hunderbolt.

"I have no spleen," she replied, with a dignity of passion. "I have only
pity. I was as blind as you. If heartbreak tore the scales from my
eyes, perhaps that is well for me. For I see something terribly wrong in
myself, in you, in all of us, in the life of today."

"You keep your pity to yourself. You need it," answered Geralda, with
heat. "There's nothing wrong with me or my friends or life in good old
New York."

"Nothing wrong!" cried Carley. "Listen. Nothing wrong in you or life
today--nothing for you women to make right? You are blind as bats--as
dead to living truth as if you were buried. Nothing wrong when thousands
of crippled soldiers have no homes--no money--no friends--no work--in
many cases no food or bed?... Splendid young men who went away in their
prime to fight for you and came back ruined, suffering! Nothing wrong
when sane women with the vote might rid politics of partisanship, greed,
crookedness? Nothing wrong when prohibition is mocked by women--when the
greatest boon ever granted this country is derided and beaten down and
cheated? Nothing wrong when there are half a million defective children
in this city? Nothing wrong when there are not enough schools and
teachers to educate our boys and girls, when those teachers are
shamefully underpaid? Nothing wrong when the mothers of this great
country let their youngsters go to the dark motion picture halls and
night after night in thousands of towns over all this broad land see
pictures that the juvenile court and the educators and keepers of
reform schools say make burglars, crooks, and murderers of our boys and
vampires of our girls? Nothing wrong when these young adolescent girls
ape you and wear stockings rolled under their knees below their skirts
and use a lip stick and paint their faces and darken their eyes and
pluck their eyebrows and absolutely do not know what shame is? Nothing
wrong when you may find in any city women standing at street corners
distributing booklets on birth control? Nothing wrong when great
magazines print no page or picture without its sex appeal? Nothing wrong
when the automobile, so convenient for the innocent little run out
of town, presents the greatest evil that ever menaced American girls!
Nothing wrong when money is god--when luxury, pleasure, excitement,
speed are the striven for? Nothing wrong when some of your husbands
spend more of their time with other women than with you? Nothing wrong
with jazz