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position of a man who likes olives and caviare and could obtain them at remote shops, but who waits patiently for the chance of their being put on sale by his own grocer to whom he is indissolubly bound by the magic of proximity.

The hunger for old ideas which the impatience with old authors has left unappeased is curiously evidenced in the eager welcome accorded to contemporaries who rearrange and reword old ideas. But this revival is not universal or assured, and the withdrawal of a large part of the world's store from the world's use is an indisputable misfortune.

The decadence of the Biblical and classical traditions already referred to has extended and accelerated the surrender to modernism. The location of Homer and Moses, formerly vital forces in the world's culture, on the dim verge of semi-historic record, made the whole past, as it seemed, penetrable and habitable. With these as the extreme frontier, anything on this side of the Iliad or the Pentateuch seemed neighborly, as France and England seem almost homelike to an American who has scaled the Himalayas.

Two mitigations of the malady of our time it would be uncandid not to specify. The temporal confinement is partly balanced by the enlargement of the spatial outlook. The whole world is in view, and a full record of the transactions of a single moment of our varied modern life would be encyclopædic. Our age suffers less than other periods from self-imprisonment, for the same reason that our country suffers less than other nations from a prohibitory tariff: the variety of internal resources is great. Isolation, however, in both cases, is costly even to the privileged.

A second mitigating fact is the patronage granted by influential moderns to certain older themes or writers. Sci

ence, eager for new fields at the same time that it asserts that every field is inexhaustible, intersects its former course, describes a loop as it were, and numbers antiquity among the conquests of modernism. The past as material becomes invaluable, however lightly it may be esteemed as coadjutor. The passion for novelty is as dominant here as elsewhere: what we crave is the latest upheaval of the earliest deposit, and the oldest papyrus would be inestimable as long as it was also the newest.

Something like a collation of opinions, a symposium of the centuries, is carried out here and there in philosophy and religion, but our respect for the ancients, like our deference for old men, is tinctured with a counteractive condescension. The past as a check upon the present must be valued before it can be useful. The aim, of course, is to get at the criticism of our own points of view which is latent in the difference between our own and past ages in those artistic, literary, and philosophical fields in which Plato, Dante, or even Jesus, might still be qualified to enlighten us. But if our own points of view dominate the investigation, the criticism is annulled, and the difference merely reinforces self-complacency.

When all concessions have been duly made, the identification by an age of its standard with its product, the assignment of values by a test so accidental and so unstable as time, the willful renunciation by mankind of a large part of its hard-won and long-saved treasures, are real misfortunes to the human species.

V

The influence of the sway of the expert in checking individuality is reinforced by the autocracy of the moment. Opinion in our day, even in the mouth of a Bacon or a Coleridge, must be dumb

or apologetic in the absence of the latest bits of possibly immaterial and superficial knowledge. The 'free play of mind' on life in general is checked by the universal sense of the futility of that play on most subjects foreign to the thinker's specialty. Whatever absurdities inhered in the old-time regimen, under which moral precepts, religious dicta, political judgments, commercial sense, and even scientific data all emanated from the same armchair, it trained and exercised the intellect to a degree unknown to our enlightened humility.

The formation of worthless opinions has probably been one of the marked utilities, as it has manifestly been one of the thriving industries, of the human race, and has kept alive that curiosity and agility which in later and happier applications has at last appropriated truth. Take the conduct of democracies, for example. Politics is one of the few pursuits still left to the amateur, and the result is, by all robust standards, a slovenly performance. Meanwhile, the state keeps afloat and the bunglers are educated, and the wise and kind rule of sagacious angels would probably be worth far less to a people than the privilege of mismanaging their own affairs. The botchwork and patchwork of the incompetent many in politics does more to train, and, in the long run, to serve mankind than the expert work of the skilled few in science.

Individuality is likewise repressed by the likeness which the common pursuit of the same ends at the same time induces in the lives and thoughts of men. In so far as 'people read old novels, they read different novels, and the ground of choice is internal and characteristic; in so far as they read new novels, they read the same, and the basis of choice is exterior and arbitrary. The gregariousness thus induced becomes itself an

object of desire, and books sell better merely because they sell well. The gluten in human nature is amusingly brought out by our impatience to join the largest aggregations. As things now stand we see the same plays, hear the same musicians, study the same pictures and statues, digest the same literature, absorb the same ideas, read the same telegrams in the same words at practically the same moment from Cape Town to Pall Mall and from New York to San Francisco. The same effect that is visibly manifest in the audience at a play or concert, the packing of humanity in solid and uniform rows for the enjoyment of a common experience, is brought about in a less pictorial or obvious form by the simultaneous perusal of the newspaper and the magazine. We sit in a crowd by our own firesides.

VI

The faith in the passing hour rests on hopes of amelioration that are largely baseless. Change is a quack, or half-quack; its services fall short of its advertisements. It may reconstruct the map or the frame of the world, but psychological conditions the only conditions that count revert stubbornly to the old ways. The automobile will not effect that dissipation of ennui for which our faith once looked to the still untested locomotive. The friction of human impatience against physical impedimenta has not been relieved by the industry of the cable or the omnipresence of the telephone. Behind the new discoveries and the new speculations, the old questions smile at us with an irony as baffling as Mona Lisa's. Conditions approach standards only to learn that standards are themselves progressive, and the interval (on which our happiness is staked) remains unaltered by the twofold advance.

Even in the great fight for personal

and social betterment, inexorable limitations must be faced.. Man may grow better, yet fail to reach the point where the difference between his best and his lowest moments will cease to divide his nature and perplex his life. States may remedy injustice without reaching the hour when the difference between the lots of their happiest and least happy members will not humiliate the one and embitter the other. I urge no dastardly relinquishment or relaxation of the struggle; the battle pays, if it merely lifts the plane of the battleground; but it is well to remember that the halfness, the ambiguity, the provisionality, from which our hopes and energies now seek to be freed are handicaps whose reappearance behind each new victory of humanity and justice must be counted among the ruthless certainties of life. We shall always be living in the makeshift cabin beside the half-built house.

The external march of events will never bring us deliverance, and its duplicity lies in the fact that it diverts us always with the specious hope of an impracticable rescue. The real hope lies in inward self-adjustment. To value in to-day only its difference from yesterday is to identify the country with the frontier. The secret of life lies in the larger and fuller appropriation, by the individual spirit, of abiding and

universal values; not discovery, but rediscovery, is the key. Make the comparison in what field you please: contrast the kaleidoscopic glimpses of travel with the reperusal day by day of a familiar landscape, the fluttering from one new book to another with the lifelong probing of some mighty classic, the patter of shifting acquaintance with the slow, calm pace of proved friendships, the caprices of unfixed passion with the loves that embrace a lifetime: the attestation to the worth of permanence is universal.

The only large values are those in which our ancestors participated. The oldest of wonders is the greatest life. An ironclad, as such, is a commonplace beside a ship, and society merely as society is a more stupendous fact than Rome or England. The Iliad is less remarkable than speech, and the aeroplane is only a mote in the sky. Landscape, the family, the nation, religion - their origins are lost in the silence of a gray antiquity. The Now the present is indeed sacred; but its sacredness is inappreciable to those who are circumscribed by its limits; it is reserved for minds that escape its bounds.

'Do not read the Times!' said Thoreau, in words that become the more memorable the less they are remembered, 'read the eternities.'

THE SOUL OF A GIRL

BY CHARLES JOHNSTON

GRACE sat by the open window, dreaming delicious day-dreams interwoven with the fragrant tendrils of the honeysuckle. Walter was coming; coming, as Grace confidently hoped, to tell her how much he loved her, to put his heart and life between her hands. Dear Walter! how fond she was of him, of his bigness and his strength, his fine face and his skillful hands, of his ideals and his enthusiasms, and, most of all, his love of her; for Grace was assured that he loved her, and that he only sought a fit occasion to tell her so, would, indeed, come that afternoon, expressly to make a fit occasion.

What should she answer? Well, she told herself, she was not quite sure. Perhaps she loved him enough; perhaps she should bid him wait until she loved him more; perhaps it was all fancy, and she did not care for him at all, and must tell him that, gently, kindly, finally. Then she smiled in her heart and with her lips and eyes. It was not true that she did not know; she knew very well what she would say, and how her heart would rejoice to say it. She would take him to herself and make him altogether her own.

And then? Then would begin their joyful life together. Not at once; not too soon. She would not let him think her too easily won. She must not cheapen the gift of herself, but must seem to hold back awhile, letting his eagerness overbear her. Not too soon, then; but also not too long. Dangerous, always, very long engagements: hearts had time to grow cold before they were quite

welded; familiarity might make, not contempt, for Walter could never feel for her that, but make them, perhaps, a little too well used to each other. And besides, she did not want to wait very long. She wanted him soon; wanted to be wholly happy, to sail forth boldly into that new sea of light; to taste all and know all of happiness, to fill her life full; for she had been lonely, often, since father and mother died.

And then she began to embroider the fabric of fancy. Where would they live? Here, surely, in this dear home of hers, with its lovely garden set in velvet lawns. Aunt Estelle might stay, a welcome, gentle guest, ready to come in with little services and amenities where they were needed; or ready to efface herself and remain placidly in the background.

Yes, here they would live, surely, where father and mother had lived; where she herself had been born and passed her childhood, and the long vacations of boarding-school days; the two marvelous summers excepted, when they sailed over the great waters and saw strange lands and many cities. Yes, they would live here, making happy excursions, mayhap, to lovely places: the Thousand Islands, Colorado, Florida; perhaps she would take him to Europe and show him all the wonders. Yes, that would be delightful: to conduct him through the broad galleries of the Louvre, the Uffizzi, the Dresden palace, Vienna; to watch his wonder at it all; to see the artist in him rejoice

in these greater artists, and to know he owed it all to her. Yes, that would be very sweet.

And then they would come home again, to her cosy rooms and lovely garden; and then, perhaps —yes, but not too soon, for they were such little tyrants, and so utterly absorbed one's life. Afterwards, yes; after they were done with their journeyings and settled down. But he must love her ever so much, just herself, first, with no one at all to share his love; it must be all hers; he must be all hers. And smiling to herself, she made a little motion of opening her arms and raising her lips; and something of the roses stole into her cheeks and neck, and something of the sunlight glistened in her eyes. Oh, how happy she would be, happy, happy happy

While she was in the very midst of her dreams, Walter was announced. He came in on the heels of the announcement, very confident in his welcome, too absorbed in his own thoughts, indeed, to think of anything but his

purpose.

Grace rose to greet him, her cheeks still tinged with the roses, her eyes luminous, making as though to give him both her hands.

'Oh Walter' she began, smiling her welcome from a full heart.

Walter grasped her right hand, shook it and let it go again, absorbed, unseeing. There was a little smile on Grace's lips, but she felt a sudden coldness about her heart.

Still standing, Walter began,

'I have come to tell you something, Grace!'

She glanced up, quickly, inquiringly. He had come to tell her, after all! Everything was all right, then; and there was a quick return of warm hope to her heart. She was ready, almost, to throw herself into his arms, telling him that she knew already. But his ab

sorbed mood checked her, chilled her, filled her once more with sharp misgiving.

'Come out on the lake,' Walter went on. 'I'll row up to the island and we can talk it all over comfortably. It's about my future life.'

Was this a doom or a promise of what she so hoped? Grace looked into his face with something showing in her eyes of the doubt and fear that were fighting in her heart; but Walter was too full of his thought to note any shade of feeling in her.

Grace felt thwarted, baffled; she had planned that there, in the lovely room with its soft luxury, with its diamondpaned windows giving on the garden, she would listen to him telling her — everything. But he was bidding her go out on the lake.

'But, Walter,' she began, hesitantly, holding to her plan, in part because she had made it, in part because it had been the prologue of her dream; 'it's so cool and pleasant here, so quiet and dreamy

'No!' interrupted Walter. 'I need a row! I want the exercise! There's such a lot to talk of, to plan, to decide! I've got to let off steam. Get a hat and come!'

Brusque and domineering, yes; she did not mind that; perhaps she even liked it, in him; but the whole tone and manner of his speech threatened her dream with ruin, filling her heart with cold desolation. His words: the future, so much to plan, something to tell her,

all this could mean just what she longed for. The words, yes; but not the tone, not the spirit. That was hopelessly far away.

'Walter,' she began again, hesitating, catching at the vanishing dream.

'Get your hat and come! It's awfully important to me! I'll go ahead and get the boat out. Don't be long!' And he turned his back on her, and

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