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 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, be-
cause 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 its 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 is 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.