novelist.'—'He has downright insulted them,' said my neighbor on the right, 'don't you think?'
'Why, no,' I replied, 'not exactly. He was asked to speak on the superfluous things; and, he has really demonstrated that they are superfluous. After this, don't you see, the builders of civilization can go on with their work and not! worry about the arts. He has told them that beauty is not for them; and they will swiftly conclude that they are not for beauty. I think he has very honestly expressed what our radical young people are thinking. They are in revolt. They wish by all means to widen the traditional breach between the artist and the Puritan.'
'What do you mean by Puritan?' inquired my friend, as we made our way out of the hall together.
He is a simple-hearted old gentleman who doesn't follow the new literature, but still reads Hawthorne and George Eliot.
'It isn't,' I explained, 'what I mean by Puritan that signifies. It is what the young people mean. A Puritan for them is any man who believes it possible to distinguish between good and evil, and who also believes that, having made the distinction, his welfare depends upon, his furthering the one and curbing the other.'
'But,' cried the old gentleman in some heat,
