SUMMER 99 



bring your favorite hippopotamus into the 

 house, leave off a crinoline or bustle when 

 those horrors are rife, and whew ! the gab- 

 ble and the scolding ! The laws laid down 

 by Mrs. Grundy are the most stringent 

 of all laws. Shall we ever wake up and do 

 our own thinking ? Let loose a Luther, 

 or Bellamy, or Marx, and what a coil ! 

 Because they tell something that the others 

 have not told. How afraid we have been 

 of science, because its facts disagree with 

 the whimsies we have been expecting it 

 to prove ! We ought to love a revolution- 

 ist, even one of destructive theories, be- 

 cause he puts life enough into us to make 

 us complain, at all events. 



Look at the superstitions that have laid 

 hold on us superstitions about wealth 

 and society, and other superstitions about 

 equality ; superstitions about secret frater- 

 nities and spring medicine, equinoctial 

 storms and amber beads, goose-bones, 

 Bhagavat Gitas, unlucky Fridays, and night 

 air. Superstition is a roundabout process 

 of false reasoning; and it is harder to reason 

 falsely than right ; yet see how we keep on 



