ey can
elevate the entire present generation of young men, if they give their
minds to it, to care for the intellectual pursuits they care for. Give
the men a chance, and----

Musing along in this way we are suddenly pulled up by the reflection that
it is impossible to make an unqualified statement that is wholly true
about anything. What chance have I, anyway? inquires the young man who
thinks sometimes and occasionally wants to read. What sort of
leading-strings are these that I am getting into? Look at the drift of
things. Is the feminization of the world a desirable thing for a vigorous
future? Are the women, or are they not, taking all the virility out of
literature? Answer me that. All the novels are written by, for, or about
women--brought to their standard. Even Henry James, who studies the sex
untiringly, speaks about the "feminization of literature." They write
most of the newspaper correspondence--and write it for women. They are
even trying to feminize the colleges. Granted that woman is the superior
being; all the more, what chance is there for man if this sort of thing
goes on? Are you going to make a race of men on feminine fodder? And here
is the still more perplexing part of it. Unless all analysis of the
female heart is a delusion, and all history false, what women like most
of all things in this world is a Man, virile, forceful, compelling, a
solid rock of dependence, a substantial unfeminine being, whom it is some
satisfaction and glory and interest to govern and rule in the right way,
and twist round the feminine finger. If women should succeed in reducing
or raising--of course raising--men to the feminine standard, by
feminizing society, literature, the colleges, and all that, would they
not turn on their creations--for even the Bible intimates that women are
uncertain and go in search of a Man? It is this sort of blind instinct of
the young man for preserving himself in the world that makes him so
inaccessible to the good he might get from the prevailing culture of the
leisure class.

THE ADVENT OF CANDOR

Those who are anxious about the fate of Christmas, whether it is not
becoming too worldly and too expensive a holiday to be indulged in except
by the very poor, mark with pleasure any indications that the true spirit
of the day--brotherhood and self-abnegation and charity--is infusing
itself into modern society. The sentimental Christmas of thirty years ago
could not last; in time the m