stock reports."

"Well--I think people who have planned as exactly as you and Mr.
Constantine have planned always banish real principle at the start.
After a time you are punished by having an almost fungous growth of
sickly conscience--you don't want to face the truth of things, yet
isolated incidents, sentimental memories, certain sights and definite
statements annoy, haunt, heartbreak you! Still, you have lost your
principle, the backbone of the soul, and the fungus-like growth of
conscience is such a clumsy imitation--like a paper rose stuck in the
ground. Mr. Constantine's type--your type--is flourishing and
multiplying among us, I fear, and such are the wishbone, or sickly
conscience, and not the backbone, or sterling principle, of the
nation. After all, fortunes alone do not make real gentility--thanks
be! But you know as well as I that all the--the Gorgeous Girls and
their kind and you and I and the next chap we meet belong to the great
majority, and of that we have every right to be proud.

"Furthermore, we ought to hold to our place in the social scheme and
be the backbone of the nation, keep our principle and not be nagged
eternally by a sickly conscience after we have gone and sold our
birthrights. Gorgeous Girls and their sort have the sole fortification
of dollars, endless dollars, endless price tags; their whims bring
whole wings of foreign castles floating across the ocean by the
wholesale to be reassembled somewhere in good old helpless Illinois or
New Jersey. And these people try to be everything but good old
American stock--which is quite wrong, for their example causes
spendthrifts and Bolsheviki to flourish without end."

"Go on," he said, almost sulkily, as she paused.

"I've watched it for thirteen years from the various angles of the
working girl with an average amount of brain and disposition. When all
is said and done you really have to work before you have earned the
right to pass judgment--work--not read or patronize or take someone
else's statements as final. Do you know how I used to identify the
kinds of people that rode in the street cars with me?... From seven
until eight there were the Frumps. The majority boasted of white kid
boots or someone's discarded near-electric-seal jacket, plumes in
their hats, and an absence of warm woollens. And everyone yawned,
between patting thin cheeks with soiled face chamois, 'What d'ja do
las' night?'

"From eight to nine came the Funnies; and t