nd money on themselves, in making their bodies free and strong and
beautiful. But no; they would rather have a stylish dress than a
graceful body. They don't care to be beautiful themselves; all they
want is a handsome gown to cover their ugliness.' Isn't it strange
that we never seemed able to realize that the Greek fashions were
immortal because they were beautiful?"

"Still, I don't think the dress of the Greek women would be very
convenient for housework," ventured Adam.

Robin shook her head. "You only say that because some woman has said
it to you. The Diana of the Stag wore the first rainy-day gown. The
Greek dress was capable of ever so many modifications. If I were
making a handbook of proverbs for women, I should say, 'A good
complexion is rather to be chosen than many fine dresses, and glossy
and abundant hair turneth away wrath.' I believe in the simplification
of life. I understand just how Thoreau felt when he threw out that
specimen because it had to be dusted daily. There are very few things
beautiful enough to pay for that amount of trouble. But perhaps that
is because I don't care for specimens, and I loathe dusting."

"You ought to have been a Jap," said Adam. "There was one in college,
in my class, and one day when I was fretting over something I could
not afford he said, in that immensely polite way of theirs, 'You I
cannot understand. With all American people it so is, even as by
Ruskin said was it; whatever you have, of it you more would get, and
where you are, you would go from. You happy are only when something
you get, and never that you yourself are.' But I think the Celestial
was wrong there. When a man is self-conscious of illy-made garments, a
mean domicile, a poor kind of half education, he is uncomfortable; he
hasn't accomplished his evolution from the conscious, the
self-conscious, to the unconscious. It was this very discomfort and
inequality that used so to enrage me, for it need not have been."

"I wish," said Robin, "we knew how to make paper; of all the
fascinating things in Bellamy's 'Equality,' there was nothing I liked
so well as the idea of paper garments, to be burned when one got
through with them. Think of never having any washing and ironing, and
always having new clothes."

"I wonder whether we could invent some of those things over again,"
said Adam, reflectively.

"I couldn't spare you any of my precious rags, if you could," said
Robin.

"Most of the paper was ma