d for strangeness in the things themselves is the demand of the
sophisticated mind: the mind which has lost its simplicity in the
process of continuing unenlightened. It is this demand which betrays the
mediocre mind of the Anglo-Saxon race, the sophistication of the English
mind, and the obfuscation (which is sophistication at second-hand) of
the American mind. The non-imaginative person is nowhere so much at home
as in a voluntary exile; and this may be why it was sometime said that
travel is the fool's paradise. For such a person to realize anything the
terms are that he shall go abroad, either into an alien scene or into a
period of the past; then he can begin to have some pleasure. He must
first of all get away from himself, and he is not to be blamed for that;
any one else would wish to get away from him. His exaction is not a
test of merit; it is merely the clew to a psychological situation which
is neither so novel nor so important as to require of our hard-worked
civilization the production of an order of more inspired criticism than
it has worried along with hitherto.

XXV

A NORMAL HERO AND HEROINE OUT OF WORK

They sat together on a bench in the Park, far enough apart to
distinguish themselves from the many other pairs who were but too
obviously lovers. It could not be said quite that these two were
actually lovers; but there was an air of passionate provisionality over
and around them, a light such as in springtime seems to enfold the tree
before it takes the positive color of bud or blossom; and, with an eye
for literary material that had rarely failed him, he of the Easy Chair
perceived that they were a hero and heroine of a kind which he instantly
felt it a great pity he should not have met oftener in fiction of late.
As he looked at them he was more and more penetrated by a delicate
pathos in the fact that, such as he saw them, they belonged in their
fine sort to the great host of the Unemployed. No one else might have
seen it, but he saw, with that inner eye of his, which compassion
suffused but did not obscure, that they were out of a job, and he was
not surprised when he heard the young girl fetch a muted sigh and then
say: "No, they don't want us any more. I don't understand why; it is
very strange; but it is perfectly certain."

"Yes, there's no doubt of that," the young man returned, in a despair
tinged with resentment.

She was very pretty and he was handsome, and they were both tast