has had
its wings clipped so often lately that its part was timidly negligible,
and they haven't any good writers any more. I'm sick of Chesterton.

I've only discovered one soldier who passed through the much-advertised
spiritual crisis, like this fellow, Donald Hankey, and the one I knew
was already studying for the ministry, so he was ripe for it. I honestly
think that's all pretty much rot, though it seemed to give sentimental
comfort to those at home; and may make fathers and mothers appreciate
their children. This crisis-inspired religion is rather valueless and
fleeting at best. I think four men have discovered Paris to one that
discovered God.

But us--you and me and Alec--oh, we'll get a Jap butler and dress for
dinner and have wine on the table and lead a contemplative, emotionless
life until we decide to use machine-guns with the property owners--or
throw bombs with the Bolshevik God! Tom, I hope something happens. I'm
restless as the devil and have a horror of getting fat or falling in
love and growing domestic.

The place at Lake Geneva is now for rent but when I land I'm going West
to see Mr. Barton and get some details. Write me care of the Blackstone,
Chicago.

S'ever, dear Boswell,

SAMUEL JOHNSON.

BOOK TWO--The Education of a Personage

CHAPTER 1. The Debutante

The time is February. The place is a large, dainty bedroom in the
Connage house on Sixty-eighth Street, New York. A girl's room: pink
walls and curtains and a pink bedspread on a cream-colored bed. Pink and
cream are the motifs of the room, but the only article of furniture
in full view is a luxurious dressing-table with a glass top and a
three-sided mirror. On the walls there is an expensive print of "Cherry
Ripe," a few polite dogs by Landseer, and the "King of the Black Isles,"
by Maxfield Parrish.

Great disorder consisting of the following items: (1) seven or eight
empty cardboard boxes, with tissue-paper tongues hanging panting from
their mouths; (2) an assortment of street dresses mingled with their
sisters of the evening, all upon the table, all evidently new; (3) a
roll of tulle, which has lost its dignity and wound itself tortuously
around everything in sight, and (4) upon the two small chairs, a
collection of lingerie that beggars description. One would enjoy seeing
the bill called forth by the finery displayed and one is possessed by
a desire to see the princes