Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/216

Counter-Currents with Mr. Lowell at the men and women who, while accepting our hospitality, "make no secret of regarding us as the goose bound to deliver them a golden egg in return for their cackle." That they should not hesitate to come without equipment, without experience, without even a fitness for their task, seems to us perfectly natural. Perhaps they have written books which none of us have read, or edited periodicals which none of us have seen. Perhaps they have known celebrities of whom few of us have heard. It does not matter in the least. From the days when Miss Rose Kingsley came to tell us the worth of French art (does not the ocean roll between New York and Paris?), to the days when Mrs. Pankhurst came to tell us the worth of womanhood (does not the ocean roll between Boston Common and Hyde Park?), we have listened patiently, and paid generously, and received scant courtesy for our pains. "I find it so strange," said an Englishman 200