And that is
to knock the spirit out of a man. Which is his magic. Clown and Pantaloon
and Harlequin and Columbine are very simple folk, you know. They let
themselves be just what it's most natural to be, and only try to give their
friends in front ... kind friends in front, they call them ... just what
will make them happiest quickest. So this is what they've come to be by
this time, Clown and Columbine, Harlequin and Pantaloon. No names but
those, no meaning, no real part at all in the rattle and clatter of
machinery which is now called Life. They're out of it. They clung to the
skirts of the theatre for a bit. But the theatre, aching to be "in it",
flung them off. The intellectual drama had no use for them, no use at all.
And so they found themselves (out of it indeed) busking on the pavement,
doing tricks and tumbling and singing silly songs to the unresponsive
profiles of long lines of ladies (high-nosed or stumpy-nosed ladies),
waiting admittance to the matinees of some highly intellectual play. And
with glasses on those noses they'd be reading while they waited the book of
that same play: so even then our poor gods busked in vain.
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