elves. We may observe, for
instance, a quietly and tastefully dressed woman reading, we will say,
Laura Jean Libbey. We are disconcerted, and the effect is depressing. But
the discrepancy may arise in either of two ways. If we have here a person
formerly possessing good taste both in dress and reading, whose taste in
the latter regard has deteriorated, we certainly have cause for sadness;
but if, as is much more likely, we have one who had formerly bad taste of
both kinds and whose taste in dress has improved, we should rather
rejoice. The argument is the same whether the change has taken place in
the same generation or in more than one. Our masses are moving upward and
the progress along the more material lines is often more rapid than in
matters of the intellect. Or, on the contrary, intellectual progress may
be in advance of manners. Such discrepancies are frequently commented upon
by foreign travelers in the United States, who almost invariably
misinterpret them in the same way. Can we blame them, when we make the
same mistake ourselves? M. Jules Huret, in his recent interesting book "En
Amerique," notes frequently the lapses in manners and taste of educated
persons among us. He describes, for instance, the bad table-manners of a
certain clergyman. His thought is evidently, "How shocking that a
clergyman should act in this way!" But we might also put it: "How
admirable that professional education in this country is so easily
obtained that one of a class in which such manners prevail can secure it!
How encouraging that he should desire to enter the ministry and succeed in
doing so!" These are extreme standpoints; we need of course endorse
neither of them. But when I find that on the upper west side of New York,
where the patrons of our branch libraries are largely the wives and
daughters of business men with good salaries, whose general scale of
living is high, the percentage of fiction circulated is unduly great, I do
not say, as I am tempted to do "How surprising and how discouraging that
persons of such apparent cultivation should read nothing but fiction, and
that not of the highest grade!" I say rather: "What an evidence it is of
our great material prosperity that persons in an early stage of mental
development, as evidenced by undue preference for narrative in literature,
are living in such comfort or even luxury!"

Is not this the right way to look at it? I confess that I can see no
reason for despairing of the