with the fact before our eyes. A Chinese gentleman spends an hour in imploring a relative to dine with him, utterly refusing, so urgent is his desire of company, to accept No for an answer, and then flies into a rage because the cousin commits the faux pas of yielding to his importunity, and agreeing to dine. Louis Napoleon perpetrates the king-joke of the century by solemnly presenting the Russian Czar with a copy of Thomas
That he stood in earnest need of a shave heightened the pallor of brow and temples. He was seated, cramped rather, in an upright chair with chin down. His left hand beat a tattoo on the table top and he sucked the thumb of his right hand like a badly trained child at a make-belief meal. "Taste good?" asked Hipps. "If I'd known you'd a fancy that way I'd have brought along a soother."
She was quite satisfied that a good deal was effected by this make-belief of housekeeping; and was as merry as if we had been keeping a baby-house, for a joke. So we went on. Dora was hardly less affectionate to my aunt than to me, and often told her of the time when she was afraid she was 'a cross old thing'. I never saw my aunt unbend more systematically to anyone.
After the war, when there was no longer any privateering, vessels like Captain Carter's, carrying eighteen or twenty guns apiece, couldn't pretend to be other than smugglers or pirates, and then these make-belief sean-boats came into use everywhere. But just now they were a novelty.
It is hard for children and savages to behave reverently at all times to the idols of their make-belief; and they had frolicked excessively with Jan Chinn. But the reference to his home cast a gloom on the people. "And the Sahib will not come again?" said he who had been vaccinated first. "That is to be seen," answered Chinn, warily.
Why is a poppy show more convincing than the COMEDIE FRANCAISE? Because it is still further removed from reality. There is so much make-belief that you cease to struggle. You succumb without an effort. You are quite disposed, you are positively anxious, to make concessions to the improbable. Once they are made why, as you say, it is plain sailing."
It is hard for children and savages to behave reverently at all times to the idols of their make-belief; and they had frolicked excessively with Jan Chinn. But the reference to his home cast a gloom on the people. "And the Sahib will not come again?" said he who had been vaccinated first. "That is to be seen," answered Chinn, warily.
So that Winifred, with a child's subtle instinct for avoiding the painful things, behaved as if nothing serious was the matter. Instinctively, she withheld her attention, and was happy. Yet in her remoter soul, she knew as well as the adults knew: perhaps better. Her father was quite well in his make-belief with her. But when she went away, he relapsed under the misery of his dissolution.
In this way there was a little make-belief of hope; but I doubt if my aunts were really deceived, and I did not quite know what to think. My uncle seemed flushed and excited, and contradicted me rather sharply because I happened to be in error about something of no importance.
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