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sionally through some stroke of fate the conditions surrounding
one unit become so distinct as to strike it off from the rest of the
protoplasm. It thereby attains all the attributes of a discreet
entity, achieves a certain kind of self-sufficiency, and at that
functional moment when by all the laws of organic process it
should detach itself from the mass to proceed in its own par
ticular direction, the unit, as in this case Mr. Warburg, refuses
to respond to the habitual stimuli, and is carried two or three
stations beyond its accepted destination.
SLATER BROWN
PARIS AT ONE TIME
N AKED AND transparent negroes, taller than the tour
Eiffel, play ball with apricot-coloured cubes . . .
against a cobalt sky.
A typhoon . . . purple-green, whirling ... an
inverted pine-tree. Ah! it is a Christmas tree with all
our gifts upon it. It sways and is sucked into the sea—disap
pears.
The earth slants up in a plane to the farthest place in the sky.
Open mummy-cases in exact rows ... all the queens of the
world, their heads turned to the left ... lie listening forever to
our words of love ... a smile of unbelief upon their painted
profiles.
The wind gently lifts them from their caskets ... they
become tall plume-pens of many colours . . . emerald, blue,
yellow, black, cerise. They write in the sand, something that
has been forgotten. No one moves them but they continue to
write and slowly the Champs Elysees appears in the foreground
. . . rousseau-like people go walking up and down. A long
line of carrousels slowly fades into place, down the centre of the
avenue . . . from the arch to the concord. They are painted
and golden, but silent and curtained and motionless. All at
once all of the people, walking on the paths and in the groves,
begin to move slowly towards the carrousels . . . when everyone
has disappeared inside the curtains, a silent music begins to
play. The curtains are lifted for a moment . . . there are no
horses, no pigs, or chariots. There are two great spiral blades:
giant augers. The people stand stupidly upon them and wait.
The spirals begin to revolve. They dig themselves rapidly down
into the earth . . . everything disappears. The music too is
under the ground.