urry! She'll get her diploma in January. It'd be a pity
to have her miss!"

Arnold's stepmother broke in rather impatiently, "If I were a girl
engaged to Arnold, I'd _marry_ him!"

"--the trouble with all you connoisseurs, Morrison, is that you're
barking up the wrong tree. You take for granted, from your own tastes,
when people begin to buy jade Buddhas and Zuloaga bull-fighters that
they're wanting to surround themselves with beauty. Not much! It's the
consciousness of money they want to surround themselves with!"

Morrison conceded part of this. "Oh, I grant you, there's a
disheartening deal of imitation in this matter. But America's new to
aesthetics. Don't despise beginnings because they're small!"

"A nettle leaf is small. But that's not the reason why it won't ever
grow into an oak. Look here! A sheaf of winter grasses, rightly
arranged in clear glass, has as much of the essence of beauty as a
bronze vase of the Ming dynasty. I ask you just one question, How many
people do you know who are capable of--"

The art-critic broke in: "Oh come! You're setting up an impossibly
high standard of aesthetic feeling."

"I'm not presuming to do any such thing as setting up a standard!
I'm just insisting that people who can't extract joy from the shadow
pattern of a leafy branch on a gray wall, are liars if they claim to
enjoy a fine Japanese print. What they enjoy in the print is the sense
that they've paid a lot for it. In my opinion, there's no use trying
to advance a step towards any sound aesthetic feeling till _some_ step
is taken away from the idea of cost as the criterion of value about
anything." He drew a long breath and went on, rather more rapidly than
was his usual habit of speech: "I've a real conviction on that point.
It's come to me of late years that one reason we haven't any national
art is because we have too much magnificence. All our capacity for
admiration is used up on the splendor of palace-like railway stations
and hotels. Our national tympanum is so deafened by that blare of
sumptuousness that we have no ears for the still, small voice of
beauty. And perhaps," he paused, looking down absently at a crumb he
rolled between his thumb and finger on the table, "it's possible that
the time is ripening for a wider appreciation of another kind of
beauty ... that has little to do even with such miracles as the shadow
of a branch on a wall."

Morrison showed no interest in this vaguely phrased hypothesi