" The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court
asks the President-elect whether he will be faithful to the Constitution
and the laws of the United States, and the President-elect invariably
says that he will. The candidate for American citizenship is asked
whether he hereby renounces allegiance to foreign kings, emperors, and
potentates, and fervently responds that he does. When I took my medical
examination for a life-insurance policy, the physician asked me whether
I suffered from asthma, bronchitis, calculus, dementia, erysipelas, and
several score other afflictions, and, without waiting for an answer, he
wrote "No" opposite every disease.

Whenever I think of the world and the world's opinion, I think of Mrs.
Harrington in whom I see the world typified. Now Mrs. Harrington is
inconceivable in a scheme where the proper reply to every question is
not as thoroughly established as the rule for the proper use of forks
at dinner. In the presence of an unfamiliar reply to a familiar question
Mrs. Harrington is suspicious and uneasy. She scents either a joke or an
insult; and we are all Mrs. Harrington. If you were to ask a stranger
whom did he consider the greatest playwright of all times and, instead
of Shakespeare or Moliere, he were to say Racine, it would be as if one
were to ask him whether he took tea or coffee for breakfast and he said
arsenic. It would be as though you asked your neighbour what he thought
of a beautiful sunset and he said he did not like it. It would be as if
I were to say to Mrs. Harrington, "Well, I suppose I have stayed quite
long enough," and she were to say, "Yes, I think you had better be
going."

V

THE MIND TRIUMPHANT

One night after dinner I quoted for Harding the following sentence from
an address by President Lowell of Harvard: "The most painful defect in
the American College at the present time is the lack of esteem for
excellence in scholarship." Thereupon Harding recalled what some one had
said on a related subject: "Athleticism is rooted in an exaggerated
spirit of intercollegiate rivalry and a publicity run mad."

That night Harding dreamt the following:

_From the Harvard "Crimson" for October 8, 1937:_

"Twenty-five thousand men, women, and children in the Stadium yesterday
broke into a delirium of cheers when the Cambridge team in Early
English Literature won its fourth successive victory over Yale. Both
sides were trained to the minute, h