47 
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.