Ethical 235 



three hundred days in the year, the school-houses 

 lack awnings and broad verandahs. Economy for- 

 bids, you reply. Not so. Most of these gimcrack 

 shanties are embellished with towers and cupolas. 

 The instinct for display manifests itself in crude 

 and vulgar decoration : friezes, panels, mouldings, 

 what in short the people themselves call — frills. 

 The moral effect of this upon the plastic minds of 

 the children is not to be ignored. The girls learn 

 to set an extravagant value upon appearance. Ask 

 the druggists of the Pacific Slope how much money 

 is spent by maidens not out of their teens upon 

 complexion washes, arsenic wafers, hair dyes, beauty 

 masks, bust developers, and — nose-machines ! 



In fine, the gentle art of pretending to be what you 

 are not is ardently pursued in the West, although, 

 like the will o' the wisp, it leads into quagmires. 



The teachers in the schools and the pastors of 

 the churches are not responsible for a condition of 

 affairs which they strive (for the most part in vain) 

 to ameliorate. Their efforts are handicapped by 

 public opinion which assigns them a place too low 

 in the social scale. In a new country, the inter- 

 preters of the spiritual lie beneath the heel of the 

 material. Nearly all the ministers of the gospel 

 are shockingly under-paid, and eating their bread 

 and butter subject to the caprice of a committee of 

 women. Above the head of the preacher impends 

 a tempestuous petticoat. 



The day must dawn when the men of the West 

 will see the necessity of exalting the ministers of 

 the gospel above the ignominies of work-a-day life. 

 Now, they (the ministers) are constrained to beg, 



