n
safe in the security of fifty thousand a year. And, since they really do
not care about anything, they are as likely to praise as to blame, and
to agree with everybody about everything. Their world is all cakes and
ale--why should they bother as to whether the pothouse beer is bad?

I confess, with something of a shock, that essentially I am like the
rest of these people. The reason I am not interested in my country and
my city is because, by reason of my financial and social independence,
they have ceased to be my city and country. I should be just as
comfortable if our Government were a monarchy. It really is nothing to
me whether my tax rate is six one-hundredths of one per cent higher or
lower, or what mayor rules in City Hall.

So long as Fifth Avenue is decently paved, so that my motor runs
smoothly when I go to the opera, I do not care whether we have a Reform,
Tammany or Republican administration in the city. So far as I am
concerned, my valet will still come into my bedroom at exactly nine
o'clock every morning, turn on the heat and pull back the curtains. His
low, modulated "Your bath is ready, sir," will steal through my dreams,
and he will assist me to rise and put on my embroidered dressing gown of
wadded silk in preparation for another day's hard labor in the service
of my fellowmen. Times have changed since my father's frugal college
days. Have they changed for better or for worse?

Of one thing I am certain--my father was a better-educated man than I
am. I admit that, under the circumstances, this does not imply very
much; but my parent had, at least, some solid ground beneath his
intellectual feet on which he could stand. His mind was thoroughly
disciplined by rigid application to certain serious studies that were
not selected by himself. From the day he entered college he was in
active competition with his classmates in all his studies, and if he had
been a shirker they would all have known it.

In my own case, after I had once matriculated, the elective system left
me free to choose my own subjects and to pursue them faithfully or not,
so long as I could manage to squeak through my examinations. My friends
were not necessarily among those who elected the same courses, and
whether I did well or ill was nobody's business but my own and the
dean's. It was all very pleasant and exceedingly lackadaisical, and by
the time I graduated I had lost whatever power of concentration I had
acquired in my prep