The Book of Life Part 22

Remember that they are the opinion of the most learned historian of s.e.x customs who has ever written in English; a man whose authority is recognized in our schools, whose books are in every college library.

William Edward Hartpole Lecky is not in any sense a revolutionist; he is a conventional English scholar, an upholder of English law and order and patriotism. He is not of my school of thought, but of those who now own the world and run it. I quote him, because he tells in plain language what kind of world they have made; I invite you to study his words, and then judge my statement that the s.e.x arrangement under which we live in modern society is not monogamous love, but marriage-plus-prost.i.tution.

It is my hope to point the way to a higher system. I should like to call it marriage; but perhaps it would be more precise to call it marriage-minus-prost.i.tution. In working it out, we shall have to think for ourselves, and discard all formulas. It is obvious that our present-day religious creeds, ethical ideals, legal codes, and social rewards and punishments have been powerless to protect marriage, or to make it the rule in s.e.x relations.h.i.+ps. So we shall have to begin at the beginning and find new reasons for monogamous love, a new basis of marriage other than the protection of private property. We shall have to inform ourselves as to the fundamental purposes of s.e.x; we shall have to ask ourselves: What are the factors which determine rightness and wrongness in the s.e.x relations.h.i.+p? What is love, and what ought it to be? These questions we shall try to approach without any fixed ideas whatever. We shall decide them by the same tests that we have used in our thinking about G.o.d and immortality, health and disease. We shall ask, not what our ancestors believed, not what G.o.d teaches us, not what the law ordains, not what is "respectable," nor yet what is "advanced,"

according to the claim of modern s.e.x revolutionists and "free lovers."

We shall ask ourselves, what are the facts. We shall ask, what can be made to work in practice, what can justify itself by the tests of reason and common sense.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE DEVELOPMENT OF MARRIAGE

(Deals with the s.e.x-relations.h.i.+p, its meaning and its history, the stages of its development in human society.)

What, in the most elemental form, is s.e.x? It is a difference of function which makes it necessary for two organisms to take part in the reproduction of the species. The purpose, or at any rate the effect, of this s.e.x difference is the mixing of characteristics and qualities. If the s.e.x relations.h.i.+p were unnecessary to reproduction, variations might begin, and be propagated and carried to extremes in one line of inheritance, without ever affecting the rest of the species. Very soon there would be no species, or rather an infinity of them; each line of descent would fly apart, and become a group all by itself. You have perhaps heard people comment on the fact that blondes so frequently prefer brunettes, and that tall men are apt to marry short women, and vice versa. This is perhaps nature's way of keeping the type uniform, of spreading qualities widely and testing them thoroughly. Nature is continually trying out the powers of every individual in every species, and by the process of s.e.xual selection she chooses, for the reproduction of the species, the individuals which are best fitted for survival.

This, of course, refers to nature, considered apart from man. In human society, as I shall presently show, s.e.xual selection has been distorted, and partly suppressed.

s.e.x differentiation and s.e.xual selection exist almost universally throughout the animal and vegetable kingdoms, everywhere save in the lowest forms of being. They take strange and startling forms, and like everything else in nature manifest amazing ingenuity. People who wish to prove this or that about human s.e.x relations will advance arguments from nature; but as a matter of fact we can learn nothing whatever from nature, except her determination to preserve the products of her activity and to keep them up to standard. Sometimes nature will give the precedence in power, speed and beauty to the male, and sometimes to the female. She is perfectly ruthless, and willing in the accomplishment of her purpose to destroy the individuals of either s.e.x. She will content the most rabid feminist by causing the female spider to devour her mate when his purpose has been accomplished; or by causing the male bee to fall from his mating in the air, a disemboweled sh.e.l.l.

As for man, he has won his supremacy over nature by his greater power to combine in groups; by his more intense gregarious, or herd instincts, which enabled him to fight and destroy creatures which would have exterminated him if he had fought them alone. So in primitive society everywhere, we find that the individual is subordinated to the group, and the "folkways" give but little heed to personal rights. Very thorough investigations have been made into the life of primitive man in many parts of the world, and the anthropologists are now arguing over the exact meaning of the data. We shall not here attempt to decide among them, but rest content with the statement that communism and tribal owners.h.i.+p is a widespread social form among primitive man, so much so as to suggest that it is an early stage in social evolution.

And this communism includes, not merely property, but s.e.x. In the very earliest days there was often no barrier whatever to the s.e.x relations.h.i.+p; not even between brothers and sisters, nor between parents and children. In fact, we find savages who do not know that the s.e.x relations.h.i.+p has anything to do with procreation. But as knowledge increases, s.e.x "tabus" develop, some wise, and some foolish. From causes not entirely clear, but which we discuss in Chapter XLVIII, there gradually evolves a widespread form of s.e.x relations.h.i.+p of primitive man, the system of the "gens," as it is called. This is the Latin word for family, but it does not mean family in the narrow sense of mother and father and children, but in the broad sense of all those who have blood relations.h.i.+p, however far removed--uncles and aunts and cousins, as far as memory can trace. In primitive communism a man is not permitted to enter into the s.e.x relations.h.i.+p with a woman of the same gens, but with all the women of some other gens. It is difficult for us to imagine a society in which all the men named Jones would be married to all the women named Smith; but that was the way whole races of mankind lived for many thousands of years.

In that primitive communist society, the woman was generally the equal of the man. It is true that she did the drudgery of the camp, but the man, on the other hand, faced the hards.h.i.+ps of battle and the chase on land and sea. The woman was as big as the man, and except when handicapped by pregnancy, as strong as the man; she was as much respected, if not more so. Her children bore her name, and were under her control, and she was accustomed to a.s.sert herself in all affairs of the tribe. In Frederick O'Brien's "White Shadows in the South Seas," you may read a comical story of a journey this traveler made into the interior of one of the cannibal islands. Everywhere he was treated with courtesy and hospitality, but was embarra.s.sed by continual offers from would-be wives. In one case a powerful cannibal lady, whose advances he rejected, picked him up and proceeded to carry him off, and he was quite helpless in her grasp; he might have been a cannibal husband today, if it had not been for the intervention of his fellow travelers.

The basis of this s.e.x equality under primitive communism is easy to understand. All goods belonged to the tribe, and were shared alike according to need. Children were the tribe's most precious possession; therefore the woman suffered little handicap from having a child to bear and feed. Primitive woman would bear her child by the roadside, and pick it up in her arms, and continue her journey; and when she needed food, she did not have to beg for it--if there was food for anyone, there was food for her and her child. She did her share of the gathering and preparing of food, because that was the habit and law of her being; she had energies, and had never heard of the idea of not using them.

This primitive communism generally disappears as the tribe progresses.

We cannot be sure of all the stages of its disappearance, or of the causes, but in a general way we can say that it gives way before the spread of slavery. In the beginning primitive man does not have any slaves, he does not have sufficient foresight or self-restraint for that. When he kills his enemies in battle, he builds a fire and roasts their flesh and eats them; and those whom he captures alive, he binds fast and takes with him, to be sacrificed to his voodoo G.o.ds. But as he comes to more settled ways of living, and as the tribe grows larger, it occurs to the chiefs in battle that the captives would be glad to give their labor in return for their lives, and that it would be convenient to have some people to do the hard and dirty work. So gradually there comes to be a cla.s.s at the bottom of society, and another cla.s.s at the top. Those who capture the slaves and keep them at work lay claim to the products of their labor--at first better weapons and personal adornments, then separate homes for the chiefs and priests, separate gardens, separate flocks and herds, and--what more natural?--separate women.

This process becomes complete when the tribe settles down to agriculture, and the ruling cla.s.ses take possession of the land. When once the land is privately owned, cla.s.ses are fixed, and cla.s.s distinctions become the most prominent fact in society. And step by step as this happens, we see women beaten down, from the position of the cannibal lady, who could ask for the man she wanted and carry him off by force if necessary, to the position of the modern woman, who is physically weak, emotionally unstable, economically dependent, and socially repressed. You may resent such phrases, but all you have to do is to read the laws of civilized countries, written into the statute books by men to define the rights and duties of women; you will see that everywhere, before the recent feminist revolt, women were cla.s.sified under the law with children and imbeciles.

Maternity imposes on woman a heavy burden, and before the discovery of birth control, a burden that is continuous. For nine months she carries the child in her body, and then for a year or two she carries it in her arms, or on her back; and by that time there is another child, and this continues until she is broken down. Having this burden, she cannot possibly compete with the unburdened male for the possession of property. So wherever there is economic compet.i.tion; wherever certain individuals or cla.s.ses in the tribe or group are allowed to seize and hold the land; wherever the products of labor cease to be the community property, and become private property, the objects of economic strife; then inevitably and by natural process, woman comes to be placed among those who cannot protect themselves--that is, among the children and the imbeciles and the slaves. Of course, some children are well cared for, and so are some imbeciles, and some slaves, and some women. But they are cared for as a matter of favor, not as a matter of their own power. They proceed no longer as the cannibal lady, but by adopting and cultivating the slave virtues, by making themselves agreeable to their masters, by flattering their masters' vanity and sensuality--in other words by exercising what we are accustomed to call "feminine charm."

From early barbaric society up to the present day, we observe that there are cla.s.ses of women, just as there are cla.s.ses of men. The position of these cla.s.ses changes within certain limits, but in broad outline the conditions are fixed, and may be easily defined. There is, first of all, the ruling cla.s.s woman. She must have birth; she may or may not have wealth, according as to whether the laws of that society or tribe permit her to have possessions of her own, or to inherit anything from her parents. If she has no wealth, then she will need beauty. She is the woman who is selected by the ruling cla.s.s man to bear his name and his children, and to have charge of the household where these children are reared, and trained for the inheriting of their father's wealth and the carrying on of his position. This confers upon the ruling cla.s.s woman great dignity, and makes her a person of responsibility. She rules, not merely over the slaves of the household, but over men of inferior social cla.s.ses, and in a few cases an exceptionally able woman has become a queen, and ruled over men of her own cla.s.s. This ruling cla.s.s woman has been known through all the ages by a special name, and the ways and customs regarding her have been studied in an entertaining book, "The Lady," by Emily James Putnam.

Next in privilege and position to the "lady" is the mistress, the woman who is selected by the ruling cla.s.s man, not primarily to bear his children, but to entertain and divert him. She may, of course, bear children also. In barbaric societies, and up to quite recent times, the importance of the ruling cla.s.s man was indicated by the number of concubines he had, and the position of these women was hardly inferior to that of the wife or queen. In the days of the French monarchy, the king's mistress was frequently more important than the queen; she was a woman of ability, maintaining her supremacy in the intrigues of the court. In ancient Greek society, the "hetairae" were a recognized cla.s.s, and Aspasia, the mistress of Pericles, was the most brilliant and most conspicuous woman in Athens. In modern France, the position of the mistress is recognized by the phrase "demi-monde," or half-world. The American plutocracy has developed upon a superstructure of Puritanism, and therefore, in America, hypocrisy is necessary. But in the great cities of America, the vast majority of the ruling cla.s.s men keep mistresses before marriage, and a great many keep them afterwards; and these mistresses are coming to be more and more openly flaunted, and to acquire more and more of what is called "social position." It is possible now in the "smart set" for a lady to accept the status of mistress, delicately veiled, without losing caste thereby, and actresses and other free lance women who got their start in life by taking the position of mistress, are coming more and more to be recognized as "ladies," and to be received into what are called the "best circles."

There remains to be considered the position of the lower cla.s.s women. In barbarous society these women were very little different from slaves.

They had no rights of their own, except such rights as their master man chose to allow them for his own convenience. They were sold in marriage by their parents, and they went where they were sold, and obeyed their new master. They became his household drudges, and reserved their affections for him; if they failed to do this, he stoned them to death, or strangled them with a cord and tied them in a sack and threw them into the river.

And, of course, the rights of the master man yielded to the rights of men of higher cla.s.ses. The king or n.o.bleman could take any woman he wished at any time, and he made laws to this effect and enforced them.

In feudal society the lord of the manor claimed the right of the first night with the wives of his serfs; this was one of the ruling cla.s.s privileges which was abolished in the French revolution. Wherever the French revolution did not succeed in affecting land tenure, the right of the land owner to prey upon his tenant girls continues as a custom, even though it is not written in the law, and would be denied by the hypocritical. It prevails in Poland, as you may discover by reading Sienkiewicz's "Whirlpools"; it prevails in England, as you may discover from Hardy's "Tess of the d'Urbervilles." You will find that it prevails in every part of the world where women have poverty and men have wealth and prestige, dress suits and automobiles. You will find it wherever there are leisure cla.s.s hotels, or colleges, or other gatherings of ruling cla.s.s young males. You will find it in the theatrical and moving picture worlds. It is well understood in the theatrical world of Broadway that the woman "star" in the profession gets her start in life by becoming the mistress of a manager or "angel." In the moving picture world of Southern California it is a recognized convention, known to everyone familiar with the business, that a young girl parts with her virtue in exchange for an important job.

CHAPTER x.x.x

s.e.x AND YOUNG AMERICA

(Discusses present-day s.e.x arrangements, as they affect the future generation.)

Our first task is to consider how people actually behave in the matter of s.e.x--as distinguished from the way they pretend to behave. The first and most necessary step in the cure of any disease is a correct diagnosis, and in this case we have not merely to make the diagnosis, but to prove it; because the most conspicuous fact about our present s.e.x-arrangements is a ma.s.s of organized concealment. Not merely do teachers and preachers for the most part suppress all mention of these subjects; but the defenders of our present economic disorder are accustomed to acclaim the private property regime as the only basis of family life. So long as people hold such an idea, there is no use trying to teach them anything on the subject. There is no use talking to them about monogamous love, because all they understand is hypocrisy. In this chapter, therefore, we shall proceed to hold up the mirror in front of capitalist morality.

I pause and consider: Where shall I begin? At the top of society, or at the bottom? With the city or the country? With the old or the young? I think you care most of all about your boys and girls, so I am going to tell you what is happening to the youth of America in these days of triumphant reaction.

I have a son, about whom naturally I think a great deal; just now he is a student at one of our state universities, and he wrote me the other day: "I went to a dance, and believe me, father, if you knew what these modern dances mean, you would write something about them." I know what they mean. They have come to us straight from the brothels of the Argentine, among the vilest haunts of vice in the world. Others have come from the jungle, where they were natural. The poor creature of the jungle has his s.e.x-desire and nothing else; he is not troubled with brains, he does not have a complicated social organism to build up and protect, consequently he does not need what are called "morals." But we civilized people need morals, and we are losing them, and our society is disintegrating, going back to the howling and fighting and cannibalism of the jungle.

Prof. William James, America's greatest psychologist, tells us that going through the motions appropriate to an emotion automatically causes that emotion to be felt. If you watch an actor preparing to rush on the stage in an emotional scene, you will see him walking about, clenching his fists, stamping his feet, making ferocious faces, "working himself up." And now, what do you think is going on in the minds of young men and women, while with their bodies they are going through procedures which are nothing and can be nothing but imitations of s.e.xual contact?

The parents, it appears, are ignorant and unsophisticated, and have left it for the children to find out what these dances mean. In Rhode Island, one of our oldest states, is Brown College, chosen by New England's aristocracy for the education of its sons; and these boys go to social affairs in the best homes in Providence, and they call them "petting-parties." And here is what they write in their college paper:

"The modern social bud drinks, not too much, often, but enough. She smokes unguardedly, swears considerably, and tells 'dirty' stories. All in all, she is a most frivolous, pa.s.sionate, sensation-seeking little thing."

This statement, published in a college paper, causes a scandal, and a newspaper reporter goes to interview the college boy who edits the paper, and this boy talks. He tells how he met a lovely girl at a dance, and his heart was thrilled with the rapture of young love. "Frankly, between you and me, I was pretty smitten with this particular little lady. Felt about her, don't you know, like a real guy feels about the girl he could imagine himself married to. Thought she was too nice to touch, almost; you know the grave sort of love affair a man always has once in a lifetime. Well, we walked a bit, and I guess I didn't say much, for a while. I felt plenty--respectfully--just the same. And as we turned the corner of one of the buildings here, she grasped my hand.

Hers was trembling. 'Love and let love is my motto, dearie,' said this seraph of my dreams; 'come, we're losing a lot of time getting started.'

That girl thought I was dead slow. She didn't know that just then I imagined the great love of my life was just entering the door. It was cruel the way she got down from the pedestal I had built for her."

Suppose I should ask you to name the influence that is having most to do with shaping the thoughts of young America--what would you answer?

Undoubtedly, the moving pictures. It is from the "movies" that your children learn what life is; if I can show you that a certain thing is in the "movies," you can surely not deny that it is pa.s.sing every day and night into the hearts and minds of millions of our boys and girls.

Take a vote among the girls, what would they consider the most delightful destiny in life; surely nine out of ten would answer, to become a screen star, and pose before a world of admirers, and be paid a million dollars a year. Make a test and see; and put that fact together with the one I have already stated, that in order to get an important job in the "movies," a girl must regularly and as a matter of course part with her virtue.

You will be told, no doubt, that this is a slanderous statement, so let me give you a little evidence. I happened within the past year to be in the private office of a well known moving picture producer, a man who is married, and takes care to tell you that he loves his wife. He was producing a play, the heroine of which was supposed to be a daughter of Puritan New England. To play this part he had engaged a chaste girl, and as a result was in the midst of a queer trouble, which he poured out to me. His "leading man" had refused to act with this girl, insisting that no girl could act a part of love unless she had had pa.s.sionate experience; no such thing had ever been heard of in moving pictures before. Likewise, the director agreed that no girl who is chaste could act for the screen, and the producer asked my advice about it. Mr.

William Allen White, of Kansas, was present in the office, and authorizes me to state that he substantiates this anecdote. We both advised the producer to stand by the girl, and he did so; and the picture went out, and proved to be what in trade parlance is termed a "frost"; that is to say, your children didn't care for it, and it cost the producer something like a hundred thousand dollars to make this attempt to defy the conventions of the moving picture world.

I will tell you another story. I have a friend, a prominent man in Los Angeles, who was appealed to by a young lady who wished to act in the "movies." My friend introduced this young lady to a very prominent screen actor, who in turn introduced her to one of the biggest producers in America, one of the men whose "million dollar feature pictures" are regularly exploited. The producer examined the young lady's figure, and told her that she would "do"; he added, quite casually, and as a matter of course, that she would be expected to "pay the price." The young lady took exception to this proposition, and gave up the chance. She told my friend about it, and he, being a man of the world, accustomed to dealing with the foibles of his fellowmen, wrote a note to the actor, explaining that inasmuch as this young lady had been socially introduced to him, and by him socially introduced to the manager, she should not have been expected to "pay the price." To this the actor answered that my friend was correct, and he would see the manager about it. The manager conceded the point, and the young lady got her chance in the "movies" and made good without "paying the price." This story tells you all you need to know about the difference in s.e.x ethics that society applies to the "lady" and to the daughter of the common people.

You know, of course, what is the stock theme of all moving pictures--the virtuous daughter of the people, who resists all temptations, and is finally rescued from her would-be seducer by the strong and st.u.r.dy arm of a male doll. Could one ask a more perfect ill.u.s.tration of capitalist hypocrisy than the fact that the girl who plays this role is required to pay with her virtue for the privilege of playing it! And if you know anything about young girls, you can watch her playing it on the screen, and see from her every gesture that what I am telling you is true. My wife knows young girls, and I took her, the other day, to see a moving picture. She said: "I have solved a problem. When I come home on the street-cars, it happens that I ride with a lot of young girls from the high school. I have been watching them, and I couldn't imagine what was the matter with them. All simple, girlish straightforwardness is gone out of them; they are making eyes, in the strangest manner--and at n.o.body; just practicing, apparently. They wear yearning facial expressions; when they start to walk, they do not walk, but writhe and wiggle. I thought there must be some nervous eye and lip disease got abroad in the school. But now, when I go to a moving picture, I discover what it means. They are imitating the 'stars' on the screen!"

In these pictures, you know, there are "ingenues," young girls engaged in making a happy ending to the story by capturing a rich lover; and then there are "vamps," engaged in seducing young men, or breaking up some happy home. In old-style melodrama it was possible to tell the "ingenue" from the "vamps"; the former would trip lightly, and glance coyly out of the corners of her eyes, while the "vamp" moved with slow, languished writhing, blinking heavy-lidded, sinister eyes. But now-a-days the "vamps" have learned to pose as "ingenues," and the "ingenues" are as vicious as the "vamps"; they both make the same glances, and culminate in the same sensual swoon. It is all s.e.x, and nothing else--except revolvers and fighting, and wild rus.h.i.+ng about.

And then, too, there are the musical comedies, made wholly out of s.e.x, being known as "girl shows," or more frankly still, "leg shows." A row of half naked women, prancing and gyrating on the stage, and in front of them rows of bald-headed old men, gazing at them greedily; also college boys, or boys too imbecile to get through college, sending in their cards with boxes of costly flowers. You will be shocked as you read my plain statements of fact, but if you are the average American, you will take your family to a musical show which has come straight from the brothels of Paris, every allusion of which is obscene. I remember once being in a small town in the South, when one of these "road shows"

arrived from New York, and I realized that this inst.i.tution was simply a traveling house of ill fame; the whole male portion of the town was a-quiver with excitement, a mixture of l.u.s.t and fear.

I live in Southern California, one of many places in America where the idle rich gather for their diversion. The country is dotted with palatial hotels, and a golden flood of pleasure-seekers come in every winter. I have talked with some of the college boys in this part of the country, and also with teachers who try to save the boys; they report these "swell" hotels as hot-beds of vice, haunted by married women with automobiles, and nothing to do, who wish to go into the canyons for s.e.xual riots. Even elderly women, white-haired women, old enough to be your grandmother! I have had them pointed out to me in these hotels, their cheeks and lips covered with rouge, with pink silk tights on their calves, and nothing else almost up to their knees and nothing at all half way down their backs. These old women seek to prey on boys, wanting their youth, and being willing to lavish money upon them. They are preying on your boys--you prosperous business men, who have preached the gospel of "each for himself," and are proud of your skill to prey upon society. You heap up your fortunes, and call it success, and are secure and happy. You have made your children safe against want, you think; but how are you going to make them safe against the "vamps" who prey upon the overwhelming excitements of youth, and betray your sons before your very eyes--teaching them l.u.s.t in their youth, so that love may never be born in their stunted hearts? All the haunts of "gilded vice" are thriving, and somebody's boy is paying the interest on the capital, to say nothing of paying the police.

Many years ago I paid a call upon Anthony Comstock, head of the Society for the Prevention of Vice. Comstock was an old-style Puritan, and many insist that he was likewise an old-style grafter. However that may be, he had a collection of the literature of p.o.r.nography which would cause any man to hesitate in condemning his activities. There is a vast traffic in this kind of thing; it is sold by pack-peddlers all over the country, and it is sold in little shops in the neighborhood of public schools. You may be sure that in your school there are some boys who know where to get it, even though they will not tell what they know. I will describe just one piece that a school boy brought to me, a catalogue of obscene literature, for sale in Spain, and to be ordered wholesale. You know how men with wares to sell will expend their imaginations and exhaust their vocabulary in describing to you the charms of each particular article for sale. Here was a catalogue of one or two hundred pages, listing thousands of items, pictures, pamphlets and books, and various implements of vice, all set forth in that imitation ecstasy of department stores and seed catalogues: here was "something neat," here was a "fancy one," this one was "a peach," and that one was "a winner."

When I was a lad, I was tramping in the Adirondack mountains and was picked up by an itinerant photographer. We rode all day together, and he became friendly, and showed me some obscene pictures. Presently he discovered that he was dealing with a young moralist, and apparently it was the first time he had ever had that experience; he talked honestly, and we became friends on a different basis. This man had a wife and children at home, but he traveled all over the mountains, and was like the sailor with a girl in every port. Also he was thoroughly familiar with all forms of unnatural vice, and took this also as a matter of course, and spread it on his journeys.

The other day I read a statement by a prominent physician in New York; he had been talking with a police captain, and had asked him to state what in his opinion was the most significant development in the social life of New York. The answer was, "The spread of male prost.i.tution."

Here is a subject to which I have to admit my courage is unequal. I cannot repeat the jokes which I have heard young men tell about these matters, and about the att.i.tude of the police to them. Suffice it to say that these hideous forms of vice are now the commonplace of the under-world of all our great cities. The other day a friend of mine was talking with a prost.i.tute who had left a high-cla.s.s resort, where the price charged was ten dollars, and gone to live in a "fifty-cent house,"

frequented by sailors. She was asked the reason, and her explanation was, "The sailors are natural." Dr. William J. Robinson has written in his magazine an account of the haunts in Berlin which are frequented by the victims of unnatural vice, there allowed to meet openly and to solicit. Frank Harris, in his "Life of Oscar Wilde," tells how when that scandal was at its height, and further exposure threatened, swarms of the most prominent men in England suddenly discovered that it was advisable for them to travel on the Continent. The great public schools of England are rotten with these practices; the younger boys learn them from the older ones, and are victims all the rest of their lives. And the corruption is creeping through our own social body--and you think that all you have to do is not to know about it!

My friend Floyd Dell, reading this ma.n.u.script, insists that this chapter and the one following are too severe. In case others should agree with him, I quote two newspaper items which appear while I am reading the proofs. The first is from an interview with H. Gordon Selfridge, the London merchant, telling his impressions of America. He tells about the "flappers," and then about the "s.h.i.+fters."