Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/139

 swimmers and that vulgar display of limbs in the newspapers."

"Cornelia," I said, "you use the word 'nice' too much; you overwork it. Your son told me the other day that, whenever he mentions a new girl acquaintance in your presence, you have only one question about her: 'Is she nice?' 'It gets on my nerves,' he says, 'to hear that everlasting: Is she nice?—Is she nice?—Is she nice?—till I don't care whether she is nice or not; and I feel like saying, No, she is horrid; but she sings like an angel, and she dances like a wave, and she makes a sparkling quip, and she has brains of her own, and she is attractive, and she is reasonable, and she is a good sport, and she doesn't squall when we get caught in the rain. I don't go around asking girls whether they are nice. How should I know? Mother means well and is perfectly fine herself, and all that. But somehow, you know, it strikes me as kind of nasty for a fellow to be always thinking whether a girl is nice.' And there, my dear Cornelia, you get a bit of the spirit of the younger generation, which is, I think, essentially sounder and healthier than the perpetual incensing of 'purity' by some earlier generations."

"In what way is it sounder and healthier?"