FIGHTING THE INSECTS 



large cities. But there are thousands and thousands of them who 

 have simply taken the small town life into the cities. And it 

 must be said that there are many city-bred people who seem to 

 prefer or at least do confine their social activities to the simple 

 church life, somewhat like that of the little towns. Perhaps this 

 is best all around, but I confess to a not unmalicious enjoyment 

 of a passage in a letter received recently from a New York friend 

 who found herself temporarily and more or less accidentally in 

 contact with such an environment, and who is still young: 



"Anyone who thinks that good, smug, virtuous young people 

 are no longer extant should see that bunch up there— some five 

 hundred of them, under thirty-five, women and men, and all 

 of them vitally interested in the church and all of them spending 

 most of their time at the church. Every evening in the week is 

 alive with some activity and swarming with people. They are 

 all half-baked and without any background and rather blind, 

 but nice. New York as I know it, or as you know it, or as any- 

 one I've ever known knows it, doesn't exist for them. To me 

 they are a brand new chapter and as such interesting, and they 

 were very nice to me. I felt like a pilgrim in a far land, and I 

 wonder if I seemed as unique to them as they to me. They don't 

 smoke or drink. After their activities in the church they fore- 

 gather at a restaurant on Broadway, where the upper floor is 

 reserved for the 'Guild,' and eat ice cream (vanilla) and drink 

 lemonade and sing the good old songs in loud voices and off the 

 key. The men are rather handsome and the girls, most of them, 

 pretty, and they look like other people, but they aren't. There is 

 a certain blank quality in them on which I can't put my finger. 

 It is a little the same quality that one feels in most clergymen." 



Of course my friend who wrote this is much younger than I 

 am and didn't have the "advantages" of my early education, and 

 I wonder whether the people she describes are not happier than 

 she is. 



[24] 



