" He used to lower his voice for that
statement, and people were impressed or pretended to be."
The late Carleon Anthony, the poet, sang in his time of the domestic and
social amenities of our age with a most felicitous versification, his
object being, in his own words, "to glorify the result of six thousand
years' evolution towards the refinement of thought, manners and
feelings." Why he fixed the term at six thousand years I don't know. His
poems read like sentimental novels told in verse of a really superior
quality. You felt as if you were being taken out for a delightful
country drive by a charming lady in a pony carriage. But in his domestic
life that same Carleon Anthony showed traces of the primitive
cave-dweller's temperament. He was a massive, implacable man with a
handsome face, arbitrary and exacting with his dependants, but
marvellously suave in his manner to admiring strangers. These contrasted
displays must have been particularly exasperating to his long-suffering
family. After his second wife's death his boy, whom he persisted by a
mere whim in educating at home, ran away in conventional style and, as if
disgusted with the amenities of civilization, threw himself, figuratively
speaking, into the sea.
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