Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/66

 elders appointed for unchastity; but they have not shown the moderns capable of dodging the stench of a disintegrated personality, which fumes in their books like a last irreducible hell. To safeguard the innocency of your son and daughter, I incline to believe that one whiff from these caverns might be as potent as Heine's prayer. Consciously or not, these novelists are preparing a counter-revolution."

"What direction, pray, will that take?" inquired Cornelia, to whom God has beautifully denied ability to follow such an argument.

"I shall not prophesy in detail," I said, looking down the slope towards the tennis court. "Is your contribution to the Younger Generation in that match?"

"Yes," she replied, "and isn't it delightful to see how keen they are about it?"

"It is. It indicates to me one of the directions of the counter-revolution. Historians in the future, surveying the monuments of our children's time, are going to refer to this as the beginning of the great age of stadium-building in America. They will see in this movement a religious significance, not yet visible to us; and they will expatiate in glowing terms on the period when, with extrava-