as weapons of the new wild life, what were these in comparison with the staggering revelations for which our young friends are indebted to Jung and Freud? With the announcement of those discoveries or, at any rate, explorations, the guardian elders of the wall, we may as well recognize, surrendered the fortress. There was, maybe, just one chance by which they might have escaped: they should have hidden as deep as possible their shattering discovery that nothing in the moral life of man matters a straw when put beside the terrific power, depth, and range of the unconscious-the submerged, the inhibited, the frustrated instincts and energies of the individual man. But they did not attempt to hide their knowledge; they proclaimed it. And we are now beginAnd we are now beginning to realize what it means as high explosive in the region of personal behavior and of social ethics.

You show the young inquirer, torn with unaccustomed pain at what he is being let into, that down among the sweetest and finest and most serene appearances of the world we inhabit there is a mass of fierce and malignant poison growths. He (and much more she) asks in amazement what all this may mean. And you reply, as those incredibly pompous Freudians are busy replying, that all, or nearly all, the woes of this miserable society that has us in thrall spring directly or by the strangest obliquity out of needs and desires which the social conventions compel us to cover up, to suppress, to clamp down.

"So," says our young friend, now thoroughly aroused, "you mean us to understand that all the repulsive things we see and hate are the positive and inescapable results of the impulses

we check, the instincts we starve, the desires we strive to bury? Or, as Mr. Stuart P. Sherman is so obliging as to put it, in his quaint perversion of the school-girl's Freud, that all the miseries of the world are caused by self-control? Because," they naturally go on, "if that is so, we are with you. The desire of the eye, and the joy as it flies-that is what we are after. Far be it from us to dispute your delightful theory that life is unrestrained self-expression, that the suppressed wish is the root of all evil, that the only right way of living is to want what you want when you want it, and see that you get it in full measure. Thanks very much; now we know exactly where we are."

Here, then, so far as the educated and conscious minority, the children of "nice people," are concerned, is our situation at the moment. And we have to realize that for ourselves and them it amounts to the most serious crisis of the spirit that the modern

world has met. world has met. Moreover, we have done next to nothing in the way of positive preparation for it. The last generation, as we can see now, was concerned almost exclusively with its own release and with giving its children the immediate benefit of that release; and, as a consequence, the elders have very little to offer the young people in this day of unlimited challenge.

tion law, we have entered upon a stage marked by an immense loosening of the rules understood as governing the conduct toward one another of wellbred youths and girls, young men and women. My impression is that, apart from the raffish idle-rich fringe, which is the same in all countries, the loosening has gone further in America than in England, more especially as regards the behavior of young people coming from homes that heretofore have occupied a marvelously favored place in the scheme of things. If this impression is accurate, the main reason, I suggest, is to be found in material conditions in the greater wealth of the United States, the social opportunities afforded by modern residential neighborhoods, the manifold influences of the automobile. We must suppose that the recklessness and vulgarity will in due course be corrected by the growth of a healthy public opinion among the young people themselves. Otherwise there can be no mistake about what is to happen: America must suffer a disastrous decline in standards, and in so doing will sacrifice one special national asset of inestimable worth. There is no feature of American life which to the English observer is so delightful, so distinctive, and so charged with social good as the natural comradeship between youths and girls, carried on beyond schooltime into the years of maturity. It is the simple truth to say that many an English parent, weighing those desirable things of life in which his American friends have a clear advantage, has often found himself rating this achievement of the North-American peoples as among their best gifts to civilization. America to-day is in danger of throwing that away. Surely its elders will

find means of helping the young to conserve such a valuable possession.

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Secondly, it is plain that the road of recovery cannot be made without thought and concerted effort on the part of those in authority, more particularly the executives of school and college. No longer is it possible to regard the coeducational institutions as organs of the social body which will run of themselves without the constant application of inventive thinking. The simpler communities of the past are speedily vanishing. Over-stimulation is a characteristic not of the great city alone, but almost of all modern life. It has to be counteracted in all the available ways that are creative and self-fulfilling; and we need no strong imagination to realize that the varied stimuli which cannot be removed become not diminished, but intensified, when interpreted, as in these days they tend to be, by enthusiastic instructors who have penetrated just far enough into the Freudian jungle to give a dangerous point to the report of their findings. The challenge is thrown down to the whole body of teachers. So far, it must be confessed, they have been among the most nearly complete victims of the system that is lamentably failing: the culture mill, the dead uniformity, the doing of all things together, saying or singing the same phrases and tunes, making the desert of standardization from which the only escape is lawlessness, as the English judge said that getting drunk was for many unfortunates the only way out of the hideous industrial city. Yet, undeniably, it is upon the teachers that the task is laid of building the roads to a freedom

that shall be not arid and negative, but rich, varied, and creative.

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Thirdly, we must put ourselves straightly up against the fact that, as regards all convention and simple acceptance of rule and tradition in belief and personal conduct, the past is past. It was in Ibsen's day that the younger generation's knocking at the door sounded ominous. They are not knocking now; they are taking all positions by storm. The old standards of right and wrong, of proper and improper, even of ugly and beautiful, they decline to take on trust. They have, apparently, done with hearsay and make-believe. They ask: "How They ask: "How

do you know? Have you ever tried it?" For any sympathetic elder, looking on, it is impossible to miss the evidence that reveals, beneath the recklessness and frivolity, a resolute search after reality. Well, it had to come. The search will mean many bad falls, and, as any one may see, a terrible amount of perplexity and suffering. But the young people will not be turned aside, though they may yet be helped along. Perhaps the best tribute we may hope to earn from them, as they set out on their journey, or as they bang their heads and hearts against the rock, is an acknowledgement that, at any rate, we did not lie to them or rig up any bogies along the track.

M

RS. HENDRICKS was as nearly annoyed as her habitual good nature would permit. She tapped her plump, slippered foot on the floor of the veranda, and achieved what was for her a very creditable frown.

"It's too bad of Ralph; it really is," she said. "I was counting on him to take Anita Clark home in his car, and he has n't put in an appearance. To cap the climax, she 's succeeded in twisting her ankle so that she can hardly walk, and there is n't a rig or taxi to be had; I 've telephoned all

over.

Anita's a nice child, but she does live a long way out."

"She does," agreed Mr. Van Deyn, briefly; "and she walks very, very slowly. Also, she is somewhat heavy; but, then, so is Sam."

"Van, that's most unkind." Nevertheless, she smiled down at the handsome young man on the step below her. "Now you run along, and ask Miss Ellie Rose as nicely as you can while I speak to Sam. And, mind, if you make love to that unsophisticated dear on the way home, the next time I have a party I shall most carefully neglect to invite you to it."

"I shall come, anyway," he assured her, cheerfully. "And how could I make love to Miss Ellie Rose or any one else, when—” He left the sen

"Oh, Van, do be sensible! You know Sam always waits for Miss Ellie Rose. Who 'll take her home if I ask him to drive Anita?"

"I." Mr. Van Deyn swung his straw hat up against his breast, and bowed toward his hostess with exaggerated courtliness. "I,' said the poet, 'I will, and you know it.' I'll take Miss Ellie Rose home. Or do anything else within my power to erase the frown from that fair brow, most lovely Katherine."

"Would you, really? Van, you are an angel. You don't know what a load you 've taken off my mind.

eloquent brown eyes spoke volumes. Despite her comfortable forty-five years and her comprehensive knowledge of Chester Van Deyn, Mrs. Hendricks found herself blushing.

"I'm ashamed of you, Van," she told him, severely. "I believe you 'd make love to your grandmother. Run along now, and see to it that you behave yourself for half an hour." She held out her hand to him, and he brushed it with his lips.

"Good night, lovely lady. My grateful thanks for a delightful evening. And be sure to wear that spiffy blue gown the next time I come to tea. I go to serve your pleasure, as always."

$ 2

And so it was that Miss Ellie Rose found herself walking home with Chester Van Deyn through the young June moonlight. She had often daydreamed of walking with him Sometimes when he had passed her house in company with some young girl, his fine head bent low in that deferential way that was peculiarly his, she had wondered what it must be like to be with him; she had tried to imagine herself in that other girl's place. She had even carried on extended conversations with him in which he asked her interested questions about her favorite flower and color; they had discussed books and pictures, and she had told him all about her admiration for Jane Austen's works.

Miss Ellie Rose had never had a sweetheart unless one counted Sam Banks, and Sam was stout, middleaged, and red-faced. Of course he had not always been middle-aged, but he had always been stout. Regularly, twice a year, he asked Miss Ellie Rose to marry him, always in the same words:

“Well, now, EHie Rose, don't you think we might get married, you and I?" And regularly Miss Ellie Rose refused him, always in the same words: "I am so sorry, Samuel, but I do not love you. I hope I may always be your very good friend."

He had

the way they talked about the weather and the possibilities of a drought and the superiority of the horse over the automobile. On the way home they discussed the party and compared it with the last affair of the kind. Miss Ellie Rose usually did most of the talking, selecting the topics with a gentle consideration for Sam. not the gift of fluent speech. He was content to agree with her, and to put in a word now and then, just enough to prevent the conversation from becoming a monologue. There was nothing very exhilarating about Sam either as a conversationalist or otherwise. He was very kind-hearted and generous, and Miss Ellie Rose depended on him as a friend; but he was not her ideal of a lover. She had her ideal. He was handsome and debonair and courtly. He had brown eyes, -Miss Ellie Rose had often seen them described as soulful,-thick, brown hair, inclined to waviness, above a noble brow, and white, even teeth. For a very long time he had existed only in her imagination; and then, somehow, he had gradually become personified in Chester Van Deyn.

Van Deyn was all of the things that Sam Banks was not. In addition, he was popular and much sought after. Agreeable and personable young men were not numerous in the little town, while there were many pretty girls. He seemed to like them all; without

it, some of them so plainly that Miss Ellie Rose felt them to be just a little forward. She did not want to be uncharitable, but it was surely not quite well, not quite nice, to loiter about the post-office until a young man appeared, and then hurry out just in time to meet him on the sidewalk.