Very few books
that the cultured class has produced of late have been such good
literature as the expression "painting the town red."
Oddly enough, this last Cockney epigram clings to my memory.
For as I was walking a little while ago round a corner near
Victoria I realized for the first time that a familiar lamp-post
was painted all over with a bright vermilion just as if it
were trying (in spite of the obvious bodily disqualification)
to pretend that it was a pillar-box. I have since heard
official explanations of these startling and scarlet objects.
But my first fancy was that some dissipated gentleman on his way
home at four o'clock in the morning had attempted to paint the town
red and got only as far as one lamp-post.
I began to make a fairy tale about the man; and, indeed, this phrase
contains both a fairy tale and a philosophy; it really states almost
the whole truth about those pure outbreaks of pagan enjoyment to which
all healthy men have often been tempted. It expresses the desire
to have levity on a large scale which is the essence of such a mood.
The rowdy young man is not content to paint his tutor's door green:
he would like to paint the whole city scarlet. The word which to us
best recalls such gigantesque idiocy is the word "mafficking."
The slaves of that saturnalia were not only painting the town red;
they thought that they were painting the map red--that they were
painting the world red.
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