THE WELL UNPLUMBED

In the darkness of the park, on the bridge watching the black swirls of the grim river, still and stark on the slab in the white morgue--the caprice of nature lives and dies. Life in the well of loneliness. Radclyffe Hall beckons with a sympathetic smile, a book in her hand, for mankind to come to the aid of the lost. But contrary to her intentions, her humane gesture is greeted only with the crash of tea cups on polite floors, the sneers of the intellectuals, and the holy pronunciamentos of of the court of civil law. Despite the while of approval shed upon her by George Bernard Shaw, the Archangels, and others of the chosen, she stands alone, a heartless public, their adamant faces clouded only with disapproval, relentlessly opposing her. Like the forlorn little match girl in the sad German legend she shivers in the darkness trying to spread light and warmth.

What can she do? There is no response to her efforts. No one will come to the aid of poor creations of nature's caprice. They are doomed to creep through existence unheeded, without pity or attention. Mankind is insensible! It is not attuned to the higher appeals of life.

Alone, forsaken, denied even the publicity of a common murderer, these helpless beings must stink along through the sewers of life under the ban of public disgust. If only curiosity, interest, some attention could be drawn to them. Perhaps through the book--The gavel of the magistrate raps fiercely on the desk. Even in the eyes of the law she is pushed aside. A smile of satisfaction spreads over the phlegmatic features of smug, heartless mankind. Cruel humanity plods on, its head high, leaving its poor sisters by the wayside, alone, out of the limelight. Was ever an abnormality dismissed with such an insulting lack of curiosity!