indoms tid's ritatica world ing, er care It is t are part 11 emp a par become a convention if they had not be found desirable. Are we really, at this late day, going to duped by the mid-century fallacy that “pl living and high thinking" are a natural com nation? Even if Shakespeare at New Pla teaches us nothing, we cannot fail to be i pressed by the memory of Thoreau, steali home from Lake Walden by dark, to prov himself secretly with better fare than the wo afforded. As if, indeed, any one who had tri plain living did not know that high thinki was done, if at all, in spite of it! "The hand little employment hath the daintier sense,' Shakespeare long since said. Let us open o own front doors, polish our own shoes, d our own bibelots, and make messes on a chafi dish when the cook is out; and let us do it lantly. But let us not pretend that it is m civilized to do these things ourselves than have them skilfully done for us. The prince disguise makes the most charming beggar the world, no doubt; but that is because-as [63] why all should wear rags. 1 every one is too good to be a parlorlet us open our own doors, if we musted we do it according to the great tradiE door-opening; but how can we do it ng to the great tradition if we abolish maids and dry up the fount of the great on? And, whatever the simplifiers say, s no doubt that, as yet, there are, to one who is too good for door-opening, ten s who are by no means good enough for ve never been able to imagine just how nd of the Last Trump is going to shiver stocracy of earth into the democracy of 1. To be sure, it is not my affair. But at ne can have, this side the grave, little e with the altruisms of the ProcrustThey merely wish to make each of us an etent Jack-at-all-trades. And one had t the German universities, if they had othing else, had blown that bubble! iend of mine asked me the other day if ot feel degraded to be at the mercy of s; humiliated by knowing that they make us indep learned and p successful hous ceeded in imit servants. But t servant. The d who wears his to appreciate h purple rightly A eats his shredd But where woul ance were not caviare as if it to be a pat if we mus The great t can we if we ab t of the p implifiers s ere are, to r-opening d enough gine just oing to democrac learned and precious lessons of taste? successful housewife is the one who has ceeded in imitating perfectly several tr servants. But the criterion is still the tr servant. The distinguished beggar is the who wears his rags as if they were purple. to appreciate him, we must know the loc purple rightly worn. The admirable veget eats his shredded wheat as if it were ca But where would be the beauty of his perf ance were not someone, somewhere, e caviare as if it were shredded wheat? affair. Br n America, auring the last months, had been for years. To be sure, the cussed since August, 1914, has been ultur; but that does not matter. We lly been talking about culture once bilitating it, if only for the sake of at the Germans, by and large, have a of anything so good. To some of us, ence of a word so long tabu is welas side-splittingly funny as it is For the fact is that for twenty years ce Matthew Arnold went out of o speak of culture has meant that have it. The only people who have at it have been the people who have u could get it at Chautauquas. To rd damned you in the eyes of the Now I have always, privately and ought it a pity that so good a word out of the best vocabularies; for ose an abstract term, you are very the thing it stands for. Indeed, it only too clear that we were doing ower to lose both the word and the [66] tem Indeed, I think w we are so little goes bankrupt, we shall infallibly any one of Candi onths, re, the s been r. We e once ake of have: of us is wel it is years out of t that have have s. To of the y and word ; for very ed, it doing d the Indeed, I think we are getting to a point wh we are so little "cultured" that we can re afford to talk about it. When the pluto goes bankrupt, he may once more, with cency, mention the prices of things. Culture ceased to be a passionate American preoccu tion. Perhaps we shall not offend modesty we use the word once more. Now there are some who, believing that is for the best in the best of possible wor and that to-morrow is necessarily better t to-day, may think that if culture is a good th we shall infallibly be found to have more o than we had a generation since; and that if can be shown not to have more of it, it can shown not to be worth seeking. Having, self, a congenital case of agoraphobia habitually say nothing to the professic optimists in the public square. The wilder is a good place to cry in; the echoes magnificent. So I shall not attempt to dep any one of Candide's happy conviction. If person is kind enough to listen, I will sin ask him to contemplate a few facts with |