A Museum Piece

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Forced to admit that his art was going unnoticed in a frivolous world, Jay Smith decided to get out of that world. The four dollars and ninety-eight cents he spent for a mail order course entitled Yoga—the Path to Freedom did not, however, help to free him. Rather, it served to accentuate his humanity, in that it reduced his ability to purchase food by four dollars and ninety-eight cents.

Seated in a padmasana, Smith contemplated little but the fact that his navel drew slightly closer to his backbone with each day that passed. While nirvana is a reasonably esthetic concept, suicide assuredly is not, particularly if you haven’t the stomach for it. So he dismissed the fatalistic notion quite reasonably.

“How simply one could take one’s own life in ideal surroundings!” he sighed, (tossing his golden locks which, for obvious reasons, had achieved classically impressive lengths). “The fat stoic in his bath, fanned by slave girls and sipping his wine, as a faithful Greek leech opens his veins, eyes downcast! One delicate Circassian,” he sighed again, “there perhaps, plucking upon a lyre as he dictates his funeral oration—the latter to be read by a faithful countryman, eyes all a-blink. How easily he might do it! But the fallen artist—say! Born yesterday and scorned today he goes, like the elephant to his graveyard, alone and secret!”

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