Semanticate

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 				<h3 epub:type="ordinal z3998:roman">I</h3>
 				<p epub:type="title">Palliation of the Gambit</p>
 			</hgroup>
-			<p>Much has been written critically about Felix Kennaston since the disappearance of his singular personality from the field of contemporary writers; and <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Froser’s <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Biography</i> contains all it is necessary to know as to the facts of Kennaston’s life. Yet most readers of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Biography</i>, I think, must have felt that the great change in Kennaston no long while after he “came to forty year”⁠—this sudden, almost unparalleled, conversion of a talent for tolerable verse into the full-fledged genius of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Men Who Loved Alison</i>⁠—stays, after all, unexplained.⁠ ⁠…</p>
+			<p>Much has been written critically about Felix Kennaston since the disappearance of his singular personality from the field of contemporary writers; and <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Froser’s <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Biography</i> contains all it is necessary to know as to the facts of Kennaston’s life. Yet most readers of the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Biography</i>, I think, must have felt that the great change in Kennaston no long while after he “came to forty year”⁠—this sudden, almost unparalleled, conversion of a talent for tolerable verse into the full-fledged genius of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Men Who Loved Alison</i>⁠—stays, after all, unexplained.⁠ ⁠…</p>
 			<p>Hereinafter you have Kennaston’s own explanation. I do not know but that in hunting down one enigma it raises a bevy; but it, at worst, tells from his standpoint honestly how this change came about.</p>
 			<p>You are to remember that the tale is pieced together, in part from social knowledge of the man, and in part from the notes I made as to what Felix Kennaston in person told me, bit by bit, a year or two after events the tale commemorates. I had known the Kennastons for some while, with that continual shallow intimacy into which chance forces most country people with their near neighbors, before Kennaston ever spoke of⁠—as he called the thing⁠—the sigil. And, even then, it was as if with negligence he spoke, telling of what happened⁠—or had appeared to happen⁠—and answering my questions, with simply dumbfounding personal unconcern. It all seemed indescribably indecent: and I marveled no little, I can remember, as I took my notes.⁠ ⁠…</p>
 			<p>Now I can understand it was just that his standard of values was no longer ours nor really human. You see⁠—it hardly matters through how dependable an agency⁠—Kennaston no longer thought of himself as a man of flesh-and-blood moving about a world of his compeers. Or, at least, that especial aspect of his existence was to him no longer a phase of any particular importance.</p>

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 			<p>Felix Kennaston did not write very long that night. He fell idly to the droll familiar wondering how this dull fellow seated here in this luxurious room could actually be Felix Kennaston.⁠ ⁠…</p>
 			<p>He was glad this spacious and subduedly-glowing place, and all the comfortable appointments of Alcluid, belonged to him. He had seen enough of the scrambling hand-to-mouth makeshifts of poverty, in poverty’s heart-depressing habitations, during the thirty-eight years he weathered before the simultaneous deaths, through a motor accident, of a semi-mythical personage known since childhood as “your Uncle Henry in Lichfield,” and of Uncle Henry’s only son as well, had raised Felix Kennaston beyond monetary frets. As yet Kennaston did not very profoundly believe in this unlooked-for turn; and in the library of his fine house in particular he had still a sense of treading alien territory under sufferance.</p>
 			<p>Yet it was a territory which tempted exploration with alluring vistas. Kennaston had always been, when there was time for it, “very fond of reading,” as his wife was used to state in tones of blended patronage and apology. Kathleen Kennaston, in the old days of poverty, had declaimed too many pilfered dicta concerning literary matters to retain any liking for them.</p>
-			<p>As possibly you may recall, for some years after the death of her first husband, Kathleen Eppes Saumarez had earned precarious bread and butter as a lecturer before women’s clubs, and was more or less engaged in journalism, chiefly as a reviewer of current literature. For all books she had thus acquired an abiding dislike. In particular, I think, she loathed the two volumes of “woodland tales” collected in those necessitous years, from her Woman’s Page in the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Lichfield Courier-Herald</i>, for the fickle general reading-public, which then used to follow the life-histories of Bazoo the Bear and Mooshwa the Mink, and other “citizens of the wild,” with that incalculable unanimity which today may be reserved for the biographies of optimistic orphans, and tomorrow veers to <i xml:lang="fr">vies intimes</i> of high-minded courtesans with hearts of gold.⁠ ⁠… In fine, through a variety of reasons, <abbr>Mrs.</abbr> Kennaston quite frankly cared even less for books, as manifestations of art, than does the average tolerably honest woman to whom books do not represent a source of income.</p>
+			<p>As possibly you may recall, for some years after the death of her first husband, Kathleen Eppes Saumarez had earned precarious bread and butter as a lecturer before women’s clubs, and was more or less engaged in journalism, chiefly as a reviewer of current literature. For all books she had thus acquired an abiding dislike. In particular, I think, she loathed the two volumes of “woodland tales” collected in those necessitous years, from her Woman’s Page in the <i epub:type="se:name.publication.newspaper">Lichfield Courier-Herald</i>, for the fickle general reading-public, which then used to follow the life-histories of Bazoo the Bear and Mooshwa the Mink, and other “citizens of the wild,” with that incalculable unanimity which today may be reserved for the biographies of optimistic orphans, and tomorrow veers to <i xml:lang="fr">vies intimes</i> of high-minded courtesans with hearts of gold.⁠ ⁠… In fine, through a variety of reasons, <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mrs.</abbr> Kennaston quite frankly cared even less for books, as manifestations of art, than does the average tolerably honest woman to whom books do not represent a source of income.</p>
 			<p>And you may or may not remember, likewise, what Kennaston wrote, about this time, in the colophon to <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Men Who Loved Alison</i>. With increased knowledge of the author, some sentences therein, to me at least, took on larger significance:</p>
 			<blockquote>
 				<p>“No one, I take it, can afford to do without books unless he be quite sure that his own day and personality are the best imaginable; and for this class of persons the most crying need is not, of course, seclusion in a library, but in a sanatorium.</p>

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 			<p>Kennaston turned to the publishers’ advertisements. Dapley &amp; Pildriff at that time were urging everyone to read <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">White Sepulchers</i>, the author of which had made public the momentous discovery that all churchgoers were not immaculate persons. Paige Ticknor’s Sons were announcing a new edition of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">The Apostates</i>, a scathing arraignment of plutocratic iniquities, which was heralded as certain to sear the soul to its core, more than rival Thackeray, and turn our highest social circles inside out. Then the Gayvery Company offered <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Through the Transom</i>, a daring study of “feminism,” compiled to all appearance under rather novel conditions, inasmuch as the brilliant young author had, according to the advertisements, written every sentence with his jaws set and his soul on fire. The majority of Leeds, McKibble &amp; Todd’s adjectives were devoted to <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Sarah’s Secret</i>, the prize-winner in the firm’s $15,000 contest⁠—a “sprightly romance of the greenwood,” whose undoubted aim, Kennaston deduced from tentative dips into its meandering balderdash, was to become the most sought-after book in all institutes devoted to care of the feebleminded. And Stuyvesant &amp; Brothers were superlatively acclaiming <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">The Silent Brotherhood</i>, the latest masterpiece of a pornographically gifted genius, who had edifyingly shown that he ranked religion above literature, by retiring from the ministry to write novels.</p>
 			<p>Kennaston laughed⁠—upon which side of the mouth, it were too curious to inquire. Momentarily he thought of printing the book at his own expense. But here the years of poverty had left indelible traces. Kennaston had too often walked because he had not carfare, for a dollar ever again to seem to him an inconsiderable matter. Comfortably reassured as to pecuniary needs for the future, he had not the least desire to control more money than actually showed in his bank-balances; but, even so, he often smiled to note how unwillingly he spent money. So now he shrugged, and sent out his loved romance again.</p>
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-			<p>An unlikely thing happened: the book was accepted for publication. The Baxon-Muir Company had no prodigious faith in <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">The Audit at Storisende</i>, as a commercial venture; but their “readers,” in common with most of the “readers” for the firms who had rejected it, were not lacking in discernment of its merits as an admirable piece of writing. And the more optimistic among them protested even to foresee a possibility of the book’s selling. The vast public that reads for pastime, they contended, was beginning to grow a little tired of being told how bad was this-or-that economic condition: and pretty much everything had been “daringly exposed,” to the point of weariness, from the inconsistencies of our clergy to the uncleanliness of our sausage. In addition, they considered the surprising success of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Marmaduke Fennel’s eighteenth-century story, <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">For Love of a Lady</i>, as compared with the more moderate sales of Miss Elspeth Lancaster’s <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">In Scarlet Sidon</i>, that candid romance of the brothel; deducing therefrom that the “gadzooks” and “by’r lady” type of reading-matter was ready to revive in vogue. At all events, the Baxon-Muir Company, after holding a rather unusual number of conferences, declared their willingness to publish this book; and in due course they did publish it.</p>
+			<p>An unlikely thing happened: the book was accepted for publication. The Baxon-Muir Company had no prodigious faith in <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">The Audit at Storisende</i>, as a commercial venture; but their “readers,” in common with most of the “readers” for the firms who had rejected it, were not lacking in discernment of its merits as an admirable piece of writing. And the more optimistic among them protested even to foresee a possibility of the book’s selling. The vast public that reads for pastime, they contended, was beginning to grow a little tired of being told how bad was this-or-that economic condition: and pretty much everything had been “daringly exposed,” to the point of weariness, from the inconsistencies of our clergy to the uncleanliness of our sausage. In addition, they considered the surprising success of <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Marmaduke Fennel’s eighteenth-century story, <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">For Love of a Lady</i>, as compared with the more moderate sales of Miss Elspeth Lancaster’s <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">In Scarlet Sidon</i>, that candid romance of the brothel; deducing therefrom that the “gadzooks” and “by’r lady” type of reading-matter was ready to revive in vogue. At all events, the Baxon-Muir Company, after holding a rather unusual number of conferences, declared their willingness to publish this book; and in due course they did publish it.</p>
 			<p>There were before this, however, for Kennaston many glad hours of dabbling with proof-sheets: the tale seemed so different, and so infernally good, in print. Kennaston never in his life found any other playthings comparable to those first wide-margined “galley proofs” of <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">The Audit at Storisende</i>. Here was the word, vexatiously repeated within three lines, which must be replaced by a synonym; and the clause which, when transposed, made the whole sentence gain in force and comeliness; and the curt sentence whose addition gave clarity to the paragraph, much as a pinch of alum clears turbid water; and the vaguely unsatisfactory adjective, for which a jet of inspiration suggested a substitute, of vastly different meaning, in the light of whose inevitable aptness you marveled over your preliminary obtuseness:⁠—all these slight triumphs, one by one, first gladdened Kennaston’s labor and tickled his self-complacency. He could see no fault in the book.</p>
 			<p>His publishers had clearer eyes. His Preface, for one matter, they insisted on transposing to the rear of the volume, where it now figures as the book’s tolerably famous colophon⁠—that curious exposition of Kennaston’s creed as artist. Then, for a title, <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">The Audit at Storisende</i> was editorially adjudged abominable: people would not know how to pronounce Storisende, and in consequence would hold back from discussing the romance or even asking for it at book-dealers. <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Men Who Loved Ettarre</i> was Kennaston’s ensuing suggestion; but the Baxon-Muir Company showed no fixed confidence in their patrons’ ability to pronounce Ettarre, either. Would it not be possible, they inquired, to change the heroine’s name?⁠—and Kennaston assented. Thus it was that in the end his book came to be called <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Men Who Loved Alison</i>.</p>
 			<p>But to Kennaston her name stayed always Ettarre.⁠ ⁠…</p>
-			<p>The book was delivered to the world, which received the gift without excitement. The book was delivered to reviewers, who found in it a well-intentioned echo of <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Maurice Hewlett’s earlier medieval tales. And there for a month or some six weeks, the matter rested.</p>
+			<p>The book was delivered to the world, which received the gift without excitement. The book was delivered to reviewers, who found in it a well-intentioned echo of <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Maurice Hewlett’s earlier medieval tales. And there for a month or some six weeks, the matter rested.</p>
 			<p>Then one propitious morning an indignant gentlewoman in Brooklyn wrote to <i epub:type="se:name.publication.journal">The New York Sphere</i> a letter which was duly printed in that journal’s widely circulated Sunday supplement, <i epub:type="se:name.publication.journal">The Literary Masterpieces of This Week</i>, to denounce the loathsome and depraved indecency of the nineteenth and twentieth chapters, in which⁠—while treating of Sir Guiron’s imprisonment in the Sacred Grove of Caer Idryn, and the worship accorded there to the sigil of Scoteia⁠—Kennaston had touched upon some of the perverse refinements of antique sexual relations. The following week brought forth a full page of letters. Two of these, as Kennaston afterward learned, were contributed by the “publicity man” of the Baxon-Muir Company, and all arraigned obscenities which Kennaston could neither remember or on rereading his book discover. Later in this journal, as in other newspapers, appeared still more denunciations. An up-to-the-minute bishop expostulated from the pulpit against the story’s vicious tendencies, demanding that it be suppressed. Thereafter it was no longer on sale in the large department-stores alone, but was equally procurable at all the bookstands in hotels and railway stations. Even the author’s acquaintances began to read it. And the Delaunays (then at the height of their vogue as exponents of the “new” dances) introduced “the Alison amble”; and from Tampa to Seattle, in certain syndicated cartoons of generally appealing idiocy, newspaper readers were privileged to see one hero of the series knock the other heels over head with a copy of Kennaston’s romance. And women wore the “Alison aigrette” for a whole season; and a new brand of cheap tobacco christened in her honor had presently made her name at least familiar in saloons. <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Men Who Loved Alison</i> became, in fine, the novel of the hour. It was one of those rare miracles such as sometimes palm off a well-written book upon the vast public that reads for pastime.</p>
-			<p>And shortly afterward <abbr>Mr.</abbr> Booth Tarkington published another of his delightful romances: one forgets at this distance of time just which it was: but, like all the others, it was exquisitely done, and sold neck and neck with <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Men Who Loved Alison</i>; so that for a while it looked almost as if the American reading public was coming to condone adroit and careful composition.</p>
+			<p>And shortly afterward <abbr epub:type="z3998:name-title">Mr.</abbr> Booth Tarkington published another of his delightful romances: one forgets at this distance of time just which it was: but, like all the others, it was exquisitely done, and sold neck and neck with <i epub:type="se:name.publication.book">Men Who Loved Alison</i>; so that for a while it looked almost as if the American reading public was coming to condone adroit and careful composition.</p>
 			<p>But presently the advertising columns of magazines and newspapers were heralding the year’s vernal output of enduring masterworks in the field of fiction: and readers were again assured that the great American novel had just been published at last, by any number of persons: and so, the autumnal predecessors of these new <i xml:lang="fr">chefs d’œuvre</i> passed swiftly into oblivion, via the brief respite of a “popular” edition. And naturally, Kennaston’s romance was forgotten, by all save a few pensive people. Some of them had found in this volume food for curious speculation.</p>
 			<p>That, however, is a matter to be taken up later.</p>
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