Page:Americans and others.djvu/229

 room. But we are supposed to discuss topics of the day, and Dante happened some little while ago. He has no bearing upon aviation, or National Insurance Bills (that is our subject next Monday night); but he is brimming over with ethics, and it is the duty of your precious Ethical Society to grapple with him exhaustively. I always wondered what took you to that strange substitute for church; but now I see in it the hand of Providence pointing the way to Miss Ramsay's lecture field. Please persuade your fellow Ethicals that four lectures—or even one lecture—on Dante will be what Alice Hunt calls an "uplift." I feel that I must try and find an opening for Hannah's protégée, because she helped me with Fräulein Breitenbach's concert last winter,—a circumstance she does not lightly permit me to forget. Did I say, "May Heaven forgive her" for saddling me with this Scotch schoolmaster's daughter? Well, I take back that devout 215