Page:Counter-currents, Agnes Repplier, 1916.djvu/24

Counter-Currents slighted creature that he was a half-century ago. He meets with the most distinguished consideration, and he is always accorded the first hearing in print and on the platform. He commands our respect when he deals soberly with sober facts in sober language, when his conclusions are just, his statements irrefutable. He is less praiseworthy when he flies to fiction, an agreeable but unconvincing medium; or to verse, which, as the theologian said of "Paradise Lost," "proves nothing." It is very good verse sometimes, and its grace of sentiment, its note of appeal, find an easy echo in the reader's heart.

A little poem called "The Factories," published in "McClure's Magazine" for September, 1912, gives an almost perfect example of the modern point of view, of the emotional treatment of an economic question, and of the mental confusion which arises from the substitution of sympathy for exactness. 8