deed, he ever heard the madly melodious
boast of the "roaring boy"?

After all, there is nothing wonderful in this. It but shows that the
genius which creates and the imagination which appreciates are akin,
even as Professor Spingarn has asserted. Even operas and symphonies
were composed at a piano. Strauss heard the one hundred and five
instruments which are called on to represent the cry of the baby in
his _Symphonia Domestica_ all tooting and scraping in the notes his
ten fingers evoked from his piano keys. (Personally I should rather
have heard them so!) And why cannot I hear at least a simple little
song in the melody that my one finger plays? The numerical ratio is in
my favor, surely, although my neighbor would doubtless rudely suggest
that I am not Richard Strauss. At any rate, for me there is a great
joy in singing songs as they ought to be sung, if only with one
finger, which has done much to console me for the technical powers
nature has so plentifully denied me. I offer the same solution to all
others who are in my case, only suggesting that it would be wise of
them, perhaps, to learn while they are yet plastic the use of all ten
fingers. They will not thereby secure ten times as much enjoyment, but
their families will thank them.

[Illustration]

_The Immorality of Shop-windows_

At the heart of morality lies content. That is a statement either
optimistic or cynical, as you choose to look at it; but it is a
statement of fact. Even the reformer seeks to allay his discontent,
which does not arise from the morality in him, but from the immorality
in other people. Anybody who has lived with a reformer knows this.
Therefore are modern shop-windows--by steel construction made to
occupy the maximum amount of space, to assault by breadth and
brilliance the most callous eye--one of the most immoral forces in
modern city life.

This is especially true of the shop-windows on Fifth Avenue, New York.
For these windows, even at night illuminated like silent drawing-rooms
vacant of people, expose to the view of the most humble passer on the
curb as well as to the pampered rich racing by in motors, the spoils
of all the world. Here are paintings by the old masters and the new;
rare furniture and marbles from Italian palaces; screens from Japan;
jewels and rugs from the Orient; silk stockings, curios, china,
bronzes, hats, furs; and again more curios, cabinets, st