size of a three-minute egg-boiler, and taking one handed it to Pilgrim. "Take this with the compliments of the Distillery,' he said, 'and at your leisure try it. Treat it precisely as you would an hour glass and you will find that while its finely divided fractions of seconds continue to run you will have time for anything you wish.' And so he brought them to the office door and bowed them out.

"As they stepped outside Pilgrim stopped a moment, drew his hand across his forehead once or twice and then murmured to himself: 'I begin to see what the old man is driving at. Time is mine for the taking; when I will take the time for anything, I surely will have it. Psychology is indeed a great science!'

"And now the guide would have shown Pilgrim many other things, the Gallery of Paintings and Sculpture and the Museum. But Pilgrim begged him rather to take him to a place where he might rest a little, inasmuch as he had come far that day and what he had just seen had given him food for thought. 'Let me then take you out upon the terrace,' said the guide, 'for you can there both rest and enjoy the prospect.' So Pilgrim sat upon the terrace and mused of what he had seen, until a messenger came saying: 'The Interpreter bids you spend the night and the morrow here, and the third day you shall set forth again.' So Pilgrim abode there two days, and the third day took his departure along the road that it was appointed to him to travel."

This, my dear reader, is a sample of what I found in our time-worn family copy of Pilgrim's Progress after it had been for some time in company with the volume of Life and the Philosophische Studien. One must, I am sure, admit the strangeness of the phenomenon, whatever he may think the cause. To what it may lead I do not know; but it justifies, I should say, the prejudice which many scrupulous people have against piling other books on their Bibles and prayer books, and lays heavy emphasis on the need of keeping one's library in order.

MANNERS AND MORALS

(An Unconventional Dialogue)

Part I. Manners versus Morals

T was "Scrip's" evening at the "Interrupters," which is a Club of a dozen ancient and honorable diners, mostly of the academic persuasion. It was named upon the experience that good talk, like mixed drinks, must not have too much of any one ingredient. "Scrip," (which is short for Scriptorius, as "Cad" - which is my honorable title is a libel for Academicus) after five years' absence, had travelled far to return to the fold for his fiftieth birthday. So we drank his health, and let him talk. He had always chafed a bit under the academic harness; when the chance, came, he was enticed New York-ward to the editorial cubicle of our foremost magazine. Scrip was always thought of as the writer in our little company, in which few were innocent of a book. For the rest, there was "Zeno" our Greek scholar; and "Plautus" our Latin one; "Cosmos" our encyclopedic biologist, who devoured novels like breakfast food; "Chaos" our iconoclastic sociologist, who took Scrip's chair and his place in the Club; Eliot "The Puritan," who held forth on things in general, though officially a philologist, -all of the Faculty of Athenopolis. To this hub of the mid-west, Scrip and I attached ourselves young, eastern, and effete seventeen years ago, if so unreliable a document as a college catalogue may be credited. With us came "Mac," sometimes known as "Popular Error," - Scotch, controversial and chemical, and to be silenced only by letting him read "McAndrew's Hymn;" and "the Kid," who wasn't appreciably younger than the rest of us, but declined to grow up. He taught English, and abused his privileges frightfully. The out

siders were "Pluto" Plutocrat a man of generous ways and hospitable autos. He was the only moneyed member of the group unless I except "Bruno," whose name was Brown, and who practiced law on lawyers lucratively; the "Judge," who really was a judge; and the "Senator," who once ran for office but was outstripped, and was primarily an Interrupter. The talk was much less of a monologue than my report suggests; but it was Scrip's evening and a lively one; Talk that seems worth reporting is rare in these syncopated days. Scrip's talk was always an inspiration to me, and that is how I came to Boswell him. Boswelling, to get by the editor, must be trimmed to set proportions; so the high points alone are left. Talk is a way train, sprinting and lounging at pleasure, and touching leisurely at small stations; this is an express version.

It started rather innocently, just a reference by Mac to anti-cigarette laws and "dry" campaigns, which set Scrip off with a fling at "the clumsy hold on the values of life that passes for wisdom in this melting-pot of ours, and makes legislatures so childishly solemn when they call out the whole fire-department of morality to extinguish an innocent bit of smoke. Whether a cigarette or a temperate mug of ale makes for a fine habit or a coarse one, depends entirely upon how it is mannered; and that's what we're all going to preach and teach as soon as people are sensible enough to stand the gospel.

"This isn't a little matter, because it's part of a big one. I want to hasten the day when we can talk and write and act as we feel and think, and still pass for as respectable as we happen to be. We can't do it to-day because we are carrying along an old-fashioned, words-of-one-syllable, Puritanic notion that we can solve our problems by simple home-remedies of morality, that leave a bad taste in the mouth. You all sport a public, moralizing, dress-parade self, and a private one, far more attractive and comfort

able, which makes this Club possible. In fact you're all frauds and hedgers, trimming your professions, and dulling your insight to the feeble capacities of students and the prejudices of their parents the tax-payers. I hope you enjoy it. That's what I'm going to talk about. I'm rather full of the thing now; and I'm beginning to find inklings of it in a book or two just off the press. So I want to announce my discovery before it gets commonplace. It's my story now a poor thing, but mine own. "Perhaps it's not quite modest to claim to be a moralist, so I'll only claim to be a mannerist; curious to relate, that has been the actual working division of men since they stopped regarding one another as venison, and enjoyed peace at the family board. Go as far as you dare in any direction, and you come to the great divide: the men who want to save the world by morals, and the men who propose to redeem it by manners. What I intend to point out are the limitations of the moralist's program, past and present. So if you have cigars to light, (or cigarettes, if you've broken the law) prepare to light them now; for I'm off.

"What I object to is this senseless brandishing of the slogan that life is simple, when it is bewilderingly complex, and, like the cost of living, going up all the time. Ten commandments! Why, a thousand wouldn't fill the bill. The program of the simple life is about as sincere as a log-cabin with hot and cold water, porcelain tubs and electric lights. Marie Antoinette and her frivolous bevy playing at being peasants were models of sincerity compared to the modern pretenders. I sometimes suspect our many-sided Ben Franklin of starting the cult. Our greatest amateur was also our first and readiest moralist. He had a pagan streak that let him compare the charms of the Parisian dames with the virtues of his wife, which he lauded in precept and found dull in practice. Things were really simple enough in his day to permit an amateur with a good head to make great discoveries and start big

things. Franklin could afford to moralize; but he taught the trick to others who couldn't. He overdid the thrift idea: "A stitch in time, saves nine" and makes a wretched rhyme. "Early to bed, and early to rise:" "Healthy, wealthy and wise!" Wall St. was a pasture in those days! Lamb pricked that bubble; exposed early rising as a foolish fallacy or a bad habit. Nowadays we know that when not a necessity it is a disease.

"Fortunately for American habits of mind, Franklin has had two great foils - Emerson's transcendentalism and Lincoln's humor. And because we took the best of all of them, and compounded their wisdom, we are, among other things, the sanest people on earth at times. Lincoln's Grant-whiskey story is a classic, though it won't do for the First Reader. You can't do big things on small moralities. 'Hitch your wagon to a star' is a finer way of saying it. Either way, you've got to have illumination and inspiration, get it as you will."

Here Plautus and Zeno broke in Zeno first. "But that is morality. That's what the Greeks taught. They wanted men to grow bigger and better and lose their littleness. I'm sure the Greeks would have been evolutionists if they had only known the facts. As it was, they kept guessing at it. They subordinated the little moralities to the big ones, and drew a fine perspective of the virtues and the graces alike. I don't know that I ever thought of it in just those terms, but that was the Greek idea: to be a mannerist and a moralist in one. Kalagathia was their slogan. The good is the beautiful. It's the same glorious spectrum broken up in different rays.'

Then Plautus: "And it was the Roman ideal as well. The patrician was the generous gentleman, disregarding the minor annoyances of life, and keeping his eyes set on the real values, while maintaining a philosophical composure, a fine indifference. He may have overdone the disregarding business. I don't set him up as a model for a more careful age. But he stands as an antidote for