Page:Points of View (1924).pdf/226



I have no high expectation regarding Babbitt's son. He gives as little promise as his father of capacity for finding delight in the things of the mind. The daughter may conceivably become an interesting individual, perhaps only an intense and difficult one.

Babbitt is not a representation of the highest American standards of morals and manners. But neither is The Rise of Silas Lapham nor Huckleberry Finn nor Henry James's The American. Neither is Vanity Fair a representation of the highest standards of morals and manners in England, nor is David Copperfield, nor Pride and Prejudice. It is not the business of the realistic novelist nor dramatist to confine his studies to those small and isolated spots in which the society of his contemporaries approaches perfection. To propose such an aim is absurd. A jury of award which accepted it would at once be obliged to exclude from its consideration