Page:Hermione and her little group of serious thinkers (1923, c1916).djvu/170

Hermione We're going to take up Mars soon.

Mamma said to me only yesterday: "Hermione, you simply must drop some of your serious subjects during the hot weather."

"Mamma," I told her, "that was all very well in your day—to take things up and drop them at will. But people didn't have a Social Conscience in those times. We advanced thinkers owe a duty to the race. We must grapple with things. We are not content to frivol, I will take up Mars!"

And, you know, I don't have the temperament to remain idle. My mind must be active. Sometimes when I think how active my mind is, I wonder my forehead isn't wrinkled.

And of course that would be a loss—anything is a loss that destroys Beauty.

For, after all, Beauty is what the world needs more than anything else. It's a serious thought—how far Use should be sacrificed to Beauty, and Beauty to Use, isn't it?

You know that's why I can't join the suffragists. I am one, of course, but that suffragist yellow is such a horrid color I simply cannot wear it.