ers among them, it was only incidentally that they
cared about that. They satisfied nature in a routine way, outside office
hours. No special excitement about it. Nothing hectic--or magical.

Now, sex is a fundamental state and concern of existence: it's a primary
matter. If it's pushed to one side, we at least should be careful what
does it. And religion, too, God or no God, is a primary matter, if we
stretch the word to cover all the spiritual gropings of man. Yet what is
it that pushes these two great things aside in America? What makes them
subordinate? Business. We put business first.

And what is this business? What is the charm of this giant who engrosses
us so? In Tarkington's novel you find yourself in a town of neighborly
people, in the middle west somewhere; a leisurely and kindly
place--home-like, it used to be called. But in the hearts of these
people was implanted a longing for size. They wished that town to grow.
So it did. (We can all have our wishes.) And with its new bigness came
an era of machinery and rush. "The streets began to roar and rattle, the
houses to tremble, the pavements were worn under the tread of hurrying
multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look of the faces was lost in
something harder and warier."

"You don't know what it means, keepin' property together these days,"
says one of them. "I tell you when a man dies the wolves come out of the
woods, pack after pack ... and if that dead man's children ain't on the
job, night and day, everything he built'll get carried off.... My Lord!
when I think of such things coming to _me_! It don't seem like I
deserved it--no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I
have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to be guards
to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build
bigger.... What's the use of my havin' worked my life and soul into my
business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed and scattered, soon as I'm
in the ground?"

* * * * *

Poor old business! It does look pretty sordid. Yet there is a soul in
this giant. Consider its power to call forth the keenness in men and to
give endless zest to their toil and sharp trials to their courage. It is
grimy, shortsighted, this master--but it has greatness, too.

Only, as we all know, it does push so much else to one side! Love,
spiritual gropings, the arts, our old closeness to nature, the
independent outlook and dis