cessor to my admiration. When Bronson Alcott, returning from his western lecturing tour, presented himself late at night to his poverty stricken family, they flew down the stairs, wife and four girls, in their night wear, to meet him. (A well-bred person would, of course, have sent one of her huddle of colored servants.) The philosopher presented himself somewhat apologetically, confessing that he had lost his overcoat and that his net profits had amounted to only one dollar. Mrs. Alcott, that underbred woman, kissed the old sage affectionately and said: "I think you did very well indeed, dear." And they all trooped up to bed—heaven knows how many of them to a room, covered with heaven knows what a horror of a carpet.
Now, that domestic scene contrasts rather shabbily, I admit, with Mrs. Gerould's picture of a really nice woman meditating a fracture of the seventh commandment in a spacious sunflooded chamber with a Chinese rug. Morals change with modes. As Mrs. Gerould has taught us, "civilization means accepting nicer and nicer things and rejecting nasty ones." And so I shall probably continue to read Mrs. Gerould's stories and to neglect Miss Alcott's, and yet to feel, after all, that though the later writer is undeniably more chic, the earlier one may
