nds at the Whipple
New Place. There was Emmanuel Schilsky, who talked more pithily than
Merle and who would be the editor-in-chief of the projected _New Dawn_.
Emmanuel, too, had come from his far-off home to flush America's
spiritual darkness with a new light. He had written much about our
shortage of genuine spiritual values; about "the continual frustrations
and aridities of American life." He was a member of various groups--the
Imagist group, the Egoist group, the Sphericists, other groups piquantly
named; versed in the new psychology, playing upon the word "pragmatism"
as upon a violin.

Sharon Whipple, the Philistine, never quite knew whether pragmatism was
approved or condemned by Schilsky, and once he asked the dark-faced
young man what it meant. He was told that pragmatism was a method, and
felt obliged to pretend that this enlightened him. He felt a reluctant
respect for Schilsky, who could make him feel uncomfortable.

And there was the colourful, youngish widow, Mrs. Truesdale, who wrote
free verse about the larger intimacies of life, and dressed noticeably.
She would be a contributing editor of the _New Dawn_, having as her
special department the release of woman from her age-long slavery to
certain restraints that now made her talked unpleasantly about if she
dared give her soul free rein. This lady caused Sharon to wonder about
the departed Truesdale.

"Was he carried away by sorrowing friends," asked Sharon, "or did he get
tired one day and move off under his own power?" No one ever enlightened
him.

Others of the younger intelligentzia came under his biased notice. He
spoke of them as "a rabble rout," who lived in a mad world--"and God
bless us out of it."

But Sharon timed his criticism discreetly, and the _New Dawn_ lit its
pure white flame--a magazine to refresh the elect. Placed superbly
beyond the need of catering to advertisers, it would adhere to rigorous
standards of the true, the beautiful. It would tell the truth as no
other magazine founded on gross commercialism would dare to do. It said
so in well-arranged words. The commercial magazines full well knew the
hideous truth, but stifled it for hire. The _New Dawn_ would be honest.

The sinister truth about America as revealed in the initial number of
the brave new venture was that America was crude, blatant, boastful,
vulgar, and money-grubbing. We were without ideals beyond the dollar;
without desires save those to be glutted by materia