that of a fool.

John Muir, the eminent poet-naturalist of the _Mountains of
California_, had a habit at the table of "crumming" his bread--that
is, toying with it, until it crumbled to pieces in his hand. He
would, at the same time, be sending out a steady stream of the most
entertaining, interesting, fascinating, and instructive lore about
birds and beasts, trees and flowers, glaciers and rocks, that one
ever listened to. In his mental occupancy, he knew not whether he was
eating his soup with a fork or an ice-cream spoon--and cares less.
Neither did any one else with brains and an awakened mind that soared
above mere conventional manners. And yet I once had an Eastern woman
of great wealth, (recently acquired), and of great pretensions to
social "manners," at whose table Muir had eaten, inform me that she
regarded him as a rude boor, because, forsooth, he was unmindful
of these trivial and unimportant conventions when engaged in
conversation.

Now, neither Wagner nor Muir would justify any advocacy on my part of
neglect of true consideration, courtesy, or good manners. But where
is the "lack of breeding" in sopping up gravy with a piece of bread or
"crumming," or eating soup with a spoon of one shape or another? These
are purely arbitrary rules, laid down by people who have more time
than sense, money than brains, and who, as I have elsewhere remarked,
are far more anxious to preserve the barand unimportant conventions
when engaged in conive realization of the biblical idea of the
"brotherhood of man."

CHAPTER XIX

THE WORRIES OF JEALOUSY

A prolific source of worry is jealousy; not only the jealousy that
exists between men and women, but that exists between women and women,
and between men and men. There are a thousand forms that this hideous
monster of evil assumes, and when they have been catalogued and
classified, another thousand will be found awaiting, around the
corner, of entirely different categories. But all alike they have
one definite origin, one source, one cause. And that cause, I am
convinced, is selfishness. We wish to own, to dominate, to control,
absolutely, entirely, for our own pleasure, and satisfaction, that of
which we are jealous. In Chapter One I tell the incident of the young
man on the street car whose jealous worry was so manifest when he
saw his "girl" smiling upon another man. I suppose most men and women
feel, or have felt, at some time or other, this sex jealousy. That