ociety, a day for the Society
for the Propagation of Indians, and so on. When the year is over, the
amount that has been accomplished by this incessant activity can hardly
be estimated. Individually it may not be much. But consider where
Chaucer would be but for the work of the Chaucer clubs, and what
an effect upon the universal progress of things is produced by the
associate concentration upon the poet of so many minds.

A cynic says that clubs and circles are for the accumulation of
superficial information and unloading it on others, without much
individual absorption in anybody. This, like all cynicism, contains
only a half-truth, and simply means that the general diffusion
of half-digested information does not raise the general level of
intelligence, which can only be raised to any purpose by thorough
self-culture, by assimilation, digestion, meditation. The busy bee is
a favorite simile with us, and we are apt to overlook the fact that
the least important part of his example is buzzing around. If the hive
simply got together and buzzed, or even brought unrefined treacle from
some cyclopaedia, let us say, of treacle, there would be no honey added
to the general store.

It occurred to some one in this talk at last to deny that there was
this tiresome monotony in American life. And this put a new face on
the discussion. Why should there be, with every race under the heavens
represented here, and each one struggling to assert itself, and no
homogeneity as yet established even between the people of the oldest
States? The theory is that democracy levels, and that the anxious
pursuit of a common object, money, tends to uniformity, and that
facility of communication spreads all over the land the same fashion
in dress; and repeats everywhere the same style of house, and that
the public schools give all the children in the United States the same
superficial smartness. And there is a more serious notion, that in a
society without classes there is a sort of tyranny of public opinion
which crushes out the play of individual peculiarities, without which
human intercourse is uninteresting. It is true that a democracy is
intolerant of variations from the general level, and that a new society
allows less latitude in eccentricities to its members than an old
society.

But with all these allowances, it is also admitted that the difficulty
the American novelist has is in hitting upon what is universally
accepted as characteristic