he majority had white kid
boots and flimsy silk frocks cut as low as our grandmothers' party
gowns, and plumes in their hats and silver vanity cases. Their main
topics of conversation were: 'He said,' and 'She said,' and 'I don't
care if I'm late. I'm going to quit anyway!'

"From nine until noon came the Frills--the wives of modest-salaried
men who cannot motor, yet write to out-of-town relatives that they do
so.

"And every one of those Frumps, Funnies, and Frills apes the
Gorgeous-Girl kind--white kids for shopping, low-cut pumps in January,
bizarre coat, chiffon waist disclosing a thin little neck fairly
panting for protection, rouged cheeks, and a plume in her hat--and not
a cent of savings in the bank!

"Now there's something wrong when we've come to this, and the wrong
does not lie with these people but with those they imitate--Gorgeous
Girls, new-rich with sickly consciences and lack of principle and
common sense; and these Gorgeous Girls in turn take their styles,
slang phrases, and modes of recreation, as well as theories of life
from the boldest dancer, the most sensational chorus girl--and it's
wrong and not what America should be called upon to endure. And
it all reverts back in a sense to you busy, unprincipled, yet
conscience-stricken American business men who write checks for these
Gorgeous Girls--and the heathen in Africa--and wonder why golf doesn't
bring your blood pressure down to normal--when your grandfather had
such a wonderful constitution at eighty-four! Don't you know that
get-rich-quick people always pay a usurer's interest on the suddenly
accumulated principle?"

"Keep on," he said in the same surly tone.

"And when I go downtown and view the weary, unwashed females and the
overly ambitious painted ones, people in impossible bargain shoes and
summer furs; fat men in plaid suits and Alpine hats; undernourished
children being dragged along by unthinking adults; stray dogs
wistfully sniffing at passers-by in hopes of finding a permanent
friend; tired, blind work horses standing in the sun and resignedly
being overloaded for the day's haul; fire sales of fur coats; candy
sales of gooey hunks; a jewellery special of earrings warranted to
betray no tarnish until well after Christmas; brokers' ads and
vaudeville billboards and rows upon rows of awful, huddled-up,
gardenless homes with families lodged somewhere between the first and
twelfth stories--the general chasing after nothing, saving no