"You remember the 'distinguished' poem that was quoted in the copy you lent to me? "They ordered bacon And eggs at seven. At eight o'clock, There wa… - Alfred Noyes

"You remember the 'distinguished' poem that was quoted in the copy you lent to me?

"They ordered bacon
And eggs at seven.
At eight o'clock,
There was nobody down.
Only the coffeepot
Stood on the table."
"Yes, but what possible ..."

"Do you also remember what your 'distinguished' weekly said about it? 'The old-fashioned reader who would dismiss as insignificant this new and vital work (a striking example of the sharp-edged imagisme with which the more adventurous of our younger writers are experimenting today)' — you see, Basil, I have it by heart, words, tone, cadence and all — 'forgets that every object, even the coffeepot on the table, has a perimeter which not only encloses that object, but also subtends a physical and metaphysical otherness that includes the whole of the rest of the universe. Such work, therefore, is more truly significant of ultimate reality than all the pantings after God of the Victorians.'
...
you were squashing a perfectly genuine love of simple and true things in a perfectly genuine little woman, and that the words you borrowed for the purpose were muddle-headed and insincere drivel.
...
They are not literary grounds. They are human grounds. Miss Bird, as I told you, is unlike your 'distinguished' anonymities in having a few quite genuine beliefs; and you used the cheap phrases of a pseudo-metaphysical charlatan, in a precious literary weekly, to snub her. I saw the hurt look on her face long after you had wiped your boots on her perfectly sincere love of certain perfectly true and simple things.
...
I don't go to church to hear a high-brow Anglican curate quoting a Scandinavian lunatic, any more than I go to my hair-dresser's to hear a Christy minstrel reciting the Apostles' Creed. I know that it's all very noble and distinguished and broad-minded and generally newspaperish. You might have been brought up in a seminary for young ladies of fashion.
...
He didn't know whether he was modern or antique. In either case, it appeared he was a