Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/21

 hood party recently, where there was dancing, and the very youngest generation was present, I was greatly flattered by receiving from Adelaide, a young lady of five years, marked attentions which on previous occasions had been directed to Bertram, a far more plausible person than I in all respects, and, moreover, only thrice the age of Adelaide. I said, 'I thought you were devoted to Bertram.' Instantly she replied: 'I was. But I am not interested in Bertram any longer. I know all about him.' At the age of five, don't you see, she has already begun to 'sip the foam of many lives.' I happened to be, shall I say, the coca-cola of the evening. But I know that I shall be sipped and discarded. Already Adelaide has become critical, fastidious, wary; she will not for long be taken in."

"Well?" again from Cornelia, with a hint of irritation.

"I mean to insist," I explained cautiously, "that such sentimentalists as you and I seldom do justice to the hard, clear-eyed maturity—of a sort—which our young people have attained by pooh-poohing our sentimentality and subjectivity and adopting what Santayana calls a simple 'animal faith' in the material surfaces of things."