Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/213

 example, we are told that, "Into her workaday mind came a low light from the fire which was kindling the world; the dual belief that life is too sacred to be taken in war and filthy industries and dull education; and that most forms and organizations and inherited castes are not sacred at all." Now, to the intelligent mind there is really nothing less perturbing than the emergence, in classes and individuals, of intelligence and taste, bestirring themselves, in an imperfectly adjusted world, to seek their own level. That kind of unrest does not destroy, it creates, the "divine order." The unrest of girls like Una Golden is the hope of the middle-class; and the middle-class, Mr. John Corbin has just assured us, is the hope of our society. From the time of the Rape of the Sabines to the time of Samuel Clemens there has been a danger, in unsettled societies, that social bandits would dash in from the border and carry off the carefully nurtured daughters of "first families." That danger is the spice of life in a democracy, which offers no more kindling incentive to its undiscovered talents than admission, after due ordeals and the probation of a generation or two, into its first families. I for one regret to observe that our ancient custom of assuring every schoolboy of his right to hope for the Presidency is falling into desuetude—without the slightest visible reason why it should. A novelist who inspires the Younger Generation by reviving this and kindred conceptions of democratic oppor-