have fed and vitalised him, and stretched his poor withered imagination
across the fair fields of youth's summer years. Believe me, the
humanitarian's calling seems stupid from your point of view because you
are born five hundred years before your time. When the Hull-House
principles have abolished the poor and the rich, and have transplanted the
whole human race far and wide over the hills and valleys of this earth,
then will be time enough for the spiritual luxury of such teachings as
yours.

The last batch of books has come, Creelman's novel, _Eagle Blood_, among
them. Evidently it is a story written to prove the intellectual and
commercial ascendency of Americans over mere Anglo-Saxons. The heroine and
a few romantic details are thrown in as a bait to the "average reader."
Alas for the "average reader"! How many crimes of this sort are committed
in his name! We can never hope to have a worthy literature until he has
been eliminated from the consciousness of those who make it. In the days
when he was not to be reckoned with, and men wrote for a very few
appreciative admirers and some desperately cruel critics, then Carlyle
began to swear at his "forty-million fool," and so attracted their
attention, and ever since we have had them with us, forty-million average
readers, calling for excitement and amusement. It is this same
"forty-million fool" who has made historical romances an inexhaustible
source of revenue to the writers of them. For he is naive, and has never
suspected the real dime-novel character of such fiction. Can you not get
some one to write an article outlining a plan by which the "average
reader" may be abolished?

XX

PHILIP TO JESSICA

DEAR JESSICA:

I will not for any consideration of custom put such a breach between my
dreams and reality as to go on addressing you in the old formal way. It
will be idle to protest; I have bought the privilege with a great price;
nay, I have even bought you, and no outcry of your rebel will shall ever
redeem you from this bondage to my hopes. One thing I know: there is no
power in all the world equal to love, and he who has this power may win
through every opposition. And was ever a man in such a position as mine?
Others have been compelled to overcome a prejudice against what was base
or unworthy in themselves, but I am forced to defend myself for my best
heritage of understanding. Would it help me in your esteem if I flung away
all my hard-won philoso