exclaimed, "Oh, dear! I wish Chaucer
were _dead_!" She had her wish in more senses than the obvious one. Not
only has Chaucer's physical body long ago given up its substance to earth
and air, but his works have to be translated for most readers of the
present day; his language is fast becoming as dead as Latin or Greek. But,
worse still, Ills very spirit was dead, so far as its reaction on her was
concerned. Poetry, to you and me, is what we make of it; and what do you
suppose our friend from Oregon was making of Chaucer? Our indifference,
our failure to react, is thus more far-reaching than its influence on
ourselves--it is, in some sense, a sin against the immortal souls of those
who have bequeathed their spiritual selves to the world in books. And this
sin the clubs are, in more cases than I care to think, forcing
deliberately upon their members.

A well-known cartoonist toiled long in early life at some uncongenial task
for a pittance. Meanwhile he drew pictures for fun, and one day a
journalist, seeing one of his sketches, offered him fifty dollars for
it--the salary of many days. "And when," said the cartoonist, "I found I
could get more money by playing than by working, I swore I would never
work again--and I haven't."

When we can all play--do exactly what we like--and keep ourselves and the
world running by it, then the Earthly Paradise will be achieved. But,
meanwhile, cannot we realize that these clubwomen will accomplish more if
we can direct and control their voluntary activity, backed by their whole
mental energy, than when they devote some small part of their minds to an
uncongenial task, dictated by a programme committee?

I shall doubtless be reminded that the larger clubs are now generally
divided into sections, and that membership in these sections is supposed
to be dictated by interest. This is a step in the right direction, but it
is an excessively short one. The programme, with all its vicious
accompaniments and lamentable results, persists. What I have said and
shall say applies as well to an art or a domestic science section as to a
club _in toto_.

To bring down the treatment to a definite prescription, let us suppose
that the committee in charge of a club's activities, instead of marking
out a definite programme for the season, should simply announce that
communications on subjects of personal interest to the members, embodying
some new and original thought, method, idea, device, or mode of