Hermione and Her Little Group of Serious Thinkers/Sympathy
SYMPATHY
OF course, we're out of town for the summer—everybody's out of town, now—but I motor in once or twice a week to keep in touch with some of my committees.
Sociological work, for instance, keeps right up the year around.
Of course, it's not so interesting as in the winter. You see more striking contrasts in the winter, don't you think?
A couple of girl cousins of mine from Cincinnati have been here. They're interested in welfare work of all sorts.
"Hermione," they said, "we want to see the bread line."
"My dears," I said, "I don't mind showing it to you, but it's nothing much to see in summer. It's in the winter that it arouses one's deepest sympathies."
And one must keep one's sympathies aroused. Often I say to myself at night: "Have I been sympathetic today, or have I failed?"
Mamma often lacks sympathy. She objects to having me reopen my Salon this winter.
"Hermione," she said, "I don't mind the subjects you take up—or the people you take up with—if you only take them up one at a time. And I am glad when your own little group meets here, because it keeps you at home. But I will not have all the different kinds of freaks here at the same time, sitting around discussing free love and sex education."
I was indignant "Mamma," I said, "what right have you to say they would discuss that all the time?"
"Because," she said, "I have noticed that no matter whether they start with sociology or psychology, they always get around to Sex in the end."
Isn't it funny about pure-minded people?—in the generation before this anything that shocked a pure-minded person like Mamma was sure to be bad.
But now it's only the evil-minded people who ever get shocked at all, it seems.
The really purest of the pure-minded people don't get shocked by anything at all these days.
I think Mamma is either getting purer-minded all the time or losing some of it—I can't tell which—for she isn't shocked as easily as she was a few months ago.
But I got a shock myself recently.
I found out that plants have Sex, you know.
Just think of it—carrots, onions, turnips, potatoes, and everything!
Isn't it frightful to think that this agitation has spread to the vegetable kingdom?
I vowed I would never eat another potato as long as I lived!
And, after all, what good does it do—letting the vegetable kingdom have Sex, I mean?
Even a good thing, you know, can be carried too far.
"Mamma," I told her, "you are hopelessly behind the times. Sex is a Great Fact. Someone must discuss it. And who but the Leaders of Thought are worthy to?"
I intend to say nothing more about it now—but when the time comes I will reopen my Salon.
And as far as talking about Sex is concerned—the right sort of a mind will get good out of it, and the wrong sort will get harm.
I don't really like discussions of Sex any more than Mamma does. No really nice girl does.
But we advanced thinkers owe a duty to the race.
Not that the race is grateful. Especially the lower classes.
It was only last week that I was endeavoring to introduce the cook to some advanced ideas—for her own good, you know, and because one owes a spiritual duty to one's servants—and she got angry and gave notice.
The servant problem is frightful. It will have to be taken up seriously.