"Pickle your own feet while they are cheap and clean."

* * *

OPINION CONCURRED IN.

Sir: My heart with pleasure filled when I saw that Riquarius quoted it
as I always want to do, "with rapture fills." While I realized it is the
height of presumption to think I could improve on Wordsworth, don't you
agree with me that rapture is more expressive than pleasure?

Jay Aye.

"Rapture" might be preferred for another reason: the accent falls on a
stronger syllable. Suppose George Meredith had used "pleasure" in his
lines--

"Lasting, too,
For souls not lent in usury,
The rapture of the forward view."

Every good poet has left lines that could be bettered for another ear.
Probably Wordsworth leads the list.

* * *

TRANSCENDENTAL CALM.

Sir: Remember the story about Theodore Parker and Emerson? While they
were walking in Concord a Seventh Day Adventist rushed up to them and
said, "Gentlemen, the world is coming to an end." Parker said, "That
doesn't affect me; I live in Boston." Emerson said, "Very well. I can
get along without it."

E. H. R.

* * *

So the President has been converted to universal military training--as a
war measure. Better late than never, as Noah remarked to the Zebra,
which had understood that passengers arrived in alphabetical order.

* * *

THIS REFERS, OF COURSE, TO FRANCE.

[From Faguet's "Cult of Incompetence."]

Democracy has the greatest inducement to elect representatives who are
representative, who, in the first place, resemble it as closely as
possible, who, in the second place, have no individuality of their own,
who, finally, having no fortune of their own, have no sort of
independence. We deplore that democracy surrenders itself to
politicians, but from its own point of view, a point of view which it
cannot avoid taking up, it is absolutely right. What is a politician? He
is a man who, in respect of his personal opinions, is a nullity, in
respect of education a mediocrity; he shares the general sentiments and
passions of the crowds, his sole occupation is politics, and if that
career were closed to him he would die of starvation. He is precisely
the thing of which democracy has need. He will never be led away by his
education to develop ideas of his own; and, having no ideas of his own,
he will not allow th