omanliness of a decadent generation.

If realism were actually real, we should have no time for books and
pictures. Our days and nights would be spent in reclaiming the people in
the slums. There would be a visible increase in the church fair--where
we spend more than we can afford for things we do not want, in order to
please people whom we do not like, and to help heathen who are happier
than we are.

[Sidenote: The Root of all Good]

The love of money is said to be the root of all evil, but love itself is
the root of all good, for it is the very foundation of the social
structure. The universal race for the elusive shilling, which is
commonly considered selfish, is based upon love.

Money will buy fine houses, but who would wish to live in a mansion
alone! Fast horses, yachts, private cars, and the feasts of Lucullus,
are not to be enjoyed in solitude; they must be shared. Buying jewels
and costly raiment is the purest philanthropy, for it gives pleasure to
others. Sapphires and real lace depreciate rapidly in the cloister or
the desert.

The envy which luxury sometimes creates is also altruistic in character,
for in its last analysis, it is the wish to give pleasure to others, in
the same degree, as the envied fortunately may. Nothing is happiness
which is not shared by at least one other, and nothing is truly sorrow
unless it is borne absolutely alone.

[Sidenote: Love]

Love! The delight and the torment of the world! The despair of
philosophers and sages, the rapture of poets, the confusion of cynics,
and the warrior's defeat!

Love! The bread and the wine of life, the hunger and the thirst, the
hurt and the healing, the only wound which is cured by another! The
guest who comes like a thief in the night! The eternal question which is
its own answer, the thing which has no beginning and no end!

The very blindness of it is divine, for it sees no imperfections, takes
no reck of faults, and concerns itself only with the hidden beauty of
the soul.

It is unselfishness--yet it tolerates no rival and demands all for
itself. It is belief--and yet it doubts. It is hope and it is also
misgiving. It is trust and distrust, the strongest temptation and the
power to withstand it; woman's need and man's dream. It is his enemy and
his best friend, her weakness and her strength; the roses and the
thorns.

Woman's love affairs begin in her infancy, with some childish play at
sweethearts, and a cavalier in dresses fo