owan's Pass, and
northwestward across the Harlem to our destination. He will recollect. We
were two days picking our way in going and two days on the return, for we
scorned the 'bus route, and that was only in the later fifties. Never
mind, if we ever do get back to small clothes and silk stockings, Martin
Cortright can show a rounded calf, if he has been esteemed little more
than a crawling bookworm these many years.

"Methinks I hear you yawn and crumple these sheets together in your hand,
saying: 'What ails the man--is he grown doity? I thought he was
contented, even if sluggishly serene.'

"And so he was, as one grown used to numbness, until last summer one
Mistress Barbara visited the man-snail in his shell and exorcised him to
come forth for an outing, to feed among fresh green leaves and breathe
the perfume of flowers and young lives. When lo and behold, on the
snail's return, the shell had grown too small!

"Faithfully,

"M. C."

* * * * *

(To R. R.)

"December 22, 19--.

"So social change has also cast its shadow across even your country
pathway, dear Hippocrates? I wish it had spared you, but I feared as much
when I heard that your peaceful town had been invaded by an advance guard
of those same People of the Whirlpool who keep the social life of their
own city in a ferment.

"You ask what is the matter, what the cause of the increasing
restlessness that appears on every side, driving the conservative
thinking class of moderate means to seek home shelter beyond city limits,
and drawing the rest into a swirl that, sooner or later, either casts
them forth as wrecks or sucks them wholly down.

"The question is difficult of answer, but there are two things that are
potent causes of the third. Money too quickly earned, or rather won,
causes an unwise expansion, and a fictitious prosperity that has degraded
the life standard. Except in exclusively academic circles, the man is
gauged by his power of financial purchase and control, and the dollar is
his hall mark. He is forced to buy, not win, his way. Of course, if
pedigree and private character correspond in quantity, so much the
better, but their importance is strictly held in abeyance.

"Even in the legendary classic shades of learning, the cold pressure of
the golden thumb crowds down and chills penniless brains. All students do
not have equal _chance_ and equal _rights_. How can they, when the
exclusiveness of many