thoughts.

"It doesn't seem right, does it," said she, "that so many--almost
everybody--should have to work so hard just to get enough to eat and to
wear and a place to sleep, when there's so much of everything in the
world--and when a few like us don't have to work at all and have much
more than they need, simply because one happened to be born in such or
such conditions. I suppose it's got to be so, but it certainly looks
unjust--and silly."

"I'm not sure the workers haven't the best of it," replied Arthur. "They
have the dinner; we have only the dessert; and I guess one gets tired of
only desserts, no matter how great the variety."

"It's a stupid world in lots of ways, isn't it?"

"Not so stupid as it used to be, when everybody said and thought it was
as good as possible," replied he. "You see, it's the people in the world
that make it stupid. For instance, do you suppose you and I, or anybody,
would care for idling about and doing all sorts of things our better
judgment tells us are inane, if it weren't that most of our fellow-beings
are stupid enough to admire and envy that sort of thing, and that we are
stupid enough to want to be admired and envied by stupid people?"

"Did you notice the Sandys's English butler?" asked Adelaide.

"_Did_ I? I'll bet he keeps every one in the Sandys family up to
the mark."

"That's it," continued Adelaide. "He's a poor creature, dumb and
ignorant. He knows only one thing--snobbishness. Yet every one of us was
in terror of his opinion. No doubt kings feel the same way about the
people around them. Always what's expected of us--and by whom? Why, by
people who have little sense and less knowledge. They run the world,
don't they?"

"As Dory Hargrave says," said her brother, "the only scheme for making
things better that's worth talking about is raising the standards of the
masses because their standards are ours. We'll be fools and unjust as
long as they'll let us. And they'll let us as long as they're ignorant."

By inheritance Arthur and Adelaide had excellent minds, shrewd and with
that cast of humor which makes for justice of judgment by mocking at the
solemn frauds of interest and prejudice. But, as is often the case with
the children of the rich and the well-to-do, there had been no necessity
for either to use intellect; their parents and hirelings of various
degrees, paid with their father's generously given money, had done their
thinking for them. The whole of anima