ly defrauded." The reader was silent for a
while, and then he said: "I wonder if anybody except the choreographic
composer ever knew what the story of any ballet was? Were you ever able
to follow it?"

"Certainly not. It is bad enough following the opera. All that one
wishes to do in one case is to look, just as in the other case all one
wishes to do is to listen. We would as lief try to think out the full
meaning of a Browning poem in the pleasure it gave us, as to mix our joy
in the opera or the ballet with any severe question of their purport."

VI

THE SUPERIORITY OF OUR INFERIORS

The satirical reader introduced himself with a gleam in his eye which
kindled apprehension in the unreal editor's breast, and perhaps roused
in him a certain guilty self-consciousness.

"I didn't know," the reader said, "that you were such a well-appointed
_arbiter elegantiarum_."

"Meaning our little discourse last month on the proper form of
addressing letters?" the editor boldly grappled with the insinuation.
"Oh yes; etiquette is part of our function. We merely hadn't got round
to the matter before. You liked our remarks?"

"Very much," our visitor said, with the fine irony characteristic of
him. "All the more because I hadn't expected that sort of thing of you.
What I have expected of you hitherto was something more of the major
morality."

"But the large-sized morals did not enter into that scheme. We deal at
times with the minor morality, too, if the occasion demands, as we have
suggested. You should not have been surprised to find politeness, as
well as righteousness, advocated or applauded here. Naturally, of
course, we prefer the larger-sized morals as questions for discussion.
Had you one of the larger-sized questions of morality to present?"

"I was thinking it was a larger-sized question of manners."

"For example."

"The experience of one of those transatlantic celebrities who seem to be
rather multiplying upon us of late, and who come here with a
proclamation of their worship of American women ready to present, as if
in print, to the swarming interviewers on the pier, and who then proceed
to find fault with our civilization on every other point, almost before
they drive up to their hotels."

"But isn't that rather an old story?"

"I suppose it is rather old, but it always interests us; we are never
free from that longing for a flattered appearance in the eyes of others
which we so seldom achieve. Th