WHAT THE OLD SOUTH CAN TEACH U8 



271 



ANOTHER ANTE-BELLUM HOME IN THE SOUTH 



saving tools, railroads and other means of 

 communication, such as the electric tele- 

 graph and telephone, and electrical appli- 

 ances generall}^, are not matched by a 

 mental, spiritual and esthetic progress. 

 The activities have outgrown the finer 

 things of life. The body has out-flour- 

 ished the soul. The course taken by our 

 civilization since the war has been toward 

 developing and perfecting the material 

 contents of life; whereas the culture, the 

 mind and heart, the esthetic and ethical 

 nature of our people themselves have by 

 no means progressed in the same degree. 

 It has been a vulgar struggle, a spirit of 

 plutocracy, in which, by slangy phrase, we 

 are told to "join the procession,^' to "be 

 alive," "hustle," "catch on," "get there, 

 Eli." What was finest and best in the old 

 Southern, colonial regime has been elim- 

 inated to make room for the materialistic 

 spirit, and a very disagreeable atmosphere 

 has been created for people who value the 

 higher things of life more than money 

 and vulgar display. 



We have drifted into materialism, a 

 mere struggle for wealth. Money, the al- 

 mighty dollar, is the circle within which 



everything moves, the center around which 

 everything revolves. This is our aristoc- 

 racy, the altar at which we bow, the pur- 

 pose for which we are educated and live. 

 All else, we are told, is mere sentiment, 

 romance, impractical, "a back number." 

 Inventions, machinery, the forms of com- 

 merce and of finance, industrial training 

 — all these forms of life have developed 

 to an unprecedented degree; yet no one 

 will assert that the mind, the soul, of our 

 people has been thereby correspondingly 

 refined, uplifted and spiritually enriched. 

 The real refinement of living does not go 

 along with this mad rush — certainly has 

 not kept pace with it. The refinement, 

 manners and culture of today cannot com- 

 pare favorably with those of former times ; 

 and it is certain that intellectual and so- 

 cial life generally has not reached so high 

 a level as in the old colonial and old aiite- 

 hellum days. The American genius for 

 beauty, culture, refinement and the fine 

 arts has not kept pace with the advance 

 of a mighty material progress. 



Is humanity to be measured by wealth, 

 by power, by material prosperity? We 

 are told to get rich, to fight, to win the 



