thinker has asserted that civilizations,
societies, empires, and republics go down to posterity typified for the
admiration of mankind, each under the form of some hero. Emerson would
have given a place in his Pantheon to Sagan. For it is he who sustained
the traditions and became the type of that distinguished and frivolous
society, which judged that serious things were of no importance,
enthusiasm a waste of time, literature a bore; that nothing was
interesting and worthy of occupying their attention except the elegant
distractions that helped to pass their days-and nights! He had the merit
(?) in these days of the practical and the commonplace, of preserving in
his gracious person all the charming uselessness of a courtier in a
country where there was no longer a court.

What a strange sight it would be if this departing dandy could, before he
leaves for ever the theatre of so many triumphs, take his place at some
street corner, and review the shades of the companions his long life had
thrown him with, the endless procession of departed belles and beaux,
who, in their youth, had, under his rule, helped to dictate the fashions
and lead the sports of a world.

No. 28--A Nation on the Wing

On being taken the other day through a large and costly residence, with
the thoroughness that only the owner of a new house has the cruelty to
inflict on his victims, not allowing them to pass a closet or an electric
bell without having its particular use and convenience explained, forcing
them to look up coal-slides, and down air-shafts and to visit every
secret place, from the cellar to the fire-escape, I noticed that a
peculiar arrangement of the rooms repeated itself on each floor, and
several times on a floor. I remarked it to my host.

"You observe it," he said, with a blush of pride, "it is my wife's idea!
The truth is, my daughters are of a marrying age, and my sons starting
out for themselves; this house will soon be much too big for two old
people to live in alone. We have planned it so that at any time it can
be changed into an apartment house at a nominal expense. It is even
wired and plumbed with that end in view!"

This answer positively took my breath away. I looked at my host in
amazement. It was hard to believe that a man past middle age, who after
years of hardest toil could afford to put half a million into a house for
himself and his children, and store it with beautiful things, would have
the